Serpent, Unkeyed

The tuba’s oldest ancestor is the serpent, a bass horn of wood bound in black leather, played with the lips in a cup mouthpiece. For two centuries it doubled the men’s voices singing plainchant in French churches; Berlioz thought it fit only for the Dies irae. Keys turned it into the ophicleide, the “keyed serpent”; soon after, valves and brass replaced the keys: the tuba in 1835, then the euphonium.

Serpent, Unkeyed treats six instruments as a dig site, in the spirit of sonic archaeology. It begins at the surface, with valves, metal and pressure, and works downward through keys, leather and wood, the voices the serpent was built to double, and breath before any instrument. There are no soloists; sounds pass from player to player across the six instruments. The only words are the names of materials — brass, keys, leather, wood, ivory, breath — each spoken once into a mouthpiece.

Three euphoniums and three tubas (CC or B♭B♭, any mixture), conductor. No mutes, no electronics. Graphic and proportional score at concert pitch, 10 pages of 48″. Animated guide to every sign: omer-kurtulus-serpent-unkeyed.static.hf.space