(Fr.).
A wind instrument of uncertain identity, used at the French court in the 17th and early 18th centuries. ‘Cromornes et trompettes marines’ formed part of the grande écurie from the mid-17th century to the mid-18th, by which time the positions originally occupied by players of these instruments had probably become sinecures (see Paris, §V, 1(i)). There were normally five cromornes: two dessus, one taille, one quinte and one basse de cromorne.
It is a misconception that the cromorne can be identified with the Crumhorn. Certain inaccuracies and inconsistencies in the description and illustrations of the crumhorn given by Mersenne (Harmonie universelle, 1636–7) and perpetuated by Trichet (Traité des instruments de musique, c1640; see Lesure, 1955), who based his comments on Mersenne’s, suggest that neither theorist was familiar with the instrument (which they called ‘tournebout’). This and the absence of firm evidence for the crumhorn in France before Mersenne show that it was little known there, if at all (if it was played in France, it would appear to have been referred to as the douçaine: see Dolzaina). Both Mersenne and Trichet refer to the cromorne only as an organ stop. The identification of the cromornewith an unusual instrument found in some modern collections and known as the tournebout(see Tournebout (2)) can also be disregarded. A suite ‘pour les cromornes’ by Degrignis (1660) in the Toulouse-Philidor Collection in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris (the opening ‘Petit bransle’ of which is given in Grove’s Dictionary, 5th edn, ‘Crumhorn’), has a bass part with a range of over two octaves; a note in the score of Charpentier’s Offerte pour l’orgue et pour les violons, flûtes, et hautbois H514 (?early 1670s; see Lewis) specifies that the bass line, which also exceeds the range of a true crumhorn, should be doubled by ‘serpent, cromorne and bassoon’. Brossard (1703) and others gave ‘basse de chromorne’ as a synonym for ‘bassoon’. The cromorne therefore appears to have been a type of bassoon. The similarity of the name to ‘crumhorn’ remains unexplained; perhaps the cromorne resembled a bass shawm, with a curved bell reminiscent of the crumhorn. Such an instrument, described as a ‘gros hault-bois’, appears in engravings of the funeral of Duke Charles III of Lorraine at Nancy in 1618 (reproduced in Boydell). Walther’s dictionary (1732) suggests that the name ‘cromorne’ was a corruption of cor (horn) and morne (dark, quiet, sad).
Grove5 (‘Crumhorn’; A. Baines)
MersenneHU
WaltherML
S. de Brossard: Dictionaire de musique (Paris, 1703/R)
F. Lesure: ‘Le Traité des instruments de musique de Pierre Trichet’, AnnM, iii (1955), 283–387; edn pubd separately (Neuilly-sur-Seine, 1957)
E. Lewis: The Use of Wind Instruments in Seventeenth Century Instrumental Music (diss., U. of Wisconsin, 1964), 486
B.R. Boydell: ‘The French Cromorne in the Early Baroque Period’, The Crumhorn and Other Renaissance Windcap Instruments (Buren, 1982), 183–97
BARRA R. BOYDELL