Klarinet Archive - Posting 000494.txt from 1995/05

From: "R. J. Shilcock" <mlfl@-----.UK>
Subj: basset horns, etc. / Rachel Park
Date: Fri, 19 May 1995 06:40:39 -0400

All the early basset horns I remember seeing in Oxford's Bate Collection had
the "knee-joint" shape, ie., 2 straight joined at an angle at the middle joint
position. These were obviously (?) later instruments by forty years or more
than
the curved instruments of Mayrhofer, though. It seems significant that the
basset horn has a bottom note an octave below that of the early cor anglais,
which was developed first; could this have something to do with its name? This
transfers the "horn" nomenclature problem back to the double reed instrument.
I've *never* seen a work on wind instruments which has pointed out that the
word "Englisch" in the 17th-18th centuries meant (in German) not only
"English", but "pertaining to angels, angelic".
I think I'd better get back to work ....
Roger Shilcock