(Fr. serpent; Ger. Serpent, Schlangenrohr; It. serpentone).
A lip-energized wind instrument with side holes and a cup-shaped mouthpiece, sometimes called the ‘bass of the cornett family’. Its original purpose was to strengthen the sound of church choirs, especially in Gregorian plainchant. In the mid-18th century it was adopted by military bands, where it was gradually replaced during the 19th century by the valved bass brass instruments.
In the Hornbostel-Sachs classification the serpent is ranked as a trumpet.
REGINALD MORLEY-PEGGE/PHILIP BATE/STEPHEN J. WESTON
The serpent differs from the ‘great’ (bass) cornett – from which it is evidently derived – by the more pronounced conicity of its bore, its thinner walls, and the absence of a thumb-hole. It consists of a sinuous conical tube about 2·13 metres long; inserted into its smaller end is a right-angled metal crook, which increases the length to about 2·44 metres. The bore expands from about 1·3 cm to nearly 10·2 cm. The mouthpiece is generally of ivory or horn and is similar to that of the bass trombone, sometimes nearly hemispherical in shape and with an exceedingly narrow rim. A metal mouthpiece with a wider rim came into use later, mainly among military-band players. The serpent originally had six finger-holes (see fig.1a), arranged in two groups of three with a distance of about 30·5 cm between the lowest hole of the upper group and the highest of the lower group. The upper group was fingered in the same way as other woodwind instruments, but the lower group could also be fingered with the order of the fingers reversed, the right hand being placed palm upwards below the bend (see fig.2). During the 19th century instruments were made with two to eight additional holes governed by closed keys (see figs.1b, c and d). In its final form the serpent had 14 such keys, with no holes directly fingered. English and continental serpents differ in outline, the English instruments being more compactly folded (see figs.1 a and b).
Serpents were nearly always made of wood, usually walnut. Surviving instruments show two distinct methods of construction. The earlier was to shape and hollow out two complete halves from solid blocks of wood and glue them together to make a tube, strengthening the parts subject to stress with ox sinew and covering the whole with leather. The second method, favoured by 19th-century English makers, was to build up the instrument from fairly short overlapping half-sections. These were glued, reinforced across the joints with metal staples, and lapped with canvas and then with leather. The two ends of the tube were further strengthened with brass mounts. In a few early serpents the two methods were combined as the available material dictated. Although Mersenne said that serpents could equally well be made of brass or silver, no early metal instruments seem to have survived. Metal serpents are said to have been made around 1800 by August Grenser (i) of Dresden, and by Feidhart, a pewterer of Leipzig. In the Reid Collection (Edinburgh University) there is a late-style serpent of copper signed ‘Joseph Taylor, Glasgow’.
Originally the serpent was held vertically, but during the 18th century Abbé Lunel, a celebrated serpent player at Notre Dame, Paris, introduced a method of holding the instrument diagonally with the second bend over the forearm. Hermenge, in his serpent tutor (c1817), advocated a nearly horizontal position with the first bend between the left forearm and the body. Hermenge notwithstanding, as late as the mid-19th century, serpentists in Amiens Cathedral were still holding the serpent d'Eglise vertically and examination of the drilling of the finger holes in extant early 19th century French church serpents suggests the vertical position remained in favour. Military serpents, on the other hand, being by design more compact and sturdy than church serpents, lent themselves almost immediately to a more horizontal playing position; in England, tradition has it that George III suggested both the method (used by military marching bands) of holding the serpent on the diagonal (see fig.2), and the slightly outwards-turned bell that is characteristic of most later English instruments.
Like all cup-mouthpiece instruments the serpent sounds a number of the partials of the harmonic series. Opening of successive finger-holes modifies the effective length of the air column and so enables the formation of new fundamentals (here the terms ‘fundamental’ and ‘harmonic’ are used in the broad sense common among playing musicians). Chromatic intervals are obtained by half-opening the finger-holes or by fork fingering, the former being the older method. As the finger-holes are opened towards the mouthpiece the tone quality becomes progressively poorer, though skilful breath control can mitigate inequalities in resonance. The 8th partial, obtained with all holes covered, was probably the upper limit of the range. The serpent’s large bore enables the fundamental to sound readily, and the diatonic scale of the first octave consists entirely of fundamentals. The rather curious proportions of the instrument, however, afford the player considerable latitude in the pitch of these fundamentals and, to a lesser extent, of their partials, which can by lip adjustment be lowered by as much as a 4th. This explains why on most charts the downward compass of the instrument is shown as extended by two or more semitones below the note sounded with all finger-holes closed and normal lip tension, and may also account for the many divergences between one fingering chart and another. Of eight such charts published between c1760 and c1835 (listed in Table 1) no two agree as to either fingering or compass. All except the last are for serpent without keys and indicate occasional fork fingering; four call for some half-stopping as well. The last is for a seven-key instrument on which all the chromatic notes are obtained by means of the keys (see fig.3). In England it was customary to consider the serpent’s true fundamental (all holes closed) as C, while the French tutors and Fröhlich give it as D. D is possible on English instruments, but French instruments seem to be more responsive at the lower end of their compass, though there is little apparent difference in size.
During
the mid-19th century a few larger serpents were built. A contra-serpent exactly
twice the size of the ordinary instrument was made about 1840 by two brothers
named Wood. It was played in York Minster and elsewhere in the York area, and
is now in the Edinburgh University Collection of Historic Musical Instruments.
Another large instrument, in E
, was reported to have been displayed by James Jordan,
a Liverpool maker, at the 1851 Exhibition in London; Jordan’s exhibition
leaflet makes no mention of a contra-serpent, but does describe his ‘newly invented
Euphonic Serpentcleide in C. Lowest note CCC, or an octave below the ordinary
serpent …. Its power and beauty of tone is perceptible from the lowest F of the
Pianoforte’. There is no illustration of this monster, whose price is quoted at
£31 10s.
According to Abbé Leboeuf (Mémoire concernant l’histoire ecclesiastique et civile d’Auxerre, Paris, 1743) the serpent was invented about 1590 by Edmé Guillaume, a canon of Auxerre and an official of Bishop Amyot’s episcopal household, who discovered the art of making a cornett in the form of a serpent. This new instrument is said to have given fresh zest to Gregorian plainsong and was soon in widespread use in churches. The earliest known serpent player (apart, presumably, from Guillaume himself) was Michael Tornatoris, who in 1602 was appointed player of the serpent and bassoon (the bassoon was then only in the dulcian stage) to the church of Notre Dame des Doms, Avignon.
Praetorius made no mention of the serpent, which was apparently unknown in Germany before about the mid-18th century. The first detailed description is found in Mersenne (1636–7; see fig.4); from this it may be surmised that the earliest serpents were about 46 to 61 cm shorter than the 18th-century instruments and had a true fundamental of E instead of D. Kircher (1650) included a drawing and a brief description, stating that the serpent was then used extensively only in France. In at least one European collection large cornetts of more or less serpentine form, undoubtedly made as early as or earlier than the true serpent, have been wrongly identified as ‘Italian serpents’. This has given rise to the view that the serpent originated in Italy and at an earlier date than had been generally supposed; but the alleged 16th-century serpents were examined by Morley-Pegge and proved to conform to all the criteria of the cornett, including the thumb-hole not found on the true serpent. Aimé Cherest (Bulletin de la Société des Sciences Historiques et Naturelles de l’Yonne, iv, 1850, pp.29–53) also cast doubt on the reliability of Leboeuf’s statement. He asserted an earlier origin for the instrument, basing his view on an entry in the accounts of the archdiocese of Sens for 1453–4, but the entry is ambiguous and seems almost certainly to refer to repairs made to some metallic part of the church furniture.
The serpent was probably brought to England from France after the Restoration. The James Talbot manuscript (GB-Och), which is thought to date from about 1695, gives details and measurements that show that the instrument was then nearly identical with that of a century later. According to Talbot’s notes, chromatic intervals were obtained by half-stopping the holes, but he did not mention fork fingering. The names of the two leading players of the day, Le Riche (or La Riche) and Lewis, are also given.
Apart from Busby’s account (Concert Room and Orchestra Anecdotes, 1825) of how Handel first heard the serpent in England – by no means improbable, since it appears to have been unknown at that time in Germany – the instrument seems to have attracted little attention until 1783, when a German band was recruited in Hanover for the Coldstream Guards. This band included a serpent, and within ten years or so the instrument was found in most English military bands. Doane’s Musical Directory (1794) mentions four players attached to Guards’ bands, as well as Louis Alexandre Frichot, serpent player in the Concert of Ancient Music orchestra in 1793.
Chromatic keys were evidently added to the serpent earlier in England than elsewhere: in the early 1800s three keys became standard; their application to the convoluted serpent was no doubt suggested by the three-key upright Bass-horn with which Frichot was experimenting early in the 1790s. About 1817 the bandmaster of the Prince Regent’s band, Christian Kramer, is said to have devised improvements which made every note ‘equal in strength and roundness of tone’. He ‘added both to the number and size of the holes; constructed keys with a double action, which lie conveniently under the hand, and enable the performer to slur through the chromatic scale’. His instrument was reputed to have a compass of ‘three octaves from double C’ and was no doubt the forerunner of the seven-key serpents made in London by Thomas Key of Charing Cross.
The serpent made a significant contribution to the English church band in the early 19th century, although it was not as prevalent as has previously been surmised. D.J. Blaikley (Grove2) stated that the instrument ‘for many years was an indispensable member of the primitive orchestras which accompanied the singing in rural churches in England’. In 1922 K.H. MacDermott (Sussex Church Music in the Past, p.41) noted that the serpent was ‘practically obsolete in England, but still to be met with in France’. He referred to four church bands in Sussex where it had been played. S.J. Weston (1995, p.223) located examples of its use in six of the nine eastern counties. He noted 21 extant serpents with a known church provenance, both on the mainland and on the Isle of Man and the Scilly Isles. The serpent was used in much the same way as bassoons and cellos to support the church band’s texture; the serpent’s close relatives, the ophicleide and bass-horn, were less often used. Examples of church bands which used a mixture of bass instruments include Hucknall, Nottinghamshire, where a ‘bass fiddle’, ophicleide, trombone and two bassoons were used in conjunction with the serpent. At Seagrave, Leicestershire, however, it seems that the serpent was superseded by an ophicleide, although the two instruments are preserved together, displayed in the same glass case.
In Germany the serpent was evidently first adopted in certain wind bands around the middle of the 18th century. A number of military marches composed between 1750 and 1764 containing serpent parts have been discovered by Karl Haas, but no earlier evidence of the serpent in German wind bands has come to light. Although the 19th-century upright serpent was used to some extent in Germany, it did not have so long a life there as elsewhere, no doubt because the valve was developed earlier in Germany than elsewhere.
In France the serpent was used mainly in sacred music, and it is doubtful that it was used in military bands before the Revolution. Gaspard Veillard, who taught serpent at the newly formed Paris Conservatoire from 1796 to 1803, was a member of the Musique des Gardes Françaises as early as 1771, but as he was also a bassoonist at the Paris Opéra he probably played a bassoon and not a serpent in the military band. A bassoon-serpent introduced in 1788 was the first of many forms of upright serpent widely used during the first half of the 19th century. Although its inventor, J.J. Régibo, was a Frenchman, France seems to have been the last country to adopt this type.
The main cause of the serpent’s decline in popularity in the 19th century seems to have been the increasing tendency to extend its compass upwards and to use the instrument in ways for which it was structurally unsuited. According to a manuscript serpent tutor by J.B. Métoyen, musician-in-ordinary to Louis XV and Louis XVI from 1760 to 1792, who was referring to the use of the serpent in church, it was becoming all too common among players to finish off on the ‘fourth D in the third octave’ (i.e. the 8th partial) instead of on a ‘belle pédale’. In addition, since good serpent playing depended above all upon a good sense of pitch, the addition of keys in the 19th century very probably led to a deterioration in the average quality of playing. Players were encouraged in the fallacious belief that keys cured faulty intonation, whereas keys actually had no influence on the instrument’s remarkable inherent flexibility. The serpent tended to be neglected by more sensitive musicians and so fell into disrepute, encountering devastating criticism from Choron, Berlioz and others. Such criticism, levelled at the serpent by musicians who can hardly have heard it at its best, has been frequently repeated by others who never heard it at all. Whatever its shortcomings may have been in the hands of poor players after it had been unscientifically mechanized, in its simple form it had performed useful service for at least two centuries. Burney compared its tone, in incompetent hands, to that of a ‘great hungry, or rather angry, Essex calf’, but he also admitted that when judiciously played it supported voices better than the organ. A later partisan, commenting in Musical World (3 June 1841) on an improvement made by Thomas Key, said ‘thus the fine quality of tone of the serpent may, henceforth, be available in the orchestra, and the hog-song of the ophicleide will, we fervently hope, be speedily tacitted or banished altogether’.
During the second half of the 20th century the early music movement brought about a revival of the serpent, giving rise to some new repertory. The early-brass specialist Alan Lumsden gave the first performance of Simon Proctor’s Concerto for Serpent in South Carolina in 1989. Other composers have included Judith Weir, Clifford Bevan and Robert Steadman. Peter Maxwell Davies scored for the instrument in his opera Taverner (1962–8).
Most surviving serpents, apart from the upright forms, are without attribution. Rarely one finds an example of the 18th century or very early 19th with an otherwise unknown name on it, but there is nothing to show whether the name is that of an obscure maker or of the instrument’s owner; the latter seems more probable since there is no known instance of two such serpents with the same name.
In England, where the instrument in its convoluted form survived later than elsewhere, there are a number of 19th-century examples by such makers as Milhouse, Thomas Key and Gerock, all of whom were well-known woodwind makers. During the second quarter of the century there were a few serpent specialists, such as Francis Pretty, maker of horns and trumpets, who appears to have specialized in bass-horns and serpents (1838–40), Charles Huggett (1843–9) and possibly Beacham (who has been credited with inventing the serpentcleide played by Prospère, the renowned ophicleidist of Jullien’s band).
Among
the Paris specialists were Piffault, maker of serpents militaires, an
upright form (c1806; see fig.5a), and
Baudoin (convoluted serpents d’église, usually with three keys, c1812).
The serpent Forveille was a variety of upright serpent devised by the
Paris maker Forveille shortly before 1823, when he was awarded an honourable
mention for this instrument at the Paris Exposition, and it became popular in
France. The bell half of the instrument is of wood; the remainder consists of
two sharp U-bends of brass, with the smaller end terminating in a swan-neck
crook which carries the mouthpiece (see fig.5b).
There are six finger-holes and three or four keys; fingering and general
technique – shown in several fingering charts and in tutors by Hermenge and
Schiltz – are those of the ordinary serpent. Similar in design, though with
more complicated keywork, were the chromatisches Basshorn (c1820)
by Johann Streitwolf of Göttingen and Haseneier’s Bass-Euphonium (c1850).
Coëffet’s ophimonocléide, patented in 1828, derived its name from the
fact that it had but one large, open-standing key near the brass bell; the body
of the instrument was of wood. The key was closed only for C
and D in all octaves, for B in the third octave,
and for E and F in the
fourth octave. The instrument also had a slide whereby its pitch could be
altered from opera to cathedral pitch (a difference of about one-third of a
tone). It appears to have had little success but surviving examples are
preserved in the Bate Collection, Oxford, and at the Royal College of Music,
London; an incomplete specimen is at the City Museum, Weston Park, Sheffield.
By 1850 in any case (the date of the Haseneier instrument notwithstanding) all
instruments of this type had become obsolete.
Parisian makers who produced serpents of the Russian bassoon type were Baumann (c1800–c1830), who also made serpents with six keys (of the serpent d’église type), Pezé (c1807), Boileau fils (c1818) and Galander (c1835). Forveille’s pupil Turlot made and repaired serpents of all kinds. Outside Paris, Tabard (c1820), Jeantet of Lyons (c1820), Printemps of Lille (c1820) and Coëffet of Chaumont-en-Vexin (c1828) also produced excellent serpents of the Russian bassoon type.
Belgian makers who produced upright serpents (mainly of the Russian bassoon type) as well as other instruments include Bonne (Ghent), Van Belle (Ghent), Dupré (Tournai), Van Engelen (Lierre), Charles Sax (Brussels) and Tuerlinckx (Mechelen). Streitwolf (Göttingen), Stiegler (Munich) and Luvoni (Milan) also made upright serpents. Only two makers, Milhouse and Tuerlinckx, are known to have been active before 1800. Sachs illustrated a 19th-century serpent (which he described as ‘tubaform’), the original of which is preserved in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. This is an upright instrument with a forward-facing bell of true serpent shape, rather than the ophicleide-type bell which is a feature of the ophimonocleide, among other instruments.
Late 20th-century makers of the serpent included Christopher Monk (who was succeeded by Keith Rogers), and David Harding of Abingdon.
Although the serpent, with its very low normal register, does not lend itself to virtuoso display, there have been a few players whose exceptional skill attracted notice. Abbé Aubert, serpent player at Notre Dame, Paris, from about 1750 to 1772, was said by Francoeur to have been the finest player up to that time. His successor, Abbé Lunel, also had a great reputation in his day, but both confined their playing to ecclesiastical circles. Louis Alexandre Frichot, the French serpent player, lived in England after escaping from the Revolution, but appears to have played there only on the bass-horn, his own invention. Hurworth of Richmond in Yorkshire was a member of George III’s private band and could execute elaborate flute variations on the serpent with perfect accuracy. André, of the Prince Regent’s band and later of the remarkable Montpellier Spa band near Cheltenham, appears to have been the outstanding serpent player of all time. It was for him that Christian Kramer arranged the Corelli sonata that Domenico Dragonetti, the great double bass player, performed as a showpiece. (On one occasion at Montpellier Spa when André played the sonata, Dragonetti, who was present, loudly applauded the performance.) André was held by his contemporaries to be fully as great a player on the serpent as was Dragonetti on the double bass. He retired from active playing about 1853. Jepp, of the Coldstream Guards, was another exceptional serpent player. Somewhat younger than André, he never attained the latter’s outstanding position, but his services were in great demand at music festivals and even for chamber music. He was a member of Sir George Smart’s select band that played before Queen Victoria at the Guildhall in 1837. The serpent gradually declined during the remainder of the 19th century, in spite of Sir Michael Costa’s championship of its cause. In 1897 Prout noted that ‘the serpent is now so entirely obsolete that when, some years ago, the author was arranging for a performance of St Paul, he was unable to find a player on the instrument in the whole of London, and the part had to be played on a tuba’.
The revival of interest in the serpent since the late 20th century is chronicled in the Serpent Newsletter, edited by Paul Schmidt, who also maintains the Serpent Website. Modern performers include the London Serpent Trio (comprising Philip Humphries, Andrew van der Beek and Clifford Bevan), Michel Godard, Bernard Fourtet and Douglas Yeo.
MersenneHU
A. Kircher: Musurgia universalis (Rome, 1650/R)
Imbert (de Sens): Nouvelle méthode de plain-chant (Paris, 1780)
J.W. Callcott: The Serpent (MS, c1802, GB-Lbl Add.27681, vol.xxxi, 60ff)
‘Cocatrix’: ‘Essai sur le serpent’, Correspondance de professeurs et amateurs des musique (1804), 331, 339, 345
A. Hardy: Méthode de serpent (Paris, c1810)
J.B. Métoyen: Méthode de serpent (MS, c1810, F-Pc)
J. Fröhlich: Vollständige theoretische-praktische Musikschule für alle beym Orchester gebräuchliche wichtligere Instrumente (Bonn, 1810–11)
L.J. Francoeur: Traité général des voix et des instruments d’orchestre (Paris, enlarged 2/1813 by A. Choron) [incl. ‘Serpent’ and ‘Trombe’]
G. Hermenge: Méthode elémentaire pour le serpent-forveille (Paris, c1825)
G. Hermenge: Méthode elémentaire de serpent, ordinaire et à clé (Paris, c1835)
A.-E. Choron and J.A. de La Fage: Manuel complet de musique vocale et instrumentale, ou Encyclopédie musicale (Paris, 1836–9)
H. Schiltz: Méthode complète et raisonnée de Serpent (Paris, ?1840)
E. Prout: The Orchestra, i (London, 2/1897), 242
F.W. Galpin: Old English Instruments of Music (London, 1910/R, rev. 4/1965/R by T. Dart)
C. Sachs: Real-Lexicon der Musikinstrumente (Berlin, 1913/R)
H. Bouasse: Les instruments à vent, i (Paris, 1929)
A. Carse: Musical Wind Instruments (London, 1939/R)
A. Baines: Woodwind Instruments and their History (London, 1957, 3/1967/R)
F. Farrington: ‘Dissection of a Serpent’, GSJ, xxii (1969), 81–96
S. Marcuse: A Survey of Musical Instruments (Newton Abbot and New York, 1975), 779–84
A. Baines: The Bate Collection of Historical Wind Instruments (Oxford, 1976)
P. Bate: ‘A Serpent d’église: Notes on some Structural Details’, GSJ, xxix (1976), 47–50
C. Bevan: The Tuba Family (London, 1978)
P. Bate: ‘Some Further Notes on Serpent Technology’, GSJ, xxxii (1979), 124–9
S.J. Weston: The Ophicleide: its Background, Invention and Development (thesis, U. of Leicester, 1984), 9–24
‘Le chant du serpent’, Brass Bulletin, no.67 (1989), 50–54 [interview with Michel Godard]
S.J. Weston: The Instrumentation and Music of the Church Choir-Band (diss., U. of Leicester, 1995)