Cornet Omnitonique 1847

Curator: This is the Cornet Omnitonique, crafted in 1847 by Gautrot aîné in France. It's a brass instrument, housed here at The Met. What are your initial impressions? Editor: Well, it’s gleaming, like something pirates might’ve bartered for on the high seas! All that winding metal feels almost…organic, like polished vines. It’s smaller than I expected. Curator: Yes, cornets offered a more mellow sound than trumpets and became quite popular in both orchestras and brass bands during the Romantic era. Think of it as a technological step, offering different key options. It aimed to offer a full chromatic scale in one instrument. Editor: A bit ambitious, perhaps? Still, I love imagining the kind of music that was blasted out of this. Polkas at Parisian cafes, maybe? The spirit of revolution and romance all bundled together. Curator: Indeed. Its creation also coincides with a time when instruments like this were gaining visibility in more public venues, and the industrial revolution helped standardize manufacturing, so that you could find one available to more people and players of diverse backgrounds, thereby expanding its range of influence within cultural settings. Editor: That’s wonderful! Almost a populist gesture—music for everyone! I’m still caught by how sensuous the metal looks, its glow almost alive, beckoning. It makes me consider our human relationship with crafted objects. What songs do we breathe into them, and what songs do they give back? Curator: An interesting observation. Consider also, if you will, how its preservation tells us so much of what earlier people thought of musical instruments. Did it represent pride in national artistry? Personal passion for making music? We have more questions than answers, surely. Editor: And isn't that what keeps us coming back? Curator: Precisely. It speaks of untold melodies from another time that it’s kept whispering to attentive onlookers for centuries since its creation.