Bismantova extensions

In his 1676 „Compendio Musicale“ Bartolomeo Bismantova gives a description about the cornetto and the way to play it.

Within this chapter Bismantova carefully describes top and bottom extensions (giunte di sopra e di sotto) for the cornetto in order to adjust the pitch of the cornetto to the one of the organ.

Cornetti are very flexible instruments in therms of tuning and the same instrument reacts differently to different players and mouthpieces. This, added to the fact that cornetti also play differently according to room temperature and weather conditions, makes them quite difficult instruments to tame.

Also, if we play with historical organs or anywhere outside a modern concert hall we will need to adjust to a pitch and conditions which we cannot control, and therefore Bismantova‘s suggestion makes a lot of sense in the practical world.

These extensions can only correct the pith in one direction (making it lower), but this already helps a great deal as cornetti tend to climb in tuning during rehearsals and concerts.

Using this concept by Bismantova we have developed these extensions which accurately fit our different instruments.

Each black or white (not leather covered) soprano or alto cornetto by us comes with three extensions, two top ones (5mm. and 10 mm. long) and a bottom one.

Further extensions can be made at request.

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