Hi all,

I have a nice Yamaha 4335G trumpet, and am additionally interested in performing some trumpet pieces on flugelhorn as well.

The fugelhorn seems to sound like something between the trumpet and horn. I like the way the (french) horn can sound bold and brassy but also soft, sonorous and mellow. I am wondering whether something similar can be done with the flugel.

However it seems that unlike the horn, the flugel is mostly used in jazz and its mellowness may not be so suitable for certain brighter, more aggreesive pieces. I do not know whether there is a mouthpiece to fix this on flugel.

My research shows that the flugel may have originated from the bugle or may have been used for hunting calls in old times like the horn. However if the flugel can sound as bold as that, why is it used for jazz mostly?

The flugel looks like more of a miniature tuba (due to the conical bore) than a mini horn I think, and perhaps that has to do with the tone also.

Would you not recommend the flugel if it is to be played for not so mellow pieces as well, unlike the french horn?

Thanks.

Good Question.

The flugelhorn that we know today is not the same flugelhorn you are reading about. The flugel and 'french' horn do both come from the old hunting horn. But the present common 'flugelhorn' you see in jazz is from the Saxhorn family and more related to the Saxophones if you were to look at the family tree.

Without going into paragraphs and paragraghs I will confine the rest of this to our common known flugelhorn. It does have a very soft sound. There is quite a bit of controversy about what mouthpiece is the correct mouthpiece for the instrument. Some people belive it should have a funnel shaped mouthpiece like the French horn. However, since it is played by trumpet players the most popular mouthpiece is the cup shaped mouthpiece.

YES! there is a lot you can do with a mouthpiece to change the color of the sound. I do not suggests doing it yourself, but find a good mouthpiece maker who is open minded and willing to stray from supposed tradition. Put more bite in the inner rim contour, add more 'cup' to the cup, have the throat made with a #27 bore (you can open it later if you want), have a conical taper on the shank with a constant rate of change, and very little backbore at the end. This will give you a much brighter sounding flugelhorn.

Don't get msiled into thinking that because the flugel was used for signaling that it is bright. This is a misnomer !!!!
The instrument was created to carry a far distance. Bright trumpets are bright for a short distance. Mellow sounds (like the horn) have a longer 'wave' and therefore carry farther and wrap around trees and mountains. Trumpets are direct line of sight instruments, they don't carry and bounce and wrap aroudn tree out in the forest very well.

Both the Tuba and French Horn have the same conical bore.

Because of how the present day flugel is designed and used, it would be very difficult to write for the flugel in a more assertive, bright manner. I doubt the composer could get that information into the performers heads.

W.Bolcom has written orchestra pieces with the flugel doing some attentive work. But I don't know about too many others.

Does that help a little bit?

Thanks for the info.

[Johnlovemusic] But the present common 'flugelhorn' you see in jazz is from the Saxhorn family and more related to the Saxophones if you were to look at the family tree.

This bit of misinformation is widely circulated, but it is still quite erroneous. The saxhorns, like the saxophones, were invented by Adolphe Sax. The flugelhorn was not invented by Adolphe Sax and is not related to any of these instruments. It derives from the keyed bugle.

Without going into paragraphs and paragraghs I will confine the rest of this to our common known flugelhorn. It does have a very soft sound.

It does not have "a very soft sound". It has a relatively mellow sound, and as the thread-starter suggests, not as mellow a sound as the horn. He is quite right to call it midway, in this respect, between a horn and trumpet. The cornet is approximately midway in this respect between a trumpet and a flugelhorn.

The flugelhorn, unlike the trumpet, tends not to be played above written G above the staff. The horn's best range for playing melodies is about an octave below that of the flugelhorn.

Why isn't it more used in orchestral music? One can only speculate about this, but I don't think composers need hesitate to use it as a trumpet double since a great many trumpet players own flugelhorns and pretty much any trumpet player can easily play a flugelhorn. Famous orchestral pieces using the flugelhorn include Respighi's "Pines of Rome", Ralph Vaughan Williams's ninth symphony, Michael Tippet's third sympony, and Stravinky's "Threni".

[emanresu00]I like the way the (french) horn can sound bold and brassy but also soft, sonorous and mellow. I am wondering whether something similar can be done with the flugel.

It is disrespectful to think of a flugelhorn as a sort of poor man's horn. It's a different instrument entirely. If you must compare it to another instrument, think of it as more mellow trumpet. If you want to do the things a horn does, play a horn.

I think Scotch and I are going to have to disagree on this one. I firmly believe Saxhorns (regardless of Antoine/Aldolph) are considered to be any of a group of valved brass instruments characterized by a conical tube, being oval shaped, and generally having cup-shaped mouthpieces. The valves were primarily first introduced through these Belgian instrument makers. I believe the misnomer mentioned is the other way around, that people confuse saxophones as being the only thing Antoine made; although Antoine is known to have developed the saxophone family he made many, many other contributions to the instrument world.

Now the piston valve we know of today was really probably first designed by Stolzel and Bluhmel. But the rotary valve was predated by the two part double pistoned Vienna Valve which was designed by Antoine Sax.

Yes, it might be disrespectful to think of a flugelhorn as a sort of poor man's horn. But it is not disrespectful to want to use the flugelhorn in ways it is not being used or to try and attain a similar horn type sound with one. It is not so different, after all it has a conical shaped tube like the horn, original mouthpieces were funnel shaped like the horn, it is soft and/or mellow like the horn, and the bell flare covers more distance than the other brass instruments (sort of like. . . . . . . the horn).

It does not have "a very soft sound". It has a relatively mellow sound,

I think we are talking semantics here. I would put mellow and soft together as similar descriptions. Most any definition I could find on-line and in my books uses both terms, Soft and Mellow, together when discussing saxhorns.

Regardless; Emanresu00 was asking “. . . I like the way the (french) horn can sound bold and brassy but also soft, sonorous and mellow. I am wondering whether something similar can be done with the flugel.” So, taking emanresu00’s perception the answer to his/her question is. . . .

. . . . yes. You can do something to make the Flugel appear more brassy-like. You can make a mouthpiece to fit your need and then go back to a different mouthpiece to get back to mellow/soft-ness. There is other stuff you can do to the instrument like changing the bore size of the tubing at certain places, but this is going to the extreme, is very expensive, and not easily reversible.

Dang, I think you (Scotch) and I usually agree on most things.