Italian speakers:cornamuto torto

Subject: Italian speakers:cornamuto torto
From: Stower
Date: 27 Mar 16 - 01:49 PM

I need some help from a speaker of Italian, please. I'm researching the organological and etymological overlaps between the wind cap crumhorn and cornamuse and the bagpipes, the latter being cornemuse in French and cornamuse in Italian.

The crumhorn in Italy was known as storto or cornamuto torto. Google translation gives me respectively crooked as one meaning for storto, which makes sense for the crumhorn, and for cornamuto torto, wrong or faulty bagpipes, which doesn't seem quite right. I know no Italian. Could it be that storto and torto are different forms so that cornamuto torto is bent bagpipes? That would make much more sense.

Can anyone help, please?

Subject: RE: Italian speakers:cornamuto torto
From: melodeonboy
Date: 27 Mar 16 - 06:36 PM

What about "curved" rather than "bent"?

Subject: RE: Italian speakers:cornamuto torto
From: Monique
Date: 28 Mar 16 - 05:28 AM

A "cornamuto" is a straight crumhorn and a "cornamuto torto" is a crooked "cornamuto".
"corna" = horn, "muto" = mute, "torto" = bent,crooked, "storto" = crooked, twisted....
SNIP
"The cornamuse was clearly described by Praetorius, and is yet a mystery in these modern times, because none have survived to the present and because of the confusion of instrument names at the time. Different names which were used for similar instruments and similar names used for different instruments. The name cornamuse from the Latin cornamusa commonly meant bagpipe as in the French cornemuse. The use of the name dolzaina, from the Latin dulcis (sweet), is thought to be the same or a similar instrument to the cornamuse, and yet the name is often intermingled with the dulzan or dulzian of the curtal families. These two names were sometimes used in the same sentence, as in an ensemble consisting of dolzaina, cornamuse, shawm and mute cornett."
SNIP
from there. (the bold is mine)
So the common denominator to cornamuto, crumhorn, cornamusa, cornemuse, bagpipe is "corna/corne", "horn", "pipe": they're all "tubes".

Subject: RE: Italian speakers:cornamuto torto
From: Stower
Date: 28 Mar 16 - 08:27 AM

Monique, that's helpful, thank you, and confirms in detail what I'd imagined to be the case. Naming of early instruments is always fraught with difficulties - 3 different instruments called a gittern, for example, and the same instrument was often called different things in different places. The cornamuse/bagpipe etymological link is interesting in itself, though, as if you remove the bag and drones from a bagpipe you essentially have a coramuse; bend it and you have a crumhorn.