Books › A descriptive catalogue of the musical instruments recently exhibited at the Royal Military Exhibition, London, 1890 …, 1891 › scan 202
Scan 202
A descriptive catalogue of the musical instruments recently exhibited at the Royal Military Exhibition, London, 1890 …, 1891
10 lines. Read by computer on 1 October 2026. Printed page 182. See the scan on archive.org.
1XI.
3CLASS—INSTRUMENTS WITH CUP-SHAPED MOUTHPIECES.
5FAMILY: Length varied by Valves.
7THE first application of valves, now so generally applied to brass instruments, is generally attributed to a horn player named Stölzel, a native of Breslau, at the beginning of the present century. The real credit, however, of the invention is due to the oboe player Blümel, a Silesian, who, according to M. Kastner (Manuel Général de Musique Militaire, Paris, 1848), sold the right of his invention to Stölzel, who, improving upon it, took out a patent in Germany for a horn, with three pistons, and by which he secured the right for a period of ten years. And hence Stölzel has frequently been considered as the inventor of the valve. Blümel, nevertheless, in conjunction with the instrument makers Griessling and Schott, took out another German patent, and produced brass instruments of all kinds with valves, but which, owing to their defective intonation, met with little success. Stölzel, by adding tuning slides to the additional lengths of tubing brought into use by the depression of the valves, greatly improved upon Blümel's invention; and the principle, once established, was readily taken up by other instrument makers of the time, and at their hands underwent various modifications and improvements.
9The valves were at first made of square pieces of solid brass, about 1 inch in thickness, kept in their normal position by means of a spring, and having the wind passages bored parallel in the same horizontal plane. A trumpet thus constructed is described later in the work, and valves of this description were made by the German maker Schuster, as early as 1818. As, however, instruments constructed with such contrivances could not be compared with the key bugle, either in intonation or agility, Stölzel designed a tubular valve, much smaller and lighter, and which for some time held its own. These valves were made by the maker Charles Sax, of Brussels, and were generally applied to the two-valve cornets then coming
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