(from Ger. kurzes Holz: ‘short woodwind’).
A generic term, referring to double-reed instruments from the 16th and 17th centuries with bores that double back on themselves (as in bassoons). The pitch of such instruments is thus deeper than their length would suggest. Specifically the word ‘Kortholt’ was applied to four kinds of instrument: a dulcian or early Bassoon (especially in England, according to Praetorius (2/1619), where the word ‘curtal’, a corruption of Kortholt, was used); a Racket, according to various late 16th- and early 17th-century inventories cited by Kinsky and Boydell; a Sordun, or ‘courtaut’ as Mersenne (1636–7) called a similar instrument; and a wind-cap sordun.
The
instrument Praetorius illustrates as a Kortholt is of the last type; it has a
wind cap over a double reed and an apparently cylindrical bore, doubled back on
itself within a single wooden column (see illustration). The bore issues through a small
lateral hole at the back below the wind cap. The instrument has 16 soundholes
in all: the tips of all the fingers and the thumbs cover ten holes, and the
joints of the index fingers cover two more; the latter and the little-finger
holes are duplicated to allow for left- and right-handed playing (the four
holes not in use are presumably stopped with wax). There are two closed keys
which extend the range upwards. The range is shown in the illustration as C–b
, though elsewhere
Praetorius writes that it is a full two octaves, B'–b. In dealing with most wind instruments Praetorius
both illustrated them and described them in the text; this is not the case with
the Kortholt, which is only mentioned in passing (sometimes by the name ‘Kort
Instrument’), though its range is given with those of the sorduns.
Describing the ‘courtaut’, which Mersenne characterized as an open-reed sordun, Trichet (see Lesure, 1955) wrote that ‘one covers the reed with a cap, and [the instrument] is used as a bass in consort with musettes’; according to Trichet, therefore, the courtaut is effectively the same as Praetorius's ‘Kortholt’. (See Oboe, §I, 2 and Wind-cap instruments.)
M. Praetorius: Syntagma musicum, ii (Wolfenbüttel, 1618, 2/1619/R; Eng. trans., 1986, 2/1991) [incl. Theatrum instrumentorum (Wolfenbüttel, 1620/R) as appx]
M. Mersenne: Harmonie universelle (Paris, 1636–7/R; Eng. trans. of the bks on insts, 1957)
G. Kinsky: ‘Doppelrohrblatt-Instrumente mit Windkapsel’, AMw, vii (1925), 253–96
F. Lesure: ‘Le Traité des instruments de musique de Pierre Trichet’, AnnM, iii (1955), 283–387; iv (1956), 175–253; edn pubd separately (Neuilly-sur-Seine, 1957)
H. Moeck and H. Mönkemeyer: Zur Geschichte der Kortinstrumente (Celle, 1973)
B.R. Boydell: The Crumhorn and Other Renaissance Windcap Instruments (Buren, 1982)
HOWARD MAYER BROWN, BARRA R. BOYDELL