E.G. Wright Cornet in Bb with Double Piston Valves

Along with the very early Bb made by Isaac Fiske with double piston valves, this is one of the very first cornets made in the US. Both of these were most likely made between 1850 and 1853. Be sure to read about that one for a discussion on the post horns that these makers had previously produced and what makes them a different breed. An Eb soprano post horn made by E.G. Wright is shown here in photo 5.

By 1848, German born and trained Henry Esbach was working for Wright, and likely had knowledge and ability to make this valve mechanism and Wright’s very similar “Mainzer” mechanism used in the post horns. Graves & Company, Isaac Fiske, J. Lathrop Allen and former Graves partner, Samuel Richardson, were all making post horns of that design by the early to mid-1840s, but E.G. Wright concentrated his efforts in perfecting his soprano keyed bugles during these years. However, a trumpet or post horn in F, larger than the Bb post horns, was made by Wright in 1845. This instrument, in the collections of the Smithsonian Institution, is conveniently datable by the fact that it is marked: “Wright & Baldwin, Makers, Boston”. This partnership with William Baldwin, a machinist and musician about three years his senior, is listed in the city directories only in that year.

We don’t know when Wright was first making cornets with rotary valves or if there was an overlap with the production of double piston valves, but it was most likely by 1852. That illustrates my ability to state a narrow span of years when this was likely made and also explains the extreme rarity (this is the only known example). This cornet and the example by Fiske mentioned above are both in the very important collection of Mark Elrod. We can only hope that more American made instrument from these few years are discovered in future years for us to study.

It is possible that instruments with rotary valves and those with this “neu-Mainzer” mechanism were made earlier in Cincinnati, Ohio by immigrants from proto-German countries, but we don’t know of any connection between those makers and and those in Boston. See my page on Edward Teltow for more information. Of course, Thomas Paine was making his unique patented rotary valve instruments in Boston by 1848 and one unique trumpet with rotary valves was reputedly made by Nathan Adams in Lowell, Massachusetts in the 1820s.

One design feature that you can see in the photos is that the valve slides have no ferrules connecting the crooks to the slide tubes. Instead, the tubes are soldered inside the crook tubes. In this design, the crook is not a larger bore than the slide tubes, but rather expanded on the ends to accept the tubes. This design was not used in the earlier post horns and the trumpet in F mentioned above, but is seen in the two earliest known instruments made by E.G. Wright with rotary valves. These include the very unusual alto horn covered on this site along with a circular cornet in Bb that is also in Mark Elrod’s collection (last photo, with G crook inserted). They also have the same distinctive flanges on the pull rings. Wright had abandoned these design features by about 1853.

The overall length of this cornet is 17 1/2”, the bell rim diameter is 5” and the bore through the valves measures about .425”. The bore may seem small compared with cornets made a decade later, but is appropriate in the valve section being within six inches of the mouthpiece, rather than after a gradually tapering mouthpipe as in more modern cornets. This also compares with trumpets of similar design made in Mainz, Vienna and Markneukirchen even decades later. It very likely was equipped with a shank for A and crooks for lower pitches. It stands in the low pitch from the time, about A=435Hz. This is not uncommon in my experience with American instruments from before 1855. The tuning slide crook is longer than it needs to be and this cornet may have been supplied with a shorter tuning slide for high pitch.