Mutation stop · 5 ranks, treble only
The Cornet
A compound stop of five ranks of pipes speaking together on each key, confined to the upper half of the keyboard: the brilliant voice of récits and of the grand jeu.
Mutation stop
What it is
Compound stops, Dom Bedos explains, are those that cannot be divided: several rows of pipes, set on the same slider, speak together on each key. The cornet always has five, wide-scaled and of étoffe, which repeat the trebles of five stops: the bourdon, prestant, nazard, quarte de nasard and tierce. On a C one therefore hears, ascending, C, C, G, C and E.
It is used only in the treble. Large organs have several: a two-octave cornet on the positive, the “grand cornet” of the great organ, beginning in the middle of the keyboard, a cornet de récit with a compass of two and a half octaves, played on the récit keyboard, and an echo cornet. The cornet is most often set above the windchest, on a grooved block that carries the wind to it.
L'Art du facteur d'orgues
What Dom Bedos says
Quoique les cinq rangées, qui composent le Cornet, soient à l’unisson des Jeux dont nous venons de parler, elles en different pourtant pour la qualité de l’harmonie, étant de plus grosse taille. Le Cornet est un Jeu brillant & éclatant, qui n’a lieu que pour les dessus de l’Orgue.
TranslationAlthough the five ranks that make up the Cornet are in unison with the stops just described, they differ in quality of tone, being of wider scale. The Cornet is a brilliant and bright stop, used only in the treble of the Organ.
In practice
In the music of the Couperins and their contemporaries
The cornet is above all a solo stop: Dom Bedos plays it alone in the treble, accompanied by two 8-foot stops, and uses it in the duo, trio and quatuor. In the grand jeu, the grand cornet reinforces the trebles of the trompettes and clairons, which are naturally weaker than their basses.
It is one of the three voices of the dialogue of cornet, cromorne and echo. Boyvin, in 1690, adds to the grand dialogue “the separate Cornet” as a third chorus and “the Echo Cornet” as a fourth. Dom Bedos advises against adding it to the fugue grave, however: its brightness, he says, swallows and blunts the trebles of the reeds.
The works
In the repertoire
One work in the project’s repertoire bears this name in its title.
Livre d'orgue de Limoges (anonymous, copied c. 1710–1725)
- Dialogue de basse de trompette et de cornet
See also
- Récit →Registration
- Grand jeu →Combination
- Dialogue →Registration
- Tierce →Mutation stop
- All the stops →
Sources
- Dom Bedos de Celles, L’Art du facteur d’orgues, Ire partie, Paris, 1766 (texte de l’exemplaire BnF, IMSLP)
- Dom Bedos de Celles, L’Art du facteur d’orgues, IIIe partie, chap. IV, « Les principaux mêlanges ordinaires des Jeux de l’Orgue », Paris, 1770 (transcription Wikisource)
- Jacques Boyvin, Premier livre d’orgue, Paris, 1690, « Avis au public concernant le mélange des jeux de l’orgue » (transcription Wikisource)
- Wikipédia, « Glossaire de l’orgue »
The musical programme of the Chaumes-en-Brie organ aims to serve this repertoire; its specification will be defined with the selected organ builder.