key bugle

The first known mention of a bugle with keys appears on 4 April 1800 in London's Morning Chronicle newspaper, in an advertisement for an instrument built by the London instrument maker George Astor. However, not until 5 May 1810 was a patent on a five-keyed bugle granted to Joseph Haliday of Yorkshire, entitled "Halliday's [sic] Improvements in the Musical Instrument called the Bugle Horn." Shortly thereafter, in 1811 the first known solos on the instrument were performed by trumpeter Henry Willman, brother of the clarinetist Thomas Lindsay Willman. Performances at the Theatre Royal, Dublin were announced with "Mr. H. Willman will play a Concerto on that highly-improved Instrument, The Patent Kent Bugle Horn, (Invented by Mr. Joseph Halliday)". The first book on the instrument, which by then had six keys to enable more tones, was Introduction to the Art of Playing on the Royal Kent Bugle by Johann Bernhard Logier in 1813. While the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica claims that Haliday called it the "Royal Kent Bugle" as a compliment to the Duke of Kent, who was at the time commander-in-chief, and encouraged the introduction of the instrument into the regimental bands, this appears to be at least partly erroneous. The duke was never commander-in-chief of any bands in Europe, and the dedication might have been made by Holden. A Royal Kent bugle in the key of C, stamped with Halliday’s name as inventor, and made by Turton of Dublin, was exhibited at the Royal Military Exhibition in 1890.

The instrument has a tessitura range of around two octaves, not including the fundamental tones. The notes of the harmonic series with no keys down are: To the original instrument specified in the patent, Halliday added a sixth key, which became the first and was in the normal position open; this key when closed gave B♭, with the same series of harmonics as the open tube. The series, however, becomes shorter with each successive key: The bore of the instrument is just wide enough in proportion to its length to make possible the playing of the fundamental tones in the first two series, but these notes were never used, and the harmonics above the sixth were also avoided due to poor intonation. The keyed bugle was chiefly used in B♭, usually by adding a small B♭ crook to the leadpipe of the bugle in C.