The name ‘cornett’ refers to a family of lip-vibrated finger-hole horns in widespread use from the late fifteenth century to the early nineteenth. Cornetts were made in many forms: they could be either curved or straight, wooden or ivory, covered with leather or left plain, and of either round or octagonal cross-section. However, the dominant form by far, at least from the mid sixteenth century on, was curved, wooden and leather-covered.

The cornett enjoyed a development that was unparalleled both in its rapid ascent and in its subsequent profound decline. No western musical instrument of comparable importance has ever emerged so rapidly from obscurity or plunged into such total eclipse. Though many details of this development remain obscure, the broad sweep of the curve is becoming clear as the modern revival of the cornett, begun in the early 1950s, again focuses interest and scholarship on this instrument, once regarded as, ‘the most excellent of all the wind instruments’.

Early history: ‘Trumpys, taborns and cornettys crye’

The curved form of the cornett, as well as the Latin-derived forms of its name (Latin: cornu; Italian: cornetto; French: cornet à bouquin; English: cornett), clearly link this instrument to an ancestry among the lip-vibrated animal horns widely used since ancient times for signalling. Two important developments were necessary, however, to turn animal horns prepared for blowing, capable of only one or two notes, into musical instruments useful in cultivated music: finger holes had to be added and the bore of the instrument needed to be narrow enough to permit over-blowing.