My Antique Musical Instruments

Played euphonium Friday night in a concert with the Phoenix Pioneer Band, a re-creation of the turn of the century Phoenix town band. We opened with a rag, credited to Will Huff, and published by Fillmore brothers.  And there-in hangs a tale.

Henry was the son of one of the two Fillmore brothers, a firm of religious music publishers in Cincinnati. As a youth, Henry mastered piano and violin, and then the slide trombone. His religious family tried to wean him from the trombone, viewed in the day as an instrument of the Devil – it was prominent in the music of dives, honky-tonks, and places not mentioned in polite company.  Henry was not to be dissuaded, continuing with the trombone and eventually doubling down: he took up with an exotic dancer, and together they ran away to the circus, Henry playing trombone and soon conducting and composing music for the circus band, and the dancer…. dancing.

Eventually, Henry and family reconciled; he and the exotic dancer (now his wife) moved back home, and Fillmore Brothers publishing an extraordinary volume of Henry Fillmore compositions. So many compositions, in fact, that Henry used at least nine pseudonyms to avoid suspicions of his trying to corner the market.

One of those pseudonyms was Will Huff.

Then Henry chanced to meet the real Will Huff. Who turned out to be himself a musician and band composer, living nearby and published by a rival house in Henry’s own Cincinnati.  One imagines a somewhat awkward conversation, but seemingly they worked it out, for Fillmore Brothers soon began publishing music by Will Huff as well.

So when one encounters music by Will Huff, published by Fillmore Brothers, one might not know for sure who wrote it.

(If this isn’t arcane enough for you, the one-time E-flat tuba with the Brass Band of Columbus, Paul E. Bierley authored (after much research) The Music of Henry Fillmore and Will Huff, as well as Hallelujah Trombone!, a biography of Henry. Paul sorts much of it out.)

Here’s an interesting horn. It seems essentially a baritone or euphonium, but pitched in ‘C’, a step higher than a modern instrument; looks like a modern 4 valve horn, but a trifle smaller, as one might expect from the higher pitch. The bell is quite small, by modern tastes, with a large throat, and the tubing is conical throughout. Its sound is similar to my ‘C’ ophiclyde, which is also quite conical, with a similar size bell – quite mellow, but lacking darkness.

Engraved on the bill is Kandowsky, 74 Rue de Cirche, Paris – I gather a large retail shop, stamping its name on instruments from other contract manufacturers. In the day, there were numerous, quite good, factories in both France and Bohemia. Many Lyon and Healy brass instruments from the period were sourced from both regions.

It’s ‘C’ pitch allows it to be played along with a piano, reading the melody line over the pianist’s shoulder, without transposing – exactly like a C-melody sax. Horns produced with this in mind, around 1900, were often sold as “ballad horns”, but they were never curled similar to a euphonium. They were generally circular, like a mellophone or coach horn (at least from what I’ve seen).

Regardless, a neat horn, and a fine player, though not with a full modern euphonium sound. Not a tremendous amount of wear (the valves are quite tight), but it had taken a pretty severe hit, and been sloppily put back together using lead solder and square nails to replace some braces. Cost me more to put the poor thing to rights than it cost me to buy.