The English Cornett and Sackbut Ensemble: Echoes of Venice

St Andrew’s and St George’s Church, Edinburgh - 14/01/23 

In the 16th and 17th centuries, the Republic of Venice enjoyed enormous political and mercantile power as the hub of the trade routes that fanned out over the globe. Its wealth and influence attracted musicians from all over Italy and beyond, and its position as the centre of music publishing and printing made it even more important. The combination of its commercial importance and its relative political and religious tolerance in an intolerant world made it an extraordinary centre for musical invention and innovation, as the Renaissance style gave way to the new Baroque age, and Flemish polyphony was overtaken by the new instrumental techniques, with figured bass and continuo allowing florid melodies to surge and blossom above them. 

The epicentre of this new style was the Byzantine Basilica of San Marco, right in the heart of La Serenissima, with its wonderful echoing acoustic and its opportunities for large scale music-making. The sound most associated with this period and this city is the sound of Cornetts and Sackbuts, the predecessors of the modern brass ensemble. There is a slight complication in that cornetts are not brass instruments, but we’ll come to that later!  

2023 is the 30th anniversary of the founding of the magnificent group, The English Cornett and Sackbut Ensemble, and they played an outstanding concert on Saturday 14th January in the splendid surroundings of St Andrew’s and St George’s Church in the heart of Edinburgh’s New Town, as part of the season of concerts put on by The Georgian Concert Society of Edinburgh. 

Most unfortunately, the cornett player, Gawain Glenton, has been ill recently, and was unable to participate in the concert. Given that he is one of two cornettists in the group, his absence was problematic to say the least, as virtuosi on this instrument are rare, but a nice solution was found and he was replaced by the excellent Hungarian baroque violinist, Kinga Ujszaszi, a member of the English Concert (with whom I sang many times in the 1990s) and who was heard last autumn in the Lammermuir Festival as the leader of Spiritato in a concert with the Marian Consort in Haddington. Much of the music of the time was written for various high instruments – recorder, violin or cornett - and so the combination of cornett and violin was quite natural, if a little different from what was envisaged for this concert. Still, needs must, and we were at least able to enjoy ‘just one Cornetto!’ 

The magnificent Irish cornett player, Conor Hastings, originally a trumpet player, performed heroically all evening, producing marvellous sounds from his supremely difficult instrument. The cornett evolved from older horns into a specialist instrument, made of wood covered with leather, about the length of an oboe, with finger holes similar to a recorder, and blown through a small ivory or bone mouthpiece like a trumpet. It was used primarily in ensembles, in tandem with violins or voices and produces a splendid ringing sound. Apparently, most of the virtuoso cornett players in Italy died in the great wave of plagues in the 17th century, and the instrument was superseded by the brass trumpet, and largely disappeared, only re-emerging in the 1970s when the great revival of early music took place. Even as recently as the 1980s, when I started to sing with the fine baroque ensembles emerging around Europe, few people could play the cornett well, and a certain amount of allowance had to be made in performance. Now, virtuosi like Conor Hastings can conjure remarkable sounds out of this exotic instrument, and we were lucky enough to hear the result tonight. 

The other part of the Ensemble were the three sackbuts of Emily White, Tom Lees and Adrian France. This precursor of the trombone makes a splendid sound, and the sackbuts reverberated around the church wonderfully. As Tom explained to us, the sackbut was an old Northern European name for a trombone, which itself is an Italian word meaning big trumpet! Each of the players exhibited virtuosity on their instruments of breathtaking quality, as we were presented with music from many of the great composers working in Venice at the time, Gabrieli, Monteverdi, Merulo and Gregori. 

At the heart of the Ensemble was Silas Wollston, playing the chamber organ (generously supplied by the Dunedin Consort). Ever present as continuo, and occasional solo player, Mr Wollston provided the central point of the music, demonstrating the glories of the new Baroque style and guiding us through different styles with aplomb and bravado. 

A good audience had braved the ghastly January weather, and we emerged into the wind and rain royally entertained.