This beautifully performed, recorded and presented period instrument CD is enjoyable, interesting and important. It offers as good a profile as is available of the idiom of one of the few musical instruments for which we can authoritatively trace an active lifespan from birth to natural death. The ophicleide was invented by the French maker Halary around 1817 and patented by him in 1821.Footnote ¹ It is often defined organologically as the bass member of the keyed bugle family. All keyed bugles had relatively short periods in common use, but this should not detract from their importance during the times when they flourished – an importance that must be seen in the context of the wider development of mechanical chromatic brass instruments in the nineteenth century.

Almost every important development to brass instruments in the nineteenth century was aimed at improving military music. Military music was a major preoccupation in the many countries that sought to use ceremony and display as a tool of internal and external diplomacy. It was also important because the military was by far the largest consumer of brass and wind instruments and the directors of military bands (many were civilians), exerted a major influence on musical life in their countries.Footnote ²

The keyed bugle was patented by Joseph Haliday (1774–1857), a militia bandmaster, in Britain in 1910, but it had been invented at least a decade earlier.Footnote ³ It was quickly adopted in British militia and regular army bands because it offered a good and more durable treble alternative to clarinets. In 1815 Halary, based in Agen, France, was commissioned by the Russian Grand Duke Konstantin to copy the keyed bugle for use in Russian bands. It is almost certain that his work on this commission provided Halary with the idea of a bass version of the instrument. Its active life – the period when it genuinely flourished – lasted for little more than half a century, when proficient valve bass instruments overtook it; but it remained in use for as long as there were players who favoured it and had no reason to learn a more modern instrument. Entry forms for British brass band contests in the 1860s testify to its lingering popularity, as do nineteenth-century photographs: the forms for the famous Crystal Palace contests, held from 1861 to 1863, show there to be one or two ophicleides in almost every band (each band had to declare its instrumentation prior to competing).Footnote ⁴ By this time their players were probably older men: members of what was effectively the sole generation of ab initio ophicleide players.

The story of the professional ophicleide player is well illustrated by the tale of Samuel Hughes, who was Britain’s greatest virtuoso of the instrument. He was born in Shropshire, England, and probably learned to play in the local militia band, which was especially strong. In the late 1840s he was hired to play with the private and much celebrated Cyfarthfa band in south Wales.Footnote ⁵ The manuscript part books for this band survive and testify to Hughes’s virtuosity. By the early 1850s he had left to make his fortune in London. When the British Army’s school of music opened in 1857, he was appointed its ophicleide professor, and he went on to hold similar posts in other London conservatories. He was the principal ophicleide at the Royal Opera House and a noted soloist. The critic George Bernard Shaw hated the instrument and famously characterized it as a ‘chromatic bullock’, but even he acknowledged the mastery of ‘Mr Hughes’. By 1872 Hughes was presenting dentists’ letters to the Royal Society of Musicians in support of his petition for benevolence.Footnote ⁶ In fact, it was not Mr Hughes’s teeth that had given up: it was the musical world’s interest in his instrument. He had been one of the stars of the London orchestral scene, but he died in abject poverty with his widow petitioning for cash to pay for his funeral.

The ophicleide came into being when the only other brass wind instruments (apart from the trombone) that could play bass parts were the serpent and the bass horn (another important instrument with a brief life span). The significant thing in the context of the recording under review here is that along with the keyed bugle and the serpent, it has relatively recently entered common use in period performances, and this exciting development proffers new insights into instrumental music in the earlier nineteenth century.

Patrick Wibart is clearly a virtuoso of the instrument – not the only one, but one of the best I have encountered. The test that all period instrument performers face is to prove false any prevailing ahistorical judgements about the instrument they play. By this I mean they have to convincingly show how the best early players of any given instrument coped with what modern organological analysis determines to be its inherent design flaws. Several period instrument performers have done this, and in so doing have achieved the most important advances in historical performance. For example, we no longer regard hand-stopping on french horns as a clumsy compensation for the absence of valves, neither do we see natural trumpet players confined to the clarino range as being artistically restricted. Yet more enlightening has been the acquisition of the virtuoso skills of the cornetto by performers such as Bruce Dickey. Players who have mastered these early instrument techniques have intrinsically revealed the real idioms of these instruments and cast light on the repertoires they inspired. Wibart’s performances provide an eloquent exemplar of this, and on an instrument that has often been misunderstood.

It is possible to calculate what have been seen as the organological shortcomings of the ophicleide and understand why it declined in favour of well-designed and manufactured valve instruments. Ophicleides were difficult to learn and to play; little thought was given to the ergonomics of playing them. The acoustical properties of all keyed brass instruments are challenging – they are difficult to play in tune compared to valve instruments, and in some respects they work against the instincts of modern players. In the nineteenth century they could not be produced in large quantities in the way the instruments of the saxhorn family could, and almost from their inception they were up against increasing competition from valve instruments and the widely felt urge to design the perfect model. But these issues were not perceived in such terms by contemporary players, and it is easy to see why military and brass bands regarded them as important and composers such as Mendelssohn and Berlioz championed their use in the orchestra.

The principal problem for modern players of the instrument is detecting a repertoire that does more than simply demonstrate the instrument’s character. Wibart has made as good a selection as could have been reasonably expected, and for the recording he has enlisted the support not just of a good accompanist (Lucie Sansen), but two other ophicleide players and the cornet player Adrien Ramon. Each of the period instruments is French: the ophicleides by Gautrot-Marquet et Couesnon, Müller and Leconte, the cornet by Lefèvre and the piano by Erard.

The full list of works performed is as follows: Grande Fantaisie dramatique pour ophicléide et piano and a Fantaisie sur le désir de Beethoven, both by Jules Demersseman (1833–1866); Troisième duo by Victor Caussinus (1806–1899); Trio pathétique (transcription for cornet, ophicleide and piano) by Mikhaïl Glinka (1804–1857); Kyrie eleison pour trois ophicléides by Claude Philippe Projean (fl. 1843); a short Agnus Dei by Gilbert Duprez (1806–1896), along with a transcription for three ophicleides of the same composer’s O Salutaris; Variations pour l’ophicléide op. 62 by Gaspard Kummer (1795–1870); Air varié pour ophicléide et piano op. 21 by Hyacinthe Klosé (1808–1880); and Teutatès, Fantasie mystique by Albert Corbin (d. 1893).

The transcriptions add colour to the programme, but the more interesting pieces are the original works for ophicleide and piano and the short set of duets for two ophicleides. It is these pieces that really reveal the instrument and Wibart’s mastery of it. There are no great works here, but that is hardly the point. Wibart has a refined and brilliant technique, but he also shows great musicianship in the instrument’s lyrical mode. The most convincing aspect of his playing is that each note is beautifully centred, and one suspects that it is the absence of this fundamental aspect of brass technique, which gives the instrument clarity, that separates performers like him from those of lesser accomplishment. Even without the extraordinary virtuosity that Wibart exhibits, the recording would be valuable for this aspect alone.