Josué Meléndez Pelaez is a Mexican–Swiss cornett player, teacher, and early music researcher. He studied music in Mexico and across Europe, combining modern and Baroque performance practices. Today he teaches at music academies in Bremen and Frankfurt, performs actively, and researches the history of musical ornamentation.
Josué appeared as both soloist and lecturer at the opening of Kyiv Baroque Fest, where he performed Baroque repertoire for cornett together with Maria Morozova-Meléndez (organ, positive organ, harpsichord). What stood out in particular was Josué’s mastery of ornamentation: starting from simple, evenly written note values on the page, he shaped virtuosic melismas that brought every phrase to life and gave it new meaning.
Josué’s musical path is a great example of how style, voice, and instrument can become not just a profession, but a way of thinking. Today he combines teaching and research with active performance, showing how the sound of the past can still feel alive and relevant. What follows is the musician’s own voice, gently leading the listener from the history of the instrument into the philosophy of musical performance.
Where and how the cornett sounded in early periods
The repertoire for the cornett is actually quite broad. It goes back to the 16th century, even though at that time nothing was written specifically for the instrument. Cornetts mostly played vocal music—pieces that could be sung with instrumental accompaniment or performed entirely instrumentally. So essentially, the cornett repertoire of that era consisted of vocal works.
Only around the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries did purely instrumental music begin to appear, including works for cornett. Even then, instrumentation was flexible: different instruments could be combined freely. Over time, the number of cornett players declined, and the repertoire changed with it. The cornett part was often taken over by the oboe, trumpet, or sometimes the flute.
Later on, it became increasingly difficult to define the cornett’s role. Even the way the instrument was labeled in scores caused confusion. For example, Bach wrote nine cantatas that clearly include cornett, and about 35 cantatas where the score simply says “corn.” Bach usually used the Italian cornetto rather than the German zink. This led to misunderstandings: the same marking could also be read as corno (horn), so the part might be played on a horn instead. That’s why it’s so important to write out the full instrument name.
Still, the cornett was also used in orchestral settings. In essence, it’s the soprano member of the trombone family, so it belongs to the trombone consort. There are also many works marked “cornetto/violino,” meaning the performer can choose between cornett and violin. The later the repertoire, the more often the cornett appears together with the voice—for example, in Bach’s music.
Today, many European conservatories teach the cornett. I teach in Bremen and Frankfurt and have quite a lot of students there. There are also other schools where you can study theinstrument. The main centers remain Basel, Lyon, Geneva, Bremen, Barcelona, and now Milan as well—but the number of institutions keeps growing.
Types of cornetts and how they are made
The cornett belongs to the brass family, even though its body is made of wood. Like the recorder, it comes in several sizes. There is the soprano cornett (the standard concert instrument), an alto cornett sounding a whole tone lower, and a tenor cornett, which transposes a fourth or a fifth down, depending on the model. There’s also a bass cornett, which today is played almost exclusively by Ron Wilson, the British cornettist and conductor.
Cornetts are made of wood, ebonite, or ivory. Two long pieces are carved and then glued together lengthwise to form a curved, horn-like shape. No one knows exactly how the mouthpiece came to be added, but it was clearly done for practical reasons. We have very little information about original mouthpieces. Around 16–20 examples survive, but they date from the late 19th century. All of them resemble trumpet mouthpieces, just slightly smaller.
What the lecture is about
The concert and the lecture are not directly connected, except through the principles of ornamentation. I’ll explain these principles in the lecture and then try to demonstrate them in practice during the concert.
The focus will be on ornaments that we need to use regardless of the style of music we’re playing. There are sources from the Middle Ages up until at least 1917 that clearly state that “simple” ornamentation is essential for good musical expression.
It’s often assumed that ornamentation belongs only to the period in which it was created, but that’s simply not true.
Sources on ornamentation from the 17th century also apply to later music—and this is even better documented in 19th-century sources. In Caccini’s time, people tried to explain concepts like crescendo and diminuendo in words, but it was complicated because the symbols we use today didn’t exist yet. By the Romantic era, those markings were established, so explanations became much easier.
Since ornamentation and improvisation are my main areas of specialization, I’ve gone quite deeply into this topic. I was especially struck by 19th-century sources: they talk about the importance of ornaments and their evolution. Some terminology changed, but the core idea remained the same.
Lecture notes
The lecture, which took place on the day of the concert at the National Philharmonic of Ukraine as part of Kyiv Baroque Fest 2025, became a kind of bridge between historical sources and modern performance.
Speaking about historical techniques of ornamentation, diminutions, and graces, Josué Meléndez Pelaez emphasized that improvisation and rhetoric were central to musicalpractice in the 16th and 17th centuries. He stressed that the modern habit of playing strictly “what’s written” doesn’t reflect historical reality. Sources clearly show that musicians always added ornaments, varied phrases, and improvised.
I work not only with 16th- and 17th-century materials, but also with later 19th-century sources. Technically and linguistically, they’re closer to how we think and play today, and they often help us better understand earlier sources. I chose the concept of “graces” as the central theme—small but essential ornaments that historically formed the foundation of an elegant performing style. I like the English word graces, though it’s worth noting that the term itself wasn’t used in early sources.
Graces differ from diminutions: they’re not virtuosic runs, but minimal, restrained decorations. Historical terminology here is quite complex. The correct English term for diminutions is divisions, while diminution is more of a modern umbrella term. There are also many concepts describing performance quality: grazia (grace and beauty), buona maniera (noble manner), sprezzatura (effortless ease), baghezza (a certain improvisatory openness), prontezza (readiness to suddenly launch into a virtuosic cadence).
A key example is a collection by Bartolomeo Barbarino, an Italian Baroque composer and singer. He presents the same piece in two versions: a simple one and an ornamented one. Barbarino explains: “The simple version is intended for beginners, or for those who already fully master counterpoint and are well trained.”
By “well trained,” he means musicians who are able and willing to improvise and create diminutions quickly. So this “simple” version is meant both for beginners and for top-level professionals, who can supply all the necessary ornamentation just by reading the plain version. The second version—the passeggiata (ornamented version)—is intended for singers with natural coloratura technique, although Barbarino notes that without counterpoint skills, a Baroque singer won’t truly understand how to perform their part.
So once again, we arrive at the main division in ornamentation: large diminutions (passaggi, divisions) and small ornaments—what musicologist Meyer Brown suggested calling graces.
In the 16th century, the concept of “graces” didn’t yet exist, but in the 17th century Christoph Bernhard introduced the idea of manieren—ways of performing. These are minimal expressive gestures: accenti, groppi, tremoli, trilli, portamento, esclamazioni, messa di voce, and so on. They define good performance practice. Maniera here doesn’t mean affectation—it means refinement, the ability to think and breathe with the phrase.
Special attention should be paid to porta di voce and esclamazione, described by Caccini as fundamental dynamic gestures of 17th-century music. The first is a soft attack followed by a gentle, gradual crescendo; the second is a gradual diminuendo.
There’s also the accento, a small grace: a single note that begins with a slight deviation and returns to the main pitch. Another important concept is principia sotto la nota, also known as intonazione in Caccini’s writings. Here, the note begins a third or a fourth below and moves toward the main pitch while preserving the harmony. Caccini famously warned: “This ornament is used so often nowadays… please apply it only where I indicate.”
Trills deserve special attention as well. The same rhythmic type—the augmentation trill—is reinterpreted and reused by different authors: Rognoni, Praetorius, Herbst, and even Manuel García in 1847.
García emphasizes that to master ornamentation, one must study Herbst. He provides vocal exercises on the vowels A, E, I, O, U to train trill technique. Praetorius is another important model—he often copies material from Bovicelli, sometimes even with the same mistakes, which shows how widespread the Italian style and its ornamental patterns were in Germany.
Next comes inequality—the uneven performance of fast notes. The earliest documented reference appears in Thomas de Santa María’s The Art of Playing Fantasias (Valladolid, 1565). He advises turning even notes into dotted rhythms and then offers three additional uneven patterns, including one where the fourth note is lengthened while the first three are played quickly. All three uneven options are acceptable; playing notes evenly is the least desirable choice. So when Barbarino and others write even notes, they expect them to be played with a light inequality. Rognoni supports this idea as well, using the phrase moderare le crome, implying a flexible approach to eighth notes.
A Neapolitan singer who was a contemporary of Beethoven even provides a table of characters, showing how the same phrase can sound light, tender, passionate, brilliant, elegant, or graceful—depending entirely on ornamentation. By the 19th century, ornamentation had clearly become not just a technique, but a way of shaping musical character.
It’s also important to remember that ornamentation isn’t only about adding notes—you can also take notes away. Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach writes about this explicitly. Performers shouldn’t treat the score as something mechanical, but understand the written text itself as a form of ornamentation. This applies to the entire musical heritage of the 17th to 19th centuries.
In every era, ornamentation has been based on a combination of technique, listening, understanding counterpoint, and knowledge of musical character. Ornaments can be small or large, regular or irregular, they can alter what’s written on the page—but in every case, their purpose is the same: to bring the music to life and reveal its style.
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