Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/842

778 O P E P H OPERA. See DRAMA, vol. vii. p. 437, and Music. OPHICLEIDE is a brass musical instrument with keys. It belongs to that class of instruments in which the column of air is set in vibration by a trembling of the lips applied to the edge of a hemispherical cup at the extremity of the tube, called the " embouchure." The lips vibrate from the action of the breath and play the part of reeds ; the degree of pressure of the embouchure determines the rapidity of their vibration, on which, concurrently with the length of the tube, depends the pitch, or relative posi tion, of the sound produced. The name " ophicleide " is compounded of two Greek words, o<f)is, serpent, and K-AeiSes, keys, the instrument owing, in fact, its origin to the appli cation of keys to the serpent, a wind instrument the invention of which is generally attributed to Edme Guil- laume, canon of Auxerre, somewhere about 1590. He contrived it to serve as a bass to the zinken, instruments now entirely obsolete. The serpent, represented by fig. 1, is composed of two pieces of wood, hollowed out and cut to the desired contour. They are joined together by gluing so as to form a tube, and are bound with leather to ensure solid ity. The upper extremity ends with a bent brass tube or crook, to which the mouthpiece is applied. The tube is pierced laterally with six holes, the first three of which are covered by T ,, ,. ,, . , , , , FIG. 1. The Serpent. three fingers of the right hand, and the others by the corresponding fingers of the left hand. When all the holes are thus closed the instrument will produce the following sounds, of which the first is funda mental and the rest are harmonics : 4 5678 The instrumentalist fills up the gaps in the diatonic or natural scale by the successive opening of the lateral holes after the manner practised in fingering the flute. The serpent remained in its primitive form for nearly two centuries, and then only it was attempted to improve it by adding keys. From the time of its origin it had served principally as an accompaniment to the liturgical chanting, but towards the middle of the 18th century it began to be employed as a bass for military music, and, notwithstanding its numerous imperfections, it was but slowly given up. Fig. 2 represents a curious serpent made, about 1830, by L. Embach and Co., Amsterdam. The six lateral holes are here placed more rationally along the tube, but, being beyond the reach of the fingers, they are covered by open keys, besides which the instrument also bears six closed keys for the following tones : The primitive form of the serpent was most inconvenient, and it was a musician named Regibo, belonging to the orchestra of the church of St Pierre at Lille, who, about 1780, first thought of giving it the shape of a bassoon (Gerber, Lexicon der Tonkiinstler, Leipsic, 1790). The merit of this innovation was rapidly recognized in England and Germany. Still to follow Gerber (Lexicon, 1812), one Frichot, who was established in London, published in 1800 a description of an instrument, entirely of brass, manu factured by J. Astor, which he claimed as his invention, calling it the basshorn, but which was no other in principle than the new serpent of Regibo. It only made its way to France and Belgium after the passage of the allied armies in 1815. We here reproduce (fig. 3) the drawing of a wooden serpent with bell and mouthpiece of brass, after a scale published by B. Schott of Mainz, in 1816. The English brass basshorn was designated on the Continent the English or the Russian basshorn, the "serpent anglais," or the " basson russe." Under this last name all instruments of the form, whether of wood or brass, were later on confounded in France and Bel gium. The " bas son russe " re mained in great vogue until the appearance of the ophicleide, to dis appear with it in the complete re volution broxight FIG. 2. -Serpent FIG. 3. -Wooden about by the in- by Embach. Serpent, vention of pistons. The invention of the ophicleide is generally but falsely attributed to Alexandre Frichot, a professor of music at Lisieux, department of Calvados, France. The instru ment, which the inventor called "basse-trompette," was approved of as early as 13th November 1806 by a com mission composed of professors of the Paris Conservatoire, but the patent bears the date 31st December 1810. The " basse-trompette," which Frichot in his specification had at first, in imitation of the English basshorn, called "basse cor," was, like the English instrument, entirely of brass, and had, like it, six holes ; it only differed in a more favourable disposition brought about by the curvings of the tube, and by the application of four crooks which permitted the instrument to be tuned " in C low pitch and C high pitch for military bands, in C$ for churches, and in D for concert use." The close relationship between the two instruments suggests the question whether this was the Frichot who worked with Astor in London in 1800. The first idea of adding keys to instruments with cupped mouthpieces, unprovided with lateral holes, with the aim of filling up some of the gaps between the notes of the harmonic scale, goes back, according to Gerber (Lexicon of 1790), to Kolbel, a hornplayer in the Russian imperial band about 1754. Weidinger, trumpeter in the Austrian imperial band, improved upon this first attempt, and applied it in 1800 to the trumpet. But the honour be longs to Joseph Halliday, bandmaster of the Cavan militia, of being the first to conceive, in 1810, the disposition of a certain number of keys along the tube, setting out from its lower extremity, with the idea of producing by their successive or simultaneous opening a chromatic scale throughout the extent of the instrument. The bugle- horn was the object of his reform; the only scale of which, he says, in the preamble of his patent, " until my invention I contained but five tones, viz., My improvements on that instrument are five keys, to be used by the performer according to the annexed scale, which, with its five original notes, render it capable of pro ducing twenty-five separate tones in regular progression." Fig. 4 represents the keyed bugle of Joseph Halliday.