Andrew Kershaw shows us a rare and endangered instrument, seldom found in orchestras of today; the serpent - an unusual looking beast, distant relative of the tuba, which composers such as Wagner, Mendelssohn and Berlioz wrote for.
Sections
- 0:00 Introduction
- 0:12 History
- 0:26 Construction
- 0:50 Why it is a brass instrument
- 0:59 The six fingerholes
- 1:31 Composers who wrote for it
- 1:55 Keys added and development of Ophicleide
- 2:14 Capriol Suite, Peter Warlock
Serpent, made by Georges Antoine Baudouin, France (Paris), about 1820
