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		The Milla®-Crumhorn
	Among the ca. 30 existing crumhorns from the 16th century the original of this unique instrument made by 'I MILLA' is most probably a work of Milanese origin made of carefully worked boxwood. In 1977 I discovered this instrument in the Museum of History of Art (Kunsthistorisches Museum) in Vienna (catalogue no. 4082). It originates from the Ambras collection listed there in the inventory of 1596 as "ain gelbes Krumphorn" no. 371. (a yellow crumhorn). After extensive studies of the original I reconstructed a complete consort range. The MILLA® crumhorn is very special compared to commonly used crumhorns because it has a bell mouth attached to its ellbow. Nothing is more obvious than reaching a new tone-colour through a changed construction of the bell-mouth. The effect is astonishing: the "onion" produces a muted 'vox humana' sound. With the wide open 'da caccia' bell the instrument has a 'french trumpet'-sound. The half-covered bell sounds like a regal comparable to historical organ-registers.
	My MILLA® crumhorns are outstandingly suitable and used for music-therapy. The instruments Soprano-Alto and Tenor come in European boxwood and are delivered including three bell-mouths and have a cane reed (see under 'arundo donax').

soprano in c - alto in f or descant in g - tenor in c or d - bass in F (can be easily underblown to C) - no great bass is needed.
Tenor and bass have an extra foreshortened fingering ("Applikatur") so that they can be played with small hands.

Important:
The MILLA®-crumhorn is an invention by Stefan Beck - musikhandwerk Berlin - and is protected as a trade mark not to be copied by other instrument-makers; it is an original MILLA®-crumhorn only with the 'trade mark' of the musikhandwerk workshop.

sample music: Your are listiening "L'arboscello ballo furlano" from Mainerio.
Played on MILLA®-Crumhorns by I MILLANTATORI (Joshi Obata, Wolfgang Vogel, Friedemann Schmidt, Hans-Jürgen Burggaller and Stefan Beck) Berlin .
You will be hearing a change of bells in the refrain.

This is an MP3-file (MPEG-1 Layer 3). You can listen with the QuickTime™-Plugin directly in your webbrowser and also with every external MP3-player.
This track is a part of the album "Krummhornmusik des 16. Jahrhunderts" [crumhorn music of the 16th century] which is avaible only through bec-musikhandwerk.

Click here to download the file (1,2 MB)

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arundo donax (cane) is a blade of grass grown in mediterranean zones where it has been cultivated for musical instruments since thousands of years . There is undoubtedly no substitute. Cane is used for instruments all over the world. The use of "arundo donax" is historically binding since it has been an essential part of the characteristic sound (spectrum). Cane-reeds must be played moistened but not "steeped" - steeped reeds do not sound good!