ON THE TRAIL OF THE LOST KAFOOZALUM WITH GUN AND CAMERA!

Most of you are quite familiar, by now, with the distinctly ''different'' way my mind works (or doesn''t work, LoL...as, say, compared to the vast herd out there that we co-occupy a planet with). All my life I''ve found myself in quest of often specious knowledge about all the myriad possibilities of our earthly experience as a supposedly ''sentient'' (but endlessly frustrating, contradictory, etc.) lifeform. Nothing makes my day more surely than discovering some small tidbit of arcane knowledge that soars high above the radar of about 99.9% of the population...and this particular one is a real gem! But let me explain. [Best to keep your seat belt securely fastened as we blast off into yet another ''Twonk Zone''...]

Yesterday evening, although I increasingly eschew the progressive leftist woke spirit of today''s current PBS ("public" broadcasting system), I just happened by pure chance to stumble across an installment of the PBS series of programs known as Great Performances. These are typically notably singular performances of great classic orchestral symphonies and/or operatic works by internationally renown artists and orchestras.

Earlier in the day, while sucking up my daily caffeine titer before breakfast, I was ploughing determinedly through a supposedly readable history of the Austrian Habsburg Empire, partly due to being an incurable armchair historian (although I actually do have some academic street creds to back that claim up a bit) and partly due to having Austrian maternal roots (actually, a part of the former Austrian empire, now long vanished, called the Duchy of Carniola, today situated in the Slovenian Republic...referred to as ''Oberkrain'' by the German-speakers amongst us). Slovenia, formerly part of Lower Imperial Austria is, by the way, a remarkably scenic and beautiful part of Europe whose myriad cultural and natural delights are among the travel industry''s best kept secrets. So, my point here is that I was in an Austrian mood most of the day, when I tuned into this particular episode of the PBS series.

The concert was one given by the famed Wiener Philharmoniker (Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra) in the Czech Republic''s ethereally scenic capitol, Prague, and the musical selections played included several by Smetana and a number of other well-known indigenous Czech, Bohemian and Slovakian composers. Consequently, as someone who is both a low-grade instrumentalist (only a modestly skilled slush-pumper, as we bone people put it) and lifelong appreciator of classical music (Romantic composers preferred...which as a certain long-time friend once pointed out, is the cultural hallmark of a person with somewhat less sophisticated ''classical'' tastes, LoL...but I do tolerate some Baroque ), was purely delightful. The venue chosen was set in the midst of the famous former Prague Imperial gardens, at dusk, and with all of glorious Prague in the backdrop and a display of moody masses of storm clouds roiling the skies above that ancient city, it was an absolute treat to watch all this, even vicariously, on the electronic Hungry Eye.

So, there I was, avidly releasing most of my daily perturbations and feeling my daily social annoyances drop away into the void as I watched the accomplished members of that great orchestra perform. The cameras kept panning the scene throughout the performance, naturally, capturing both the orchestral members and their several thousands of enthralled audience, when suddenly something unusual and out of the ordinary caught my eye.

It was an instrument situated to the immediate left of the row of three trombonists and it had a singularly bizarre appearance. It was a large brass instrument and to some small extent resembled a complicated, vertical trombone with an array of keyed valves, fixed upright on a stand, behind which sat its operator/musician.

Now I have been a low-grade band and orchestral instrumentalist for a number of years (in grammar school, high school and college). I once played a trombone solo at the All Western Band Review in 1964 and took a third prize there (I still have the medal), so I know something about orchestras (and brass instruments in particular). But what in bloody blazing bass clef hell was this bizarre thing that juttewd incongruously upwards on the left of the trombone section?!

As a trombonist, I am also quite well-aware of the various kinds of trombones that one commonly finds in orchestras (B-flat Tenor Trombone, Bass Trombone, Pedal Trombone, Sackbut, etc., etc) and am also quite familiar with conventional Baritones, Alto Horns, Alphorns, Sousaphones, French and English Horns, Euphoneums, etc., etc.). This strange thing, however, was none of these! The more I tried to puzzle this mystery out, the more agitated I got and the more my poor long-suffering wifie became frustrated by all my efforts to plumb the depths of this enigma aloud!

It was by that time getting close to bedtime, but I had absolutely no luck trying to solve this puzzle that was driving my normally barely stable imagination even closer to the edge of frustrated befuddlement than usual! I faced the unhappy possibility of taking all this to sleep with me…something guaranteed to keep me up most of the night as I exhausted every last brain-cell, plumbing my memory banks for some sort of plausible explanation! Not a happy prospect for as light a sleeper as I am, anyway!

Finally, as a last ditch to solve the self-imposed quandary, I resorted to using two of the on-line Artificial Intelligence assisted browsers in my search for an answer (GOOGLE’s ‘Genius’ and MS/BING’s ‘Co-Pilot’). Describing the instrument as well, as I could (as a fairly articulate individual), even AI came up with a near-total blank! Neither AI system could positively identify this strange brass instrument, but I was bemused to learn that AI thought it might be what is described as a ‘Viennese Horn’, a very special and semi-archaic brass wind instrument that is unique to the Wiener Philharmoniker! Further, AI patiently explained, the Vienna Symphony deliberately employs a number of archaic European orchestral instruments to help it create that special ‘sound’ that the orchestra is famous for. That information was at least helpful, as my quest continued.

[Incidentally, the Viennese Horn is characteristically played only by that orchestra and when candidates are auditioned for inclusion in the Philharmoniker, they are assayed partly on their ability to play this particular horn (as well as conventional French and English Horns, and Tubas).]

The other AI system I used, after an attempt to rephrase my description of the instrument in question, ventured the opinion that it was “…probably a variant of the Pedal Trombone”, an answer that I strongly suspected was equally wrong. Score ZERO for supposedly omniscient AI, eh?

But this was definitely NOT a Viennese Horn, sadly, nor was it a Pedal Trombone! Back to the starting blocks in my search!

I went to sleep that night without an answer, despite the assurance that it would be a tosser & turner of a night for me (only I can lose sleep over some sort of arcane perplexity that I can’t resolve fairly quickly), although I did finally get a few winks. But the next morning, I was back at my desktop (yeah, I’m one of those oddballs who still rely upon a desktop for my writing, instead of a laptop or tablet).

I must have tried every known trick in the PC book to describe what this strange instrument looked like, but as you all know, whether you’re dealing with auto mechanics (like the internal mysteries of my Porsche’s engine or music), unless you know the absolutely correct standard descriptive terminology to use, you’re dead in the proverbial water, with the rudder stuck and the engines FULL STOP (but with little luck). Another good example of why an education that includes linguistics and semantics is so crucially important for youthful members of society!

Finally, in desperation I tried accessing a description of the instrumental make-up of the Vienna Philharmonic under ‘images’ instead of ‘general information’ and shortly had a breakthrough moment! It was the equivalent of the sort of epiphany a Christian True-Believer might have, if Jebus or ‘the Virge’ him/her/its self suddenly materialized to them in the midst of prayers, for there at the far end of a row of trombones in the picture was an instrument that the brief television scan of the orchestra made during its performance had only sketchily revealed, and that so piqued my curiosity.

Capturing that image with a screenshot, I asked AI what that instrument was called and suddenly the clouds parted, the Firmament stood revealed, and an angelic host proclaimed the single word, CIMBASSO!

Whaaaat?! Cimbasso? Wot the ‘ell was that? Further research quickly revealed that the ‘CIMBASSO’ is a ‘low-brass instrument’ that covers the same range as a tuba or Contrabass Trombone (but was neither). The Cimbasso developed (in Italy) as an instrument that could play the lowest brass part in Italian orchestras. An Italian invention, with an appropriately Italian name, the CIMBASSO first appeared as the ‘Trombone Basso Verdi’ in the late 1880s. Its features give it a resonant sound far nearer the trombone in timbre than the tuba and its four-to-six rotary valves enable it to be played more agilely than a Contrabass (or Pedal) Trombone.

The name CIMBASSO, by the way, is thought to be a contraction of the Italian words Corno Basso or Corno Di Basso, and today it has found increasing use in specialised European orchestral works and opera. There is even a contemporary jazz artist who plays the CIMBASSO and in fact several symphonic works have been composed specifically for CIMBASSO soloists. Amazing, eh? Whoda thunkit?! The world-famed Vienna Philharmonic is a specialist user of the CIMBASSO, as it turns out!

I am tempted to say that the CIMBASSO is musically related to all that ‘EVIL WHITE CULTURE’ that originated in Northern Europe (which the WOKE crowd never mises a chance to denigrate and condemn, these days) but I''ll manfully repress that urge.

For a full beat-up on the strange CIMBASSO, refer to this WIKI article that details its full history.

And there you have it folks! Another sterling bit of arcane information about an anomaly in the musical orchestral world that more than 99.9% of the population, even in their wildest, most astutely prescient moments, would likely utterly fail to be aware of. Aren’t you glad that I, your old equally-arcane buddy am around to help fill up your remaining brain-cells with such totally useless bits of knowledge?

Yeah, I THOUGHT so…! Who else do you know who is willing and able to write more than almost 2000 words on something as spectacularly beyond the usual flows of ruminative awareness as this? But, more to the point, how boring would life be (for me, or even possibly for you) if I didn’t?...

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NOTE: The title of this piece has been shamelessly borrowed from a story that I vaguely recall appeared in a summertime issue of Joseph Campbell''s popular ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION pulp magazine, back in the 60s (written by Pauline Ashwell) and has absolutely NOTHING to do with the CIMBASSO musical instrument described herein. [I was a huge fan of 50s/60s SciFi (this was the Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke. Bradbury era), a real ''FAN'' and even attended conventions and published ''fanzines'' (this was LONG before Trekkies and ComiCons, kidlets). Modern SciFi is meh..., by comparison.]