Pommer

The treble pommer was the equivalent of our hautboy; the bass pommer corresponded to our bassoon. Midway between these lay the alto and tenor pommers, of which the former (the alto), was doubtless the forerunner of the cor anglais.

The Emperor Sigismund, Pope John XXIII, and many other Church dignitaries and others high in the affairs of state, sat in the council which opened in that year and lasted until 1418. For this occasion there were gathered together some five hundred musicians who played on fifes, fiddles, trumps, trombones, and pommers.

The Fleming Denis van Alsloot’s ‘Procession of the Religious Orders from the Town of Antwerp…’, painted in 1616 shows with excellent clarity six musicians playing a trombone, two alto pommers, a discant schalmey, cornetto, and a dulzian played on the left side with the right hand uppermost, the exact opposite to the dulzian’s descendant, the bassoon, which is played the other way round.