The Friday Quiz: Serpentine
Today's bagatelle, once solved, produces a cornucopia of lovely things, which the Wombat will provide via link.
From a Theodore Sturgeon short story in 1954 --
The Psychiatrist went to his car and got out his bag of tricks. And so it was that late in the afternoon, when MacLyle emerged stretching and yawning from his nap, he found his visitor under the spruce tree, hefting the Ophicleide...
From a wide-ranging journalistic essay published in the 1890s --
"Signor Smitoni,"...was fulfilling an engagement in Genoa, where, owing to some trifling disagreement, he became involved in a serious quarrel. His opponents were 12 to 1. By using his mighty Ophicleide ...with many a knockdown blow, [he] scattered his antagonists like ninepins, in true John Bull fashion.
From a doggerel by a writer known as "Professor Cabbage"
The Ophicleide, like mortal sin
Was fostered by the serpent.
It was invented in 1821 by a Parisian craftsman named Halari. Its vogue, such as it was, was short, and it was supplanted by a number of competing inventions, such as one patented by Wilhelm Wieprecht and Johann Gottfried Moritz in 1835, or a less well-known version of the same concept that went under a different name, adopted by a unit of the Royal Artillerey in Woolwich in 1851.
What is the Ophicleide? And what is the now-standard replacement?
First correct answer posted to comments wins a fifth-generation photocopy of David Mamet's abandoned screenplay adaptation of The Silmarillion. No Googling or asking the vaguely demonic shopkeeper who just opened up that little knicknack store in your insular Maine hometown that you've been trying to leave for years. One post per comment, please, but you may comment as often as you like.
Comments
It's a brass instrument. Not sure what replaced it, but it's big, so I'll guess the french horn.
I'm obsessive about Sturgeon, as you may know. "And Now the News..." -- one of my favorite stories in the world -- was actually published in 1956. I have the original issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction in which it appeared.
Posted by: Scraps![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.wombatfile.com/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 28, 2006 10:49 AM
Good lord -- I've played right into Scraps's hands.
Not quite right about the replacement instrument, though. The French horn's a bit older than either the Ophicleide or its heirs.
Posted by: BT![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.wombatfile.com/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 28, 2006 11:28 AM
Saxophone?
Posted by: Velma![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.wombatfile.com/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 28, 2006 11:42 AM
Actually... given the size of an Ophicleide, I'm going to change my guess to a tuba. Having a tuba fall on you is more dangerous than a sax, unless it's a baritone sax.
Posted by: Velma![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.wombatfile.com/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 28, 2006 11:44 AM
Velma's got it -- the tuba/euphonium is the instrument (or set of related instruments) whose brass-band star rose after the short lived reign of the Ophicleide -- which was enormous, even bigger than a baritone sax or a sousaphone. I did read that the inventor of the saxophone (named, unsurprisingly, Sax), was emulating some of the ophicleide's features, including its keyed fingering, into his new woodwind.
Some lovely sounds of an ophicleide being played are here:
http://www.ophicleide.com/articles/Audio.htm
Oh, and the doggerel reference to the "serpent" is to the wildly twisted, Seussian musical precursor to the ophicleide -- it's name means something like "keyed serpent" in Greek.
Posted by: BT![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.wombatfile.com/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 28, 2006 11:58 AM
Okay. After I guessed, I googled for a picture and, man, ophicleides are way cool:
http://www.serpentwebsite.com/MIM_Monstre_Ophicleide_1830.jpg
I want one!
Posted by: Velma![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.wombatfile.com/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 28, 2006 12:09 PM
I'm glad I arrived too late to guess. . . well, something far far from right. Except that I do think Bob Hope did partially replace the Ophicleides. Much to the benefit of the "on the road" movies.
Milestone -- I've never thought of Bob Hope and Bing Crosby in the same neural space as Jack Kerouac before just now, though the opportunity was certainly there. It's a grand hallucination, let me tell you.
Whoa.
Posted by: herbivorous![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.wombatfile.com/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 28, 2006 01:00 PM
And speaking of changes for the better, the Beatles were right to revise "Theodore Sturgeon" to "Eleanor Rigby." I've heard the early demos, and it was more baffling than haunting. I think the change was suggested, oddly enough, by Ringo.
Posted by: herbivorous![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.wombatfile.com/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 28, 2006 01:03 PM