Since the abandonment of the clarino (about the middle of the 18th century) our orchestras have been enriched with trumpets that permit the execution of the old clarino parts, not only with perfect justness of intonation, but with a quality of tone that is not deficient in character when compared with the mean register of the old principal instrument. The introduction of the clarinet or the so-called little clarino, although it is a wood wind instrument played with a reed, is one of the causes which led to the abandonment of the older instrument and may explain the preference given by the composers of that epoch to the mean register of the trumpet. The clarino having disappeared before Mozart's day, he had to change the trumpet parts of Handel and Bach to allow of their execution by the performers of his own time. It was now that crooks began to be frequently used. Trumpets were made in F instead of in D, furnished with a series of shanks of increasing length for the tonalities of E, E♭, D, D♭, C, B, B♭, and sometimes even A.
Fig. 2. — Modern Slide Trumpet F to C (Besson).
The first attempts to extend the limited resources of the instrument
in its new employment arose out of Hampel's Inventions-Horn,
in which, instead of fixing the shanks between the mouthpiece
and the upper extremity, they were adapted to the body
of the instrument itself by a double slide, upon the two branches
of which tubes were inserted bent in the form of a circle and
gradually lengthened as required. This system was applied to
the trumpet by Michael Woegel (born at Rastatt in 1748), whose
“invention trumpet” had a great success, notwithstanding the
unavoidable imperfection of a too great disparity in quality of tone
between the open and closed sounds. It is a curious fact that
the sackbut or early trombone was merely a trumpet with a slide,
or a draw trumpet, and that it was known as such in England,
Scotland, Spain, Holland and Italy. Yet as soon as the powerful
family of tenor and bass trombones had been created, the slide
trumpet seems to have lost its identity and to have become merged
in the alto trombone from which it differed mainly in the form of
the bent tube. The slide trumpet appears to have been re-invented
in the 18th century according to Johann Ernst Altenburg, or as some
writers put it, “the slide was adapted to it from the trombone.”
It was mentioned in 1700 by Kuhnau.[1] Any one wishing to be
convinced of this re-incarnation may compare the modern slide-trumpet
with the original slide-trumpet or alto sackbut in the
Grimiani Breviary,[2] a MS. of the 15th century, and with E. van der
Straeten's reproduction[3] of an old engraving by Galle and Stradan
from the Encomium Musices in which the forms are identical except
that in the modern slide-trumpet the bell reaches the level of the
U-shaped bottom of the slide.
(From the Encomium Musices.)
Fig. 3. — Slide Trumpet 16th century.
The slide trumpet is still used in England in a somewhat modified
form. The slide is a short one allowing of four positions. In 1889
a trumpet was constructed by Mr W. Wyatt with a double slide
which gave the trumpet a complete chromatic compass. This
instrument, which has the true brilliant trumpet tone, requires
delicate manipulation, for the shifts are necessarily very short.
About 1760 Kölbel, a Bohemian musician,[4] applied a key to the
bugle, and soon afterwards the trumpet received a similar addition.
By opening this key, which is placed near the bell, the instrument
was raised a diatonic semitone, and by correcting errors of intonation
by the tension of the lips in the mouthpiece the following
diatonic succession was obtained.
This invention was
improved in 1801 by
Weidinger,[5] trumpeter
to the imperial
court at Vienna, who increased the number of keys and thus made
the trumpet chromatic throughout its scale.[6] The instrument
shown in fig. 4 is in G; the keys are five in number, and as
they open one after another or in combination it is possible
to connect the second proper tone with the third by chromatic
steps, and thus produce the following succession: —
 |
| Fig. 4. — Keyed Trumpet. |
The number of keys was applied to fill up the gaps between the extreme sounds of the interval of a fifth; and a like result was arrived at more easily for the intervals of the fourth, the major third, &c., furnished by the proper tones of 3, 4, 5, &c. But, though the keyed trumpet was a notable improvement on the invention trumpet, the sounds obtained by means of the lateral openings of the tube did not possess the qualities which distinguish sounds caused by the resonance of the air-column vibrating in its entirety. But in 1815 Stölzel made a genuine chromatic trumpet by the invention of the Ventile or piston.[7] The natural-trumpet is now no longer employed except in cavalry regiments.[8] It is usually in E♭. The bass trumpet in E♭, which is an octave lower, is sometimes, but rarely, used. Trumpets with pistons are generally constructed in F, with crooks in E and E♭. In Germany trumpets in the high B♭ with a crook in A are very often used in the orchestra. They are easier for cornet à piston players than the trumpet in F. A quick change trumpet in Bb with combined tuning and transposing slides, for changing into the key of A, known as the “Proteano” trumpet, has been patented by Messrs Besson & Co. The transposing slide always remains at the correct length, and change of the tuning slide does not necessitate readjustment of the former. This combination slide is fitted to the ordinary valve trumpet as well as to the trumpet with “enharmonic” valves. Mahillon constructed for the concerts of the Conservatoire at Brussels trumpets in the high D, an octave above the old trumpet in the same key. They permit the execution of the high trumpet parts of Handel and J. S. Bach. The bass trumpet with pistons used for Wagner's tetralogy is in E♭, in unison with the ordinary trumpet with crooks of D and C; but, when constructed so as to allow of the production of the second proper tone as written by this master, this instrument belongs rather to the trombones than to the trumpets.
 |
|
Transposing Slide Tuning Slide |
|
Fig. 5. — Proteano Trumpet in B♭ and A (Besson). |
TRUMPET, Speaking and Hearing. The speaking trumpet, though some instrument of the kind appears to have been in earlier use, is connected in its modern form with the name of Athanasius Kircher and that of Sir Samuel Morland, who in 1670 proposed to the Royal Society of London the question of
- ↑ Der musikalische Quacksalber, p. 83.
- ↑ Brit. Mus. Facsimile, 61, pl. 9.
- ↑ La Musique aux Pays-Bas, vi. 252.
- ↑ Versuch einer Anleitung zur heroisch-musikalischen Trompeter- und Pauker-Kunst, p. 12 (Halle, 1795).
- ↑ 5 See Allg. musikal. Ztg. (November 1802), p. 158; (January 1803) p. 245; and E. Hanslicks, Gesch. des Concertwesens in Wien (1869), p. 119.
- ↑ Robert Eitner made a curious confusion between the keyed and valve trumpets (Klappen- und Ventil-Trompete). In an article entitled Wer hat die Ventil-Trompete erfunden? (Monatshefte für Musikwissenschaft, p. 41, Berlin, 1881) he deprives Stölzel of the credit of the invention of the valve in favour of Weidinger, ridiculing the notion that the keyed and the valve trumpets were not one and the same thing. Following up the idea in his Tonkünstler Lexikon, he leaves out Stölzel's name and ascribes to Weidinger the invention of the valve, with a reference to his article.
- ↑ For this ingenious mechanism, see Valve; also Gottfried Weber, Über Ventilhorn und Trompete mit 3 Ventilen, Caecilia xvii. 73-104 (Mainz, 1835); and Allg. musikal. Ztg. xxiii. 411 (Leipzig, 1821); also A. Ung, “Verbesserung der Trompete und ähnlicher Instrumente,” ibid. (1815), xviii. 633.
- ↑ For accounts of the early use of the trumpet as a signalling and cavalry instrument in the British army, see Sir Roger Williams, A Brief Discourse of War, p. 9, &c. (London, 1590); Grose, Military Antiquities, ii. 41; Sir S. D. Scott, The British Army, ii. 389-400 (London, 1868); and H. G. Farmer, Memoirs of the Royal Artillery Band (London, 1904).
