de on the same principle, and
produced an instrument more perfect mechanically and theoretically than
Savary's, but lacking some of the characteristics of the bassoon. In
Germany Almenraeder's improvements[4] have been generally adopted and his
model with 16 keys is followed by most makers, and notably by Heckel of
Biebrich.[5]

The unwieldy bass pommers of the 15th and 16th centuries led to many
attempts to produce a more practical bass for the orchestra by doubling
back the long tube of the instrument. Thus transformed, the pommer became a
fagotto. The invention of the bassoon or fagotto is ascribed to Afranio, a
canon of Ferrara, in a work by his nephew, Theseus Ambrosius Albonesius,
entitled _Introductio in Chaldaicam Linguam ... et descriptio ac Simulacrum
Phagoti Afranii_ (Pavia, 1539). The illustration of the instrument, showing
front and back views (p. 179), taken in conjunction with the detailed
description (pp. 33-38), at once disposes of the suggestion that the
phagotus of Afranio and the fagotto or bassoon were in any way related; the
author himself is greatly puzzled as to the etymology of the word. The
phagotus in fact, resembles nothing so much as the musical curiosity known
as _flute-a-bec a colonne_[6], but double and played by bellows, assigned
by G. Chouquet to the 16th century. This flute consisted of a column, with
base and capital, both stopped, the vent and the whistle being concealed
within perforated brass boxes, in the upper and lower parts of the column.
Afranio's phagotus consisted of two similar twin columns with base and
capital containing finger-holes and keys; between the columns in front was
a shorter column for ornament, and at the back of it another still shorter
whose capital could be lifted, and a sort of bellows or bag-pipe inserted
by means of which the instrument was sounded. The first instrument was
made, we are told, by Ravilius of Ferrara, from Afranio's design.[7]
Mersenne[8], who does not seem to have any difficulty in understanding the
construction of Afranio's phagotus, does not consider him the inventor of
the fagotto or bassoon, but of another kind of fagotto which he classes
with the Neapolitan _sourdeline_, a complicated kind of musette[9] (see
BAG-PIPE). Afranio's instrument consists, he states, of two _bassons_ as it
were interconnected by tubes and blown by bellows. As in the _sourdeline_,
these only speak when the springs (keys) are open. He disposes of Theseus
Albon