Thomas Harper Jnr (1816–1898) was the foremost slide trumpet player of his day. However, the slide trumpet was not capable of playing chromatically in all registers, so trumpeters also performed on the cornet, even though the sound was considered inferior by many commentators. Harper’s School for the Cornet à Pistons was published by Rudall, Carte & Co. in 1865, a decade before his trumpet tutor.

In the twentieth century this cornet tutor was largely forgotten, and at the time of writing the editor knows of only 3 extant copies: one in the library of the Royal Academy of Music, where Harper Jnr was the professor of trumpet and cornet, one at the British Library (the editor was informed that he was the first person to view this copy since it was deposited at the British Museum by Harper Jnr) and one at the Library of Congress in the USA.

Over the last century and a half the Cornet Method by J. B. Arban, published before the Harper Jnr, has been the most popular tutor. What is remarkable about the Harper Jnr is the increased technical demands it makes above those that are in the Arban. For example, some exercises ascend to high D, over two octaves above middle C, and the fingering chart goes higher to the G, in addition to including a pedal C, an octave below middle C.

The 15 studies presented here are from the end of the Harper Jnr tutor. Few marks of expression were included by Harper Jnr and it has mainly been the addition of these that has been the task of the editor, to encourage expressive performances of these studies, which are typical of the Romantic era.