Regent’s bugle.

A keyed bugle with a slide. In 1815 the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung of Leipzig stated that Johann Georg Schmidt, then solo trumpet in the Prince Regent’s private band, had recently introduced a new brass instrument that he called the ‘regent’s bugle’. Pontécoulant, Fétis and Billert left contradictory accounts of the instrument. Sachs, taking Schmidt’s own account as his source (but lacking an authenticated specimen), described the instrument as a slide bugle. Morley-Pegge (1956), offered the suggestion that Schmidt’s choice of title might have been motivated by his rivalry with the celebrated keyed bugle player, John Distin, whose reputation was largely founded on Joseph Haliday’s instrument, which he had named ‘Royal Kent Bugle’ after his own patron the Duke of Kent, younger brother to the Prince Regent.

In 1966 Joseph Wheeler investigated an instrument (no.37 of the Albert Spencer Collection in the Brighton Museum; see illustration) that presents all the characteristics mentioned by previous writers. The main tubing of this instrument is strictly cylindrical and provided with a graduated telescopic mouthpipe and a U-shaped tuning-slide which, when drawn together and to the same distance put the instrument into C, D, D, E, E or F. In addition opening one or more of five keys on the bell section furnishes semitones, whole tones and minor 3rds above the natural notes of each slide setting. This instrument, made by Curtis of Glasgow, seems to be the true ‘regent’s bugle’, and so far the only recorded example.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

FétisB

A. de. Pontécoulant: Organographie: essai sur la facture instrumentale: art, industrie et commerce (Paris, 1861/R1972 with introduction by W.L. Sumner and index by L.J. Plenckers)

C. Billert: ‘Horn’, Musikalisches Conversations-Lexikon, v, ed. H. Mendel (Berlin, 1875, 3/1890–91/R)

C. Sachs: Reallexikon der Musikinstrumente, zugleich ein Polyglossar für das gesamte Instrumentengebiet (Berlin, 1913/R)

W.F.H. Blandford: ‘The Regent’s Bugle’, MT, lxvi (1925), 442–3

R. Morley-Pegge: ‘The Regent’s Bugle’, GSJ, ix (1956), 91–6

J. Wheeler: ‘New Light on the “Regent’s Bugle”, with some Notes on the Keyed Bugle’, GSJ, xix (1966), 65–70

A. Baines: Brass Instruments: their History and Development (London, 1976/R)

R.T. Dudgeon: The Keyed Bugle (Metuchen, NJ, 1993)

PHILIP BATE/RALPH T. DUDGEON