Nope, I’m not going to mention Bill’s whistles at all, nor snakes which is why it’s a little OT and not a lot.
So…there was a programme on Radio 4 (BBC in the UK) the other day on busking instruments back in the 1800’s or so. And it seems that the predecessor of the euphonium was an instrument called a Serpent.
Anyone know anything about these…they certainly look interesting..?
Trisha
It’s the bass member of the cornet (or cornett - the renaissance holewind instrument, not the valved brass band instrument) family. There’s more than one recipe for home-made serpents on the web, e.g.:
http://www.serpentwebsite.com/SQPT_concept.htm
I’m sure I found another one on the Musical Instrument Makers Forum (www.mimf.com) but can’t quite locate it now.
I have the impression that hole placement is non-critical - they have very flexible tuning, which is what makes cornetts so fiendishly difficult to play. I’ve tried (briefly) both cornetto and serpent and they are utter beasts. The virtuoso Renaissance cornettist’s trick, apparently, was to play a descending scale while fingering an ascending one (or vice versa?). One day I will have the time and money to conquer the cornett because when played well they are among the most beautiful instruments ever devised (and curses on the sniper who robbed me of a mute cornet on Ebay!).
I’m hoping to get to the London Exhibition of Early Music next month where I’ll get the chance to try one again.
Here are a couple of web sites
http://www.serpentwebsite.com/
http://www.oddmusic.com/gallery/om24750.html
There are a bunch of other fun instruments at the oddmusic site. I like the Stroviols ukelele.
Steve
To quote the website http://www.harvard-magazine.com/archive/00so/so00.dept.treasure.html
Hector Berlioz disapproved. He thought the serpent suitable in church only in masses for the dead “to double the terrifying plainchant of the Dies irae.” “The essentially barbaric sound of this instrument,” he wrote, makes it “much better suited to the ceremonies of the bloody cult of the Druids.” Professor of music Thomas F. Kelly quotes Berlioz on the serpent in his new book, First Nights: Five Musical Premieres. Kelly teaches a popular course on the same topic (see January-February, page 52). When he gets to Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique, in which the composer deploys a serpent, Kelly brings Harvard’s instrument to class and blows into it. Berlioz called the serpent’s voice a “cold and abominable howling.”
Serpents are mentioned in more than one Thomas Hardy novel.
He really is a rollocking read.
Berlioz may have said what he did about the Serpent, he featured it in his Symphonie fantastique (along with Ophicleids!), precisely because he thought its sound fit to the Sabbat dance. This remains–or is more and more recognized as such–as a landmark in modern symphonic orchestration.
To hear a modern recording with the period instruments, check John Eliot Gardiner’s version with the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, 1993 release by Philips Classic Productions (# 434 402-2).
Believe me, in this album you can hear the Serpent instrument is, er, well–unique. Also, the horn parts, with natural (unkeyed) horns are worth listening.
I’m usually not a fan of these “fundamentalists” and Baroquists approaches of orchestral music, and prefer Boehm-system pianos 
but this recording has color!
I have a colleague who is a great serpent enthusiast. A couple of months ago I played alongside him for a special service to celebrate John Wesley’s 300th birthday - we played arrangements of some tunes that were popular in the 18th cent and what fun we had!
He was telling me recently of an instrument maker who is producing a soprano version, which ought to be fairly jolly.
I think the air requirements of the Serpent outstrip my Dixon low D by some margin.
And if you ever wanted to own one, you can try making it yourself!
http://www.simonchadwick.net/serpent/
Two day project out of plywood! I wonder if my lovely wife would mind having one of these around the house. After all, shop time is like personal therapy, right? It’s good for me, right?
-Patrick
The Doug Yeo site which links out of Patrick’s make-your-own is really interesting…including the Serpent Chandelier in the Belgian Musical Instrument museum :roll:
I wonder if my lovely wife would mind having one of these around the house.
I know that mine would!
But I can confirm that the homemade version sounds very much like my colleague’s ‘authentic’ serpent. The question is, does that make it more or less acceptable to a wife?!
That will have to remain one of life’s mysteries…
Trisha