The cornett: Acoustics and construction.

Although the cornett was one of the most widely used wind instruments during the late 16th and early 17th centuries, the construction of replica cornetts at modern pitch has not been straightforward. The cornett is excited by a lip reed as in modern brass instruments but has an approximately biconical wooden bore with toneholes. Cornetts surviving in European collections generally play at pitch levels higher than the modern standard and many of the few extant mouthpieces are of uncertain, possibly more recent, origin. As a guide to constructing replicas at modern pitch, the input and distributed impedances have been computed in the frequency domain. The accuracy of the computed frequencies for each fingering combination, although encouraging, is at present insufficient for reliable ab initio construction. However, the computations can be useful in determining appropriate perturbations in the size and placement of toneholes or in the bore required to achieve small differential frequency changes.