Wind instruments on which the reed, usually a double reed, is enclosed within a rigid cap (Ger. Windkapsel, Mundkapsel; Fr. capsule à vent) normally of wood. The player blows through a hole at one end of the wind cap, causing the reed to vibrate freely; because there is no contact between the lips and the reed the tone cannot be affected by direct lip pressure as it is with an open reed. Overblowing is not usually possible, so the range of most wind-cap instruments is restricted to those notes that can be fingered directly, normally a 9th; in some cases this range is increased by the use of keys, and there is evidence that the range of crumhorns was extended downwards by underblowing (blowing with less than usual wind pressure). The wind cap also protects the reed from damage.
Wind-cap instruments are related to the Bagpipe and the Bladder pipe, in which a reed vibrates freely within a bag or bladder; they differ from them significantly, however, in that the rigid wind cap allows articulation by the interruption of the flow of air through the reed by tonguing, whereas the flexible bag or bladder maintains a reservoir of air under pressure so that the reed vibrates continuously and cannot be affected by tonguing. True wind-cap instruments are first recorded in the late 15th century – the crumhorn in 1488 in Italy, and the wind-cap shawm in 1493 in Germany.
The origins of the wind cap are uncertain: it may have evolved from bagpipes and bladder pipes, probably not by the simple replacement of the flexible bag with a rigid cap, as Kinsky suggested, but by the development of the wooden stock of the bagpipe chanter or the protective collar round the reed of a bladder pipe. Sachs (2/1930) drew attention to certain hornpipes of the later Middle Ages, known as ‘mouth pipes’, on which a piece of horn at the upper end surrounded the reed (usually a single reed); when pressed against the mouth for playing, this horn structure functions, in effect, as a primitive wind cap. Instruments of this type survived into the 18th century in Wales and Scotland, where they were known respectively as Pibgorn and Stock-and-horn. However, these mouth horns were found primarily in Atlantic Europe, particularly in Britain and Spain, areas not associated with the early occurrence of true wind-cap instruments. Meyer has speculated that the wind cap evolved from the pirouette that supported the player's lips on many early reed instruments.
During the Renaissance a wide variety of wind-cap instruments was developed, of which the crumhorns and wind-cap shawms such as the Schreyerpfeife were the main representatives. These instruments fell out of use in art music during the 17th century, by which time changes in musical taste and the requirements of composers had made their small compass and lack of expressive range seem unacceptably restricted. Some wind-cap shawms survived as folk instruments into the 19th century, and the Practice chanter of the Highland bagpipes represents a modern survival of the wind-cap principle.
Wind-cap instruments may be grouped in four categories:
The Crumhorn was the principal wind-cap instrument from the late 15th century to the early 17th; it is associated mainly with Germany, northern Italy and the Low Countries. Although predominantly cylindrical, the bore flares slightly in the lower, curved section of the body. The cornamusa (see Cornamusa (i)), a rare form of straight, soft ‘crumhorn’ with muted bell, was little known outside Italy, though Praetorius (2/1619) described it. There are isolated references in Germany and Bohemia to ‘straight crumhorns’, which may have resembled the cornamusa. The ‘basset: Nicolo’ illustrated by Praetorius, a bass instrument like a straight crumhorn, can also be included in this group (see Crumhorn).
The Shawm with wind cap rather than open reed appears in iconographical sources, especially from Germany in the 16th century and France in the 17th. It is often depicted in the context of popular rather than art music. Praetorius illustrated a small detachable wind cap that fitted over the reed of the normal discant Schalmey (treble shawm). The extent to which detachable wind caps were used is not known.
The most extensively documented wind-cap shawm is the Schreyerpfeife, an instrument with expanding conical bore, of which examples survive in Berlin and Prague. It is recorded in German sources associated with town and court musicians from the 1520s and continued in use until the late 17th century. Considerable confusion has been caused by Praetorius's use of the plural form of the name and its synonym ‘Schryari’ for a different type of instrument (see Schryari), the shape of whose bore is not clear. His description and illustrations of three instruments, the smallest of which is quite different from the other two, may deal with a rare group of instruments which he happened to have seen; they are certainly not known from any other source.
The Hautbois de Poitou, described by Mersenne, was used in the grande écurie of the French court in the 17th century. Another French wind-cap shawm, the Cléron pastoral, described only by Trichet (see Lesure), appears to have resembled the Schreyerpfeife closely.
The German word Rauschpfeife was used in the 16th century to refer to wind instruments in general and to shawms (both with and without wind cap) in particular (Boydell).
Mersenne commented that ‘all the bagpipe chanters must be sounded with covered reeds [but] they make a much more graceful and vigorous sound when played in the mouth rather than connected to the bag, because the notes can be articulated with the tongue’. He illustrated three such chanters used separately with wind caps: one has two parallel cylindrical bores and two reeds, one a conical bore, and the third a cylindrical or possibly slightly conical bore. The use of the name ‘cornamusa’ in Italian and other Romance languages both for bagpipes and for a wind-cap instrument suggests that the latter may have been derived directly from a bagpipe chanter, and that the practice of using chanters independently may have been widespread.
The late Renaissance was a period of great advances in instrument building, and there are records of a number of wind-cap instruments that were rare or unique and which may have been no more than isolated experiments. The name Kortholt, a generic term for wind instruments with the bore doubled back to reduce their length (as in the bassoon), was also used by Praetorius for a wind-cap instrument of this type, in effect a wind-cap Sordun. This is the only evidence of such an instrument except for Trichet's description of the courtaut, and even this was differently characterized by Mersenne – as a straightforward open-reed sordun.
There is some confusion about the Doppioni, described by Zacconi. Two instruments that are probably examples of doppioni survive in Verona; they are ‘double’ in that each has two cylindrical bores of different pitch. They probably originally had wind caps but were subsequently adapted for use with open reeds on crooks.
The Cromorne (i) of the 17th century is no longer regarded as a wind-cap instrument. The term Dolzaina(or ‘douçaine’) remains problematic: it may have been used for the crumhorn, but it was also clearly used to refer to instruments without wind caps.
See also Oboe, §I, 2.
MersenneHU
PraetoriusSM
PraetoriusTI
L. Zacconi: Prattica di musica (Venice, 1592/R)
C. Sachs: ‘Der Name Rauschquinte’, ZI, xxxiii (1913), 965–6
G. Kinsky: ‘Doppelrohrblatt-Instrumente mit Windkapsel’, AMw, vii (1925), 253–96
C. Sachs: Handbuch der Musikinstrumentenkunde (Leipzig, 1920, 2/1930/R)
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)
I. Hechler: ‘Die Windkapselinstrumente: Geschichte, Speilweise, Besetzungsfragen’, Tibia, ii (1977), 265–74
B.R. Boydell: The Crumhorn and Other Renaissance Windcap Instruments (Buren, 1982)
K.T. Meyer: The Crumhorn: its History, Design, Repertory, and Technique (Ann Arbor, 1983)
BARRA R. BOYDELL