Books › A descriptive catalogue of the musical instruments recently exhibited at the Royal Military Exhibition, London, 1890 …, 1891 › scan 90
Scan 90
A descriptive catalogue of the musical instruments recently exhibited at the Royal Military Exhibition, London, 1890 …, 1891
6 lines. Read by computer on 1 October 2026. Printed page 70. See the scan on archive.org.
1In 1850 Cornelius Ward took out a patent for a bassoon which was constructed in four joints; the "wing joint" was dispensed with, and the two tubes were connected by a U-shaped crook of metal at the butt, the "double piece" no longer existing. In Ward's bassoon all the holes (23 in number) were covered by keys, and, the bore being truly conical, the scale was rendered more regular throughout. As, however, players disliked the novelty of Ward's invention, it soon became disused, and the old Savary models have been since generally followed. The principal improvements of late years have been the work of Morton in England, and of Triebert and Jancourt in Paris; and an ingenious application of ebonite, in place of wood, for the wing joints, has been recently made by Mr. Henry Carte.
3The attempts of Sax and Ward have led to the construction of bassoons of brass, but the only successful invention has been the Sarrusophone, invented in 1863 by M. Sarrus, and described subsequently in this work. A somewhat similar application of metal for a contra-bassoon had been introduced by Schöllnast of Presburg as early as 1839, and the idea was afterwards improved upon by M. Cerveny and by M. Victor Mahillon, both of whom had been working independently to secure the same result; and a metal contra-bassoon, of an entirely different form, the design of M. Martin Thibouville, was exhibited in the Paris Exhibition of 1889. The tone, however, of all is greatly inferior to that of the wooden contra-fagotto or double-bassoon, which has been perfected by Dr. W. H. Stone in recent years, and is described particularly in another place.
5And here might be mentioned a singular application of a kind of double reed, consisting of two clarinet reeds placed face to face upon a clarinet mouthpiece having a double lay. This arrangement was designed and patented in France, in 1858, by M. Bornibus, in
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