Magnum opus musicum 1604

TC: The cornetto, or cornettino, as it is also known, is perhaps not familiar to all music lovers, because it almost completely disappeared from concert halls during the classical period. In the Renaissance and Baroque periods, however, this instrument played a leading role. Can you tell us something about it? Who pushed the cornetto aside?

FS: Scholars argue about this, and the experts disagree. On the one hand, the cornett was replaced by the violin because the way composers wrote changed in the second half of the 17th century in favour of the violin.

Another aspect that is often mentioned in this context is the numerous plague epidemics, which in 1630/31 alone killed almost a third of Venice’s population. It is easy to imagine that many cornett players, teachers and makers died at that time. This certainly represented a huge setback in the passing down of knowledge and skills from one generation to the next.

Last, but not least, the rise of the oboe at the end of the 17th century contributed to the zinc falling out of favour and gradually being replaced. From being a popular virtuoso instrument, it was transformed into a kind of curiosity.

TC: The instrument’s curvature makes it look a lot like a horn. What materials are used to make modern cornetts?

FS: Given its evolutionary history, the cornett was certainly inspired by animal horns. In museums in Basel, Stuttgart, Lübeck, etc., we can still find magnificent individual instruments made of ivory. But even historically, these were very much the exception. Today, as in the past, cornetts are generally made of fruitwood or boxwood and then wrapped in parchment or thin leather.

TC: Baroque music has enjoyed great popularity again for several decades, and almost every opera house now has baroque operas on its programme, which were completely unknown 50 years ago. How do you explain this change? And how do you assess a possible similar breakthrough for the rich literature of Renaissance music?

FS: That’s not an easy question for me to answer, since I’m not a cultural manager or theatre director. In any case, it would be desirable if Renaissance music were more strongly represented, since large amounts of wonderful repertoire from this period are still waiting to be discovered by the audience.

TC: We know the cornett from the sacred music scene, but also from the courtly music scene – was it also a folk instrument or does it have its origins in the Italian village cultures? Was the cornett, so to speak, the people’s trumpet?

FS: The cornett originated in the countries north of the Alps, then it was taken to Italy, only to be brought back again in a modified form. You can even read in certain encyclopaedias that the cornetto was a kind of substitute for the trumpet; however, the cornetto and the trumpet were independent instrument families with only very little overlap in their repertoires. As part of the town piper ensemble, the cornetto was played at representative municipal events, at weddings and also for figural music in church services. It therefore played an important role in people’s everyday musical lives.

 It began with my realisation that some very simple-looking English carols were almost certainly for the big celebrations Henry V mounted around the Treaty of Troyes and his wedding to Catherine de Valois. The music is in only two voices but there were hundreds in attendance. He had his full Chapel Royal and all his instrumentalists with him, and he surely used them all to increase the impact of the event.  

 It continued with the many French songs of the early fifteenth century that were plainly intended for large audiences and were written in a way that implied far larger ensembles than a first glance at the music would suggest. 

But it is in that context that Catherine Motuz has devised her new Lassus programme. She is concentrating on the motets that were published for the first time after his death in the Magnum opus musicum that his sons assembled in his memory: the theory is that these were among his last compositions. And she is casting them grandly, as the Bavarian court documentably did, taking advantage of the assembled students at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis.  

It seems to me that this is the way early music performance is moving and that it is a most welcome initiative.