The Cornett has a straight or slightly curved wooden tube, with the fingerholes of a woodwind instrument. The only feature that the cornett shares with the modern cornet is the cup-shaped mouthpiece, common to all brass instruments. The cornett is wonderfully expressive : its sound is distinctively sweet, but with the flexibility of the human voice.
| Family |
| Brasses |
| Pitch range |
| Approximately two-and-a-half octaves. |
| Material |
| Pear, plum, maple, or walnut, sometimes covered in leather, with a mouthpiece of horn, ivory, or wood. |
| Size |
| Variable, but the standard treble cornett is about 24 in (60 cm) long. |
| Origins |
| The cornett derived from an animal horn with fingerholes pierced in the side. The wooden cornetts that they inspired were popular throughout Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries. |
| Classification |
| Aerophone: an instrument that produces its sound by the vibration of a column of air. |
| And also... |
| A straight kind of cornett exists called a mute cornett. |
