The Serpent: The Life and Death of an Eccentric Musical Instrument

The serpent instrument was so named because of its shape which looked like a snake or, conversely, one very complex letter "S." The serpent was a musical instrument that was invented by Canon Edme Guillaume about a decade before the 1500s became the 1600s. Guillaume invented the serpent to be an improvement over an existing instrument known as the bass cornett, which was a kind of valveless trumpet. The bass cornett needed to be improved because it was a rather difficult instrument to master and when played at all it was rarely played well.

Serpents were originally made of wood, but featured a mouthpiece in the shape of a cup crafted from ivory. Another method of constructing the mouthpiece of the serpent was to create a metal crook on which the mouthpiece would be mounted. The body of the serpent featured six holes for fingering that did not include an opening to be manipulated with the thumb.

Once Guillaume had done his work in creating the serpent, the musical instrument slithered away from his prototype to take up residence in two distinct houses of manufacturing. A serpent could be constructed with two complete halves that were hollowed out of wooden blocks and then glued together to create the familiar tube shape. This was the preferred method of manufacture everywhere but in England. The British preferred the other means of creating a serpent that required several smaller pieces of wood that overlapped in half sections before being glued together and covered with leather.

Occasionally, a manufacturer of the musical instrument with the snaky name would introduce metal into the process. Metal serpents were apparently nowhere near as durable as the traditional wood version since no metal version of the horn has survived to contemporary times. Regardless of whether it was made of metal or wood, the serpent presented one very distinct disadvantage to the player. The serpentine shape and rather large size of a serpent made it very difficult for a player to reach the finger holes with ease. A musical instrument designer named J.J. Regibo attempted to overcome this disadvantage of playing the serpent by creating an alternative design that turned it into an upright instrument that featured three sections capable of being dismantled. Regibo's serpent not only was easier to play than Guillaume's original, but it also produced a louder sound. While Regibo's serpent didn't do a whole lot to allow the serpent to become as omnipresent in orchestras as the trumpet or French horn, its design did set the stage for the serpent to come to resemble a bassoon more than it resembled a snake.

Guillaume had designed the serpent to replace the bass cornett as an instrument that would accompany the plainchant in church musical performances. About half a century after Guillaume introduced the serpent into churches, the instrument had succeeded in slithering its way into more secular musical congregations. Composers like Beethoven to Wagner began introducing the serpent into their compositions, often because it made for an easy alternative to inclusion of the contrabassoon.

Not too long after the serpent began showing up in secular compositions, a version of the instrument appeared that featured keys. The first serpents to be played with keys had three or four but before the serpent slithered away into the hole of musical obsolescence forever you could find versions with more than a dozen keys. The death of the serpent as a vital part of some orchestral compositions was the result of several different elements. For one thing, it turned out that the serpent really wasn't much easier to master than the cornett it was meant to replace. Another problem was that fingering charts designed for teaching the serpent varied so much that consistency of play became a significant problem. The number one reason behind the collapse and disappearance of the serpent from both ecclesiastic and secular musical performances, however, was the introduction of a tuba with valves. The appearance of this particular musical instrument caused the serpent to fall into disfavor and become a relic of the past quicker than the rise of punk caused the death of disco. The valved tuba came along in the 1830s and the serpent had already died a quick death by the 1840s.