BUGLE, a treble brass wind instrument with cup-shaped mouthpiece and conical bore.
Those members of the brass wind such as the horn, bugle, trumpet and tuba, which, in their simplest form, consist of tubes without lateral openings, depend for their scale on the harmonic series obtained by overblowing, i.e., by greater pressure of breath and by the increased tension of the lips, acting as reeds, across the mouthpiece. The harmonic series thus produced, which de pends on the acoustic principles of the tube itself, and is absolutely uninfluenced by the manner in which the tube is bent, forms a natural subdivision in classifying these instruments : (1) Those in which the lower harmonics from the second to the sixth or eighth are employed, such as the bugle, post-horn, the cornet-a-pistons, the trombone. (2) Those in which the higher harmonics from the third or fourth to the twelfth or sixteenth are mostly used, such as the French horn and trumpet. (3) Those which give out the fundamental tone and harmonics up to the eighth, such as the tuba and ophicleide.
Only five notes are required for the various bugle-calls, although the actual compass of the instrument consists of eight, of which the first or fundamental, however, being of poor quality, is never used.
In order to increase the compass and musical possibilities of the bugle, two methods have been adopted, the use of (1) keys and (2) valves. The application of keys to the bugle produced the Kent bugle (named after the duke of Kent, who was com mander-in-chief at the time of its invention in 1810) and later the ophicleide. The application of valves produced the family of saxhorns.
The bugle, like the hunting horn, is an instrument of great antiquity. The shofar of the an cient Hebrews, used at the siege of Jericho, was a cow's horn (Josh. vi. 4, 5, 8, 13, etc.), trans lated in the Vulgate buccina, in the paraphrase of the Chaldee buccina ex cornu; while Gideon's use of a massed band of three hundred shofars to terrify and defeat the Midianites (Judges vii. 16) and Saul's call to arms (I Sam. xiii., 3) may also be recalled. During the middle ages the use of the bugle-horn by knights and huntsmen, and perhaps also in naval warfare, was general in Europe.
Meyerbeer introduced the bugle in B flat in his opera Robert le Diable in the scene of the resurrection of the nuns, and a bugle in A in the fifth act.