SIR,-1 cannot help wondering how much your correspondent A. H.
Wilbraham knows about trumpets—and conductors.
Does he really imagine that the trumpeters of any orchestra of repute are deceiving their conductors, and the public, by playing cor- nets ? If he does, let him consider Messrs. Eskdale, Jackson, Walton, Mason, Bravinaton, Overton—or any other trumpeter of any standing—and be reassured.
The only occasions on which I can recall seeing comets used in an orchestra were per- formances of Cesar Franck's Symphony and of certain works of Wagner and Berlioz. which are scored for both trumpets and comets.
Composers of long ago, I would remind Mr. Wilbraham, wrote for a natural and not a valved trumpet, and I cannot believe that he is advocating a return to that very incom- plete instrument.
Mr. Wilbraham's fears for the decline of the horn should be allayed by the large num- ber of excellent young horn players now coming to the fore, inspired, it may well be, by the example of Dennis Brain. Does he con- sider the present day rotary valved German horn, now almost universally used, as a vulgar Impostor ? I do not think many would agree with him. Let him take heart, however. The day when the trumpet is ousted by the cornet and the horn by the tenor sax horn is not yet. —Yours faithfully,
N. S. HOLMI
27 Derby Road, Cavershant, Reading
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