Baroque era mouthpiece dimensions?

brokebaroque

Long time reader first time poster. I am an avid amateur, mostly I just play for church. I enjoy trying to play baroque era music on my Yamaha picc. I am a bit of a brass history nerd, and have always wanted to try the natural trumpet for which that music was originally written.

Anyways I recently acquired a natural trumpet replica (Hanns Hainlein circa 1632) so am now hunting for a mouthpiece from the same era. Since they are relatively niche the prices are pretty steep so I had the idea to try 3D printing some to "try before I buy". But unlike standard trumpets, for which quite a bit of data is out there (e.g. the Kanstul Comparator), the info on baroque era mouthpieces is pretty sparse.

I was just curious if anyone in the community happened to have some cup/rim/backbore dimensions of historic mouthpieces, or knows where to go looking for them?

loudog · Posted: Mon Dec 19, 2022 1:49 pm Post subject:

I would avoid a 3D printed mouthpiece at all cost. What you likely hope to gain by using a period mouthpiece will be lost with a 3D printed piece.

You should be able to acquire a used mouthpiece for fairly cheap...watch eBay, and the TH Marketplace. I bet you could find an old Tilz, or maybe even a Naumann.

Try calling Barry at The Baroque Trumpet Shop. He may have some used pieces in stock.

Also, check out Perry Sutton's new Baroque Trumpet mouthpieces at Dillon Music, and the Pickett Brass Tromba 1.

BTW, is your Hainlain a trumpet that was built at the Seraphinoff workshop? Another maker? Just curious!

Let me know if I can help at all!

Best,
Louie
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Dr. Louie Eckhardt, trumpeter
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Associate Professor of Music
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DH · Veteran Member Joined: 17 May 2006 Posts: 493

loudog · Posted: Tue Dec 20, 2022 4:34 am Post subject:

Here's Perry's mouthpiece at Dillon.

Yes, I've been using the Pickett Tromba 1 for a while now. I prefer it to the Egger SI-7 and SI-6 I had been using previously. My Norwich seems to work better with a modern shank... I have both historical and modern shanks for this. The piece was designed by Josh Cohen, and he uses it (or a slight variation on it). It's a pretty popular mouthpiece.
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Dr. Louie Eckhardt, trumpeter
http://www.LouieEckhardt.com
Associate Professor of Music
Hastings College

bachstrad72 · Posted: Tue Dec 20, 2022 5:14 am Post subject:

Hi Folks,

Thanks Louie for the link.

Happy to help in any way that I can. BrokeBaroque, if you'd like, feel free to shoot me an email at perry@dillonmusic.com. We can figure out something that would help, regardless of whether it is a product I have a vested interest in or something else entirely.

Perry
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~Perry Sutton~

brokebaroque · Posted: Tue Dec 20, 2022 5:52 am Post subject:

Thanks for the replies and recommendations!

Re 3D printing - I was hoping to find period-appropriate options just to play around/experiment with. While at the end of the day I might very well end up with a more modern geometry (and definitely metallic) to actually play in public, I am really curious about the differences between period-accurate mouthpieces. For example what is a Bull replica like compared to a Haas? And maybe those examples are even too "modern" for a 1632 replica? In other words it is probably more for the sake of being a brass nerd than actual functionality

Re the trumpet - the flare is stamped "Francisco Perez Alicante MMV". Compared to the horns on his current website I would say that its quality is "utilitarian", so maybe it was an early attempt? However just playing around with it on a trumpet mouthpiece I have been bitten by the baroque bug and am excited to try and learn more.

brokebaroque · Posted: Fri Jan 06, 2023 6:04 am Post subject:

Just as an update for any future searchers, after much googling I found the following set of references:

Earliest: circa 1666
Halfpenny, Eric. Early British Trumpet Mouthpieces, The Galpin Society Journal, Vol. 20 (Mar., 1967) https://www.jstor.org/stable/841505

Earliest: circa 1700
Edinburgh University Collection of Historic Musical Instruments
Portfolio of Drawings of Mouthpieces for Brass Instruments
http://www.euchmi.ed.ac.uk/uwrahmw.html

If anybody knows of any earlier mouthpiece dimensions/references please feel free to add!

cjl · Posted: Fri Jan 06, 2023 7:19 am Post subject:

I remember seeing the Francisco Perez natural trumpets when they first appeared. At the beginning he was only offering what looked to me like a copy of the Barclay-Seraphinoff workshop Hainlein model. I thought at the time that must have been where he got his start but that was only my speculation. If he attended the workshop that was certainly a great way to start in the business!

When I took the workshop long ago I had the good fortune of meeting Dave Maller who is also a builder. I was able to get from him a very period appropriate mouthpiece. You can see the mouthpieces he makes at his website, https://www.mallerbrass.com/ Look in the gallery. Below the instruments he shows mouthpieces and the first one looks exactly like what I have. VERY flat rim.

I later bought a Naumann mouthpiece. The one I got is a compromise to better fit with a player who doesn't want to get too far away from his modern mouthpiece.

I am really happy to have the Maller mouthpiece. It changes your whole experience with the older, Hainlein no holes trumpet.

-- Joe

scottfsmith · Posted: Mon Jan 09, 2023 1:26 pm Post subject:

Andy Del · Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2023 10:37 am Post subject:

There is little common ground on baroque period mouthpieces, as different centres developed in different ways. For example, there are original mouthpieces you can see at the Schola Cantorum in Basel which are almost romaine sized, all the way to quite small and shallow.

There are a few almost universal features however. They are:

- flat rim
- sharp angle at the transition from cup to throat
- bowl like cup
- stepped backbore
- larger shank

Do other mpcs which do not have these features work? Of course, but everyone is different…

The bottom line really should be that to get into this side of playing, you also need to pony up for mouthpieces!

Cheers

Andy
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brokebaroque · Posted: Fri Mar 17, 2023 7:05 am Post subject:

Just an update on how things turned out. I think Andy is absolutely right - the variance is quite large! Here are some pictures of the mouthpieces on each end of the spectrum. Both are based on historical data or direct measurement from museum pieces. The larger blue mpc is a 17th century William Bull ("G" from the Halfpenny article) while the smaller white mpc is a circa 1700 Haas from the Edinburgh Collection.

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/njRtJER848MNikqF5xFHdAmUKumTYkNXKLFVgumd482MrPq0hoxxs8Qiq7g_to_ml1o=w2400

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/JO-aZI2N93QiCNh9-su5Q4hSsm8cA3bs8hfw4byAHrh-RwerVguI7N4DJK30CE2ayXc=w2400

As far as my experience goes - the William Bull style is very challenging to play. I am just not used to that type of embouchure, and trying to learn it from scratch would be very challenging, especially for an amateur like myself. It makes it all the more impressive to see artists like Julian Zimmermann master this type of mpc! Playing on the Haas replica, however, I found to be quite easy to adapt to (as I also play horn, it is actually pretty close to the rim size of a horn mpc, though much flatter). Perhaps for this reason, I felt like I could make the replica Hainlein "speak" with much better tone using the Haas mpc. Perhaps this is because the Haas and the Hainlein originated from the same region?

Anyways, now I will use what I learned from the 3D prints (which if you have a friend with a 3D printer, will cost you only a couple of beers for the favor to print them) to inform a good decision on an actual mouthpiece purchase. I will end up going with something that has a more modern rim that will let me switch more easily between trumpets. In the meantime I will probably just use the Egger adapter and a Bach 7DW.

One final thing I have learned from playing the natural trumpet - it has greatly improved my picc endurance and range! The natural trumpet is like training for a race with extra weights. So if nothing else, my trumpet playing has improved thanks to this replica

Thanks to all for your posts and replies on this topic!

teongsfd · Posted: Sun Mar 19, 2023 8:39 am Post subject:

The Hainlein trumpet is considered to be more of a renaissance style trumpet rather than baroque, especially when you look at the shape of the bell. I remember hearing from Graham Nicholson that he could never get this trumpet to work properly, and was suggesting something in the style of a Simon Beale (or the mouthpiece drawing labelled A from the Halfpenny article) mouthpiece in which you have essentially a cup without a backbore going right into a tube.

At the end of this video Julian Zimmermann discusses a little bit about mouthpieces, albeit from a different part of Europe
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCo5KeqIwhc

At the bottom of this page you can see a few models from Nikolai Manttari
https://www.mmhistoricbrass.com/mouthpieces

This style of mouthpiece requires much more lip engagement, and it's a new learning curve.
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