curtal

Curtals, and later also the bassoons, differed from the contemporary shawms in that they were made either of a single block of wood with two parallel, conical channels bored up and down and connected at the lower end, or occasionally of two sections, each with half of the two channels hollowed out, then glued together and covered with protecting leather, a practice similar to that encountered in the making of cornetts. In both methods, a shortening of the overall length was...