Reed stop · 8 ft (4-ft resonators)

The Cromorne

A reed stop with cylindrical resonators, usually placed on the positive: the “cruchant” timbre of the récits, basses and tailles de cromorne.

Reed stop

What it is

The cromorne (also spelled “cromhorne”) is a reed stop whose pipes are all cylindrical, ending at the bottom in a cone on whose point the block is soldered. Its resonators are only the length of a 4-foot, yet it sounds at 8-foot pitch, like the trompette, because its reeds are similar. It is made of fine tin and runs the full compass.

It is rarely put on the great organ: its place is the positive. As it takes little room and has no great brilliance, it is very commonly put in small organs, where it sometimes replaces the trompette. Its name comes from the German Krummhorn, “curved horn”, the name of a wind instrument; its timbre is described as “cruchant”. In his preface, Dom Bedos reports that the trompette and the voix humaine were known in the fifteenth century, and that the cromorne came shortly afterwards.

L'Art du facteur d'orgues

What Dom Bedos says

Le Cromorne est un Jeu d’Anche cylindrique & de 4 pieds, sonnant 8 pieds, comme la Trompette. [...] Il est rare qu’on mette un Cromorne dans le grand Orgue ; on l’emploie principalement au Positif. Comme ce Jeu ne tient pas beaucoup de place, & qu’il n’a pas un grand éclat, il est fort ordinaire de le mettre dans les petites Orgues ; il convient dans des chambres & dans de petites Eglises.

TranslationThe Cromorne is a cylindrical reed stop of 4 feet, sounding 8 feet, like the Trompette. [...] A Cromorne is rarely put in the great Organ; it is used mainly on the Positive. As this stop takes little room and has no great brilliance, it is very common to put it in small Organs; it suits chambers and small Churches.

Dom Bedos de Celles, L’Art du facteur d’orgues, Part I (1766), ch. IV, sect. II, § 200, p. 56.

In practice

In the music of the Couperins and their contemporaries

Few stops recur so often in titles: récit de cromorne, basse de cromorne, cromorne en taille, trio à deux dessus de cromorne. “Basses are more commonly played on the Cromorne of the Positive than on the Trompette,” wrote Boyvin in 1690. Dom Bedos has the basse de cromorne played in imitation of the bassoon or the bass viol, the taille with the melody dominating in the second octave, and the treble with the prestant alone.

It also enters the great combinations: on the positive in the grand jeu and the fugue grave. Dom Bedos observes that the tremblant fort harms it more than any other stop: it disfigures what is pleasing in it, and the cromorne then merely sounds nasal.

The works