Renaissance cornett (cornetto)

The Renaissance cornett (in Italian, cornetto) is a wooden instrument with a cup-shaped mouthpiece, set vibrating by the lips. Although it was originally played as a woodwind instrument because of its finger holes, it belongs to the brass family because of the way it produces sound. Its timbre, sweet and slightly veiled, has repeatedly been compared with that of the human voice, particularly that of a boy soprano; Mersenne went so far as to compare it to a ray of sunlight piercing the shadows when it sounded alongside the voices of the choir in cathedrals and chapels.

The principal cornett, the soprano or treble, measures about 60 centimetres and was made by carving a single block of plum, pear or maple wood, split lengthways, hollowed out internally in a conical shape, glued back together and carved externally with an octagonal profile. The joins were reinforced with bindings and covered with black leather or parchment. It had six finger holes and a thumb hole. The most common version is the curved cornett, of which more than 140 examples survive; there was also the straight cornett, with a circular cross-section and less common, and the mute cornett, whose mouthpiece was carved from the wood itself and produced a velvety, very soft sound. The mouthpieces, of ebony, ivory or horn, were often later replacements. Besides the soprano, there was the cornettino, a fifth or a fourth higher, and the tenor cornett, a fifth lower, with a double curve and a key for the little finger, as well as the bass, described almost solely by Mersenne.

Its heyday ran roughly from 1550 to 1650. During this period it was used more than other wind instruments for virtuosity, with divisions or diminutions as spectacular as those of the violin, the viola da gamba or the voice. The Italian treatises of Ganassi, Dalla Casa and Bismantova described a highly elaborate tonguing technique, with the lingua riversa (le-re-le-re) for the fastest passages, which took as its model the vocal ornaments known as gorgia. Compared with other instruments of the period, the cornett was prized for its intonation in all keys and its ability to play pianissimo.

For centuries it was used to double voices in cathedrals and chapels, or to replace them, and from 1600 onwards to perform instrumental lines alongside the violin or a consort of trombones. Giovanni Gabrieli was one of its great masters, and in Germany and Austria it played a prominent role in the sacred music of Schütz and of the composers of the imperial court in Vienna. It also formed ensembles of five to eight parts with trombones for ceremonial and tower music, which in Germany survived into the nineteenth century. At the end of the seventeenth century it gradually yielded ground to string instruments, and by the middle of the eighteenth century its practice had declined considerably.

In the twentieth century the cornett was revived thanks to the pioneering work of Christopher Monk in Great Britain and Otto Steinkopf in Germany, in the 1950s. Today it is played by early music ensembles, and replicas are made based on examples preserved in museums, allowing the repertoire of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to be performed faithfully.