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Sounds So Nice, Feels So Good

Basilica Santa Maria della Salute at sunset

Cornetto

On their newest Accent release Le Concert Brisé features the cornetist William Dongois in sonatas by Johann Heinrich SchmelzerThere is a certain frailty and vulnerability in the sound quality of the cornetto that begs the listener's undivided attention. The cornetto is a woodwind instrument with a brass-style cup mouth piece. It is often constructed to have a curved body and wrapped in leather, but on this recording, straight cornettos were used. As a hybrid instrument, it possesses a very unique sound quality.

The cornetto flourished in the mid 1600's, in the early to middle-baroque period. It could be played in consort with other brass instruments doubling and reinforcing voices in a choir, a configuration well-favored by Venetian composers and institutions.Â

Although by the 19th century the cornetto had fallen out of use almost entirely, during its heyday, composers also wrote for the cornetto as a virtuosic instrument on par with the soloistic capabilities of the violin.

 Flugelhorn



The sound of the cornetto may remind modern listeners of another instrument that flourished a few centuries later, the flugelhorn. Admittedly, the cornetto doesn't have much to do with the flugelhorn, but the two do share a certain vocal quality, and well…maybe if instruments have many lives, one is a reincarnation of the other.

Le Concert Brisé



 This podcast has focused on the cornetto playing of one member of Le Concert Brisé, William Dongois together with violinist Alice Julien-Laferrière. The continuo accompaniment by Hadrien Jourdan is played on a very distinctive sounding Rudi Jacques mean-tone organ. There is gutsy dulcian playing from Moni Fischalek, alongside Jean-François Madeuf on the natural trumpet and Stefan Legée sackbut.

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