Natural trumpet "myth"

[tptptp]

Hey, Mr. Eliminator. For the pilot of an airplane travelling westward at mach 2, the sun rises in the west. And, although the moon seems to move east-to-west across the sky, its orbit is in the other direction, same as earth, only slower. My point is, uh, what was it now? Oh yeah, thinking out of the box is good for da brain, and I've got a headache.
_________________
Craig Mitchell

[Cornetto]

I don't get the debate here -- we have lots of surviving instruments from the 18th century. If you were to play any one of them, you'd find that the only register where you *could* play the Brandenburg in is the extremely high clarino register -- right where we play it now.

Clarino playing was actually lost shortly after J.S. Bach's lifetime. When Mendelssohn started his Bach revival in the 1820s (Bach's music was almost never heard from his death until then), everyone was telling him that Bach's trumpet parts couldn't be played. Now I don't get that logic -- it's as if they were saying that Bach's music was some kind of legend. Anyway, because of this, Mendelssohn had to assign Bach's trumpet parts to other instruments. You can still find his edition of the Third Orchestral Suite, which assigns the high melodic trumpet parts to (reportedly metal) C clarinets. There were also recordings of the 2nd Brandenburg on clarinet in the twentieth century before trumpeters could play it.

The idea that trumpeters could play other Bach pieces like the Magnificat grew slowly throughout the nineteenth century. It was ultimately the creation of the shorter "Bach trumpet" around the 1870s that allowed this. The very first of these "Bach trumpets" was actually in A, *lower* than the modern B-flat but higher than other contemporary instruments. Higher instruments in D and up were invented shortly afterwards by people like Mahillion, and became common enough in the early 1900s that Stravinsky and Ravel wrote parts for them.

One of the first modern trumpet players to master the 2nd Brandenburg was Adolf Scherbaum, who helped to develop the modern high B-flat piccolo trumpet. You can read a little about him here: http://www.asamnet.de/~bayerj/scherbe/career.htm

By the way, the period instrument conductor (and former trumpet player) Philip Pickett suggests that the 2nd Brandenburg was actually written for a trumpet that "would have been pitched in D at high church-pitch, while the rest of the instruments played at low French chamber-pitch - a minor third apart!" So there would not have been an actual trumpet in F -- just something that amounted to one because of the differences in intonation systems, which would explain why it was so rare. This fits in with his particular programmatic interpretation of these concerti, which you can read here: http://www.recorderhomepage.net/brandenburgs.html

Now we actually are playing Baroque music too high today: A=440 is a 20th century standardization. Back in the 18th century, they were playing anywhere from A=415 to A=390 and even lower. A=390 will take the sounding pitch down a step -- and make life a lot easier for the trumpet soloist.

[Peter Bond]

[quote="brassbow"].....The Aida trumpet was called the BACH trumpet and was made shorter then a natarul trumpet to play high....

The original 'Aida' trumpets were straight natural trumpets built especially for Act II scene 2 of Verdi's "Aida." They were in A and Ab, both with a single descending whole-step valve, which was largely concealed by the player's hand (maintaining the illusion of natural instruments). Verdi apparently wanted natural trumpets, but the valve was necessary to execute the "Triumphal March".
In the opera, three players (more or less) on stage sound the theme in Ab, then three others (also on stage) play it in A. BTW, additional trumpeters backstage with conventional instruments play the other stage music in this scene that could not be played on these specialized trumpets.
Nowadays, three-valve trumpets in Bb (and sometimes also in B natural) in a long 'herald' configuration are used in most Aida productions (and other cerimonial situations), and are commonly called 'Aida' trumpets.
In the current Met production, 10 or 11 players are used in this scene; two in the pit, 6 on stage (3-valve herald trpts in Bb and B), and 2 or 3 backstage.

The 19th century 'Bach' trumpet (originally a long, valved trpt in D, if a am not mistaken), was created at the time of the revival of Bach's choral works, and is a different animal entirely, whose development was unrelated. BTW, this 'Bach' trumpet was not created to play the 2nd Brandenburg concerto, but the masses and oratorios.
You can learn more about this in books by Tarr and Smithers, among others.
PB

[trpt.hick]

The key of D theory doesn't hold water. The score is clearly in F major. True, however, the old pitch was much lower than today . . . about a half-step. "Choir" pitch was all over the place because organs were tuned at all sorts of standards during the Baroque, but there is no organ in this piece.

[trpt.hick]

F trumpets were very common during the Baroque. They were the standard military instruments. The methods of Bendinelli (1618) and Fantini (1638) provide the natural harmonic series pitches in the F clef.

Orchestral music was most commonly scored in D or C because these are good keys for strings.

[7cw]

..

[trpt.hick]

This still seems like a very unplausible scenerio. "Church," or "choir" pitch are linked to the tuning of old organs. Why would this effect an orchestra not playing the piece with organ?

[7cw]

..

[Cornetto]

[Cornetto]

[_TrumpeT_]

[trumpetart]

[Cornetto]

[Biber]

[trpt.hick]

Yes, today called the tenor clef. The "c" lies on the fourth line of the tenor clef in Bendinelli's and Fantini's table of harmonics for the natural trumpet. Thus, the trumpet they refer to was obviously in F.

Ed Tarr states the same thing.

[LeeC]

Isn't there a hole on the last curve of the baroque trumpet? Something that you keep plugged up save and except for the Concert high b (C# equivalent on the B flat trumpet)?

Opening up the hole which is located at or near a specific nodal axis lowers the pitch enough to make the C# closer in tune. So I'm told.

I've tried this while blowing the B Flat on just the 1st and 3rd valves by opening the water key but the positioning isn't exact enough to lower the pitch.

Something tells me that the High (concert) B Flat is a real biatch to play with the natural trumpet or B flat in the 1st & 3rd valve position...

[Nonsense Eliminator]

LeeC --

Adding vent holes to natural trumpets is generally believed to be a modern innovation. Of course, it's impossible to say that nobody was doing this, but enough instruments have survived to be able to make the statement that this was certainly not a widespread practice. It's worth remembering that at the time, all the tubing in the instruments was handmade, so it was full of irregularities. This, coupled with the (generally) larger throats and wider rims of the mouthpieces of the day, made it easier to bend pitches in tune. Of course, if you had no choice but to lip them, and nothing else to practice, you'd probably get pretty good at it. Nonetheless, there are some contemporary accounts of audiences wincing every time the trumpeter played the 11th partial.
_________________
Richard Sandals
NBO

[Biber]

[trpt.hick]

Biber:

1. Purchase or find the books (facsimilies published by Steve Glover's The Brass Press) by Bendinelli and Fantini.

2. Read Tarr's translations and commentaries (also published by The Brass Press).

3. Look at the full pages titled, "Table of Harmonics" in each of them.

4. Learn something.

These books are listed in the bibliography of my Trumpet Pedagogy book. I use them in a course I have taught for 33 years called "Trumpet Repertoire," which is required of all performance majors at ASU. We go through each page of these books.

Steve Glover donated all of his historical items to Summit Brass. I keep these in my office at ASU. They include over 300 original manuscripts (microfilms and photos now converted to CD-R) of Baroque, Rococo, and Classical trumpet works. We look at many of these in the class as well. These include Fantini's 8 sonatas for trumpoet and organ.

Tarr also wrote articles on Bendinelli and Fantini. They even show photographs of him holding Bendinelli's pretzel-shaped trumpet (in F) made by Anton Schnitzer.

Here are some sources you can look for that discuss the Baroque trumpet in F:

Bendinelli, Cesare (Forward by Edward H. Tarr). Tutti l'arte della trombetta, 1614. Kassel, Germany: Barenreiter, 1975 (facsimile edition).

_________ (English trans. by Edward H. Tarr). Tutti l'arte della trombetta, 1614. Nashville: The Brass Press, 1975 (text only).

Fantini, Girolamo (English trans. by Edward H. Tarr). Modo per Imparare a Sonare di Tromba (1638). Nashville: The Brass Press, 1978 (facsilime edition).

Tarr, Edward. The Trumpet. Portland, OR: Amadeus Press, 1988.

Tarr's articles are in the Brass Bulletin magazines. I don't have them handy to list right now because I am at home. They were written in the mid-1970s. One of them has Bendinelli's trumpet on the cover.

Your friend,

Dave

[eb1ch]

haha at all the "do it yourself" home musicologists in this thread. Mr. Tarr knows what he is talking about, and Mr. Hickman and others like him have studied Mr. Tarr's work and nearly everything else there is to study extremely diligently. There is no conspiracy to take unsuspecting players and give them brain aneurysms because they are needlessly playing a piece of music an octave too high. this just goes with the territory when you decide to play the hardest instrument that there is.