Durch Adam's Fall ist ganz verderbt - JS Bach

Here's a brass quartet arrangement of Bach's Durch Adam's Fall ist ganz verderbt for two trumpets, Eb mellophone (sheet music says "horn in F", but it's an artifact of Finale), and baritone, separate parts. Horn and baritone parts are written in treble clef an octave up. TTC's lectures on Bach specifically mentioned this chorale, a dissonant, chromatic work. According to the lectures, "the sinuous, winding tenor line represents the serpent" etc.

A piano transcription, played by Markus Becker and also a string quartet arrangement by Quartetto Italiano di Viole da Gamba:

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Trainspotting

I took my kids to Musee Mechanique today, "one of the world’s largest privately owned collections of mechanically operated musical instruments and antique arcade machines". Jukeboxes are cool! Also, they have dioramas in a range of sizes and degrees of complexity - some really crude and some rather fancy and elaborate, with many characters and scenes. There was a diorama of a fair, with shooting gallery, an acrobat, concession stands, freak show, Ferris wheel, and a brass band. I snapped it with my phone.



The quality is regrettable, but still you can see: four clarinetists on the left of the conductor, four trumpets - notably, not cornets - on the right (only three are visible in the pic), then in the back row - flute, snare drum, bass drum, sousaphone, euphonium, tuba, two trombones, and in the middle no less than three mellophone players! These are not French horns, since they are played with right hand and the left one is not in the bell.

Why would you have both a sousaphone and a tuba?

Couturier mellophone

Last year I wanted to get me a new instrument. Window-shopping for trumpets is no fun - they all look the same. But then I came across one that is different: a Couturier Conical Bore Bb/A Trumpet. I was really fascinated: conical bore, takes a cornet mouthpiece, and especially the Bb-to-A switch valve... But when it came, somehow we did not click. I cannot explain it well, I just did not like it enough (maybe just not enough to pay $700) - so it went back.
Around that time I put in an eBay search filter for "Couturier," and one day a mellophone in Eb came up. Now if the trumpet is unusual, this thing's freak factor is off the scale. I could not resist. It cost me $100 including shipping, and I spent 75 more fixing it: frozen slide, broken water key, mouthpiece replating. I think the repair people were rather puzzled as to who would want an instrument like that and why.
One thing with the Couturier instruments - conical bore means none but the tuning slide are removable. OTOH, the inclined design means all the oil, spit, and grease goes directly into the slides and accumulates there. I had to soak and clean it out three times before it lost that godawful smell; the cleaning was rather tricky too - getting the snake into the slides from inside the pistons etc. Now it's perfectly playable and indeed rather nice. The only problem is it's missing a case. My wife tossed out the original case for it stank out the house and was really beyond salvaging. The french horn cases are expensive and don't fit too well.

So, how does it play? I think it plays great. It does sound like a horn - maybe not exactly, but much more like a horn than an oversized Eb trumpet. It could be the overall "horn" shape and the conical bore, but also the mouthpiece, which is a lot closer to the horn V-shape than to a regular trumpet mouthpiece. Above the staff the notes get rather tricky - G is OK, A is difficult.
I wasn't sure what to play on it, though. I did a two trumpets/mellophone/baritone arrangement of Bach's Durch Adam's Fall and practiced the horn line for a bit. Now I am thinking it will work great with the real horn repertoire; I think I'll try Mozart's horn concertos.
Mozart's manuscript contains bizarre scatological comments addressed to the horn player - can you beat that?

I did no new transcriptions lately. Maybe I'll use this space for gear talk. I'll write about my own instruments, but for starters here's something I was watching on eBay just now. "Vintage Rotary Valve Cornet". I came across it looking at various rotary valved brass and thought it looked cute. Made by Hail & Quiney in Boston; the internets know not of them. The starting price was $9.99, which is, you know, a fair price for a piece of no-name scrap metal. I figured I'll grab it if there would be no takers - would make a nice wall hanger. I saved the pics, here are a few:




Anyway, 15 minutes ago the bidding closed at $2,550.00. I guess quite a few people thought it was cute and would make a good wall hanger. Granted, it's in remarkably good shape for an antique, but two and a half grand! WTF? Who are these Hail and Quiney? Some legendary instrument makers?
I think I will go into an antique instrument forgery business.