Cornet, Trumpet, and Flugelhorn  Glen plays a silver
shepard's-crook cornet Glen Newton plays a cornet solo during
the Roseville Big Band's July 4, 2001, concert. The cornet was
Glen's example of an instrument not often heard today as a part
of big band jazz.  Although the trumpet is the most common
soprano brass instrument today, it was the cornet that dominated
band music a century ago. In that era, trumpets were usually
heard only in orchestras. (A letter from world-famous cornet
soloist Herbert L. Clarke to Eldon Benge in 1921 illustrates his
perception of the trumpet as "only a foreign fad for the time
present," one that "is only used properly in large orchestras of
60 or more, for dynamic effects, and was never intended as a
solo instrument.")  As late as the 1960's, school bands in the
United States generally had far more cornets than trumpets. Band
music was frequently written with three or four cornet parts and
two trumpet parts. The cornets were expected to play the more
technical flowery musical li