apelle of the electoral prince
of Saxony included two cornets, the bass being supplied by the
trombone. Monteverde introduced two cornets in the 3rd and 4th acts of
his _Orfeo_ (1607). In France the charges for the _Chapelle-Musique_
of the kings of France for the year 1619 contain two entries of the
sum of 450 _livres tournois_, salary paid to one Marcel Cayty, _joueur
de cornet_, a post held by him from 1604 until at least 1631, when
another cornet player, Jean Daneau, is also mentioned.[8]

In Germany in the 17th and 18th centuries, _Zincken_ were used with
trombones in the churches to accompany the chorales. There are
examples of this use of the instrument in the sacred cantatas of J. S.
Bach, where the cornet is added to the upper voice parts to strengthen
them. Johann Mattheson, conductor of the opera at Hamburg, writing on
the orchestra in 1713[9] gives a description of the _Zinck_ as a
member of the orchestra, but in 1739,[10] in his work on the perfect
conductor, he deplores the decrease of its popularity in church music,
from which it seems to be banished as useless. Gluck was the last
composer of importance who scored for the cornet, as for instance in
_Orfeo_, in _Paride ed Elena_, in _Alceste_ and in _Armide_, &c. The
great vogue of the curved cornet is not to be accounted for by its
musical qualities, for it had a hard, hoarse, piercing sound, and it
failed utterly in truth of intonation; these natural defects,
moreover, could only be modified with great difficulty. Mersenne's
eulogium of the _dessus_, then more employed than the other cornets,
can only be appreciated at its full value if we look upon the art of
cornet playing as a lost art. "The _dessus_," he says, "was used in
the vocal concerts and to make the treble with the organ, which is
ravishing when one knows how to play it to perfection like the Sieur
Guiclet;" and again further on, "the character of its tone resembles
the brilliance of a sunbeam piercing the darkness, when it is heard
among the voices in churches, cathedrals or chapels."[11] Mersenne
further observes that the serpent is the true bass of the cornet, that
one without the other is like body without soul. A drawing in pen and
ink of a curved cornet is given by Randle Holme in his _Academy of
Armoury_ (1688);[12] and at the end of the description of the
instrument he adds, "It is a delicate pleasant wind musick, if