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"The Baroque Trumpet Revival”

Michael Malloy

October 1978

In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Bachelor of Music History and Literature.

The Ohio State University Advisor: Martha Maas, PhD

Introduction

In the course of the revival of baroque trumpet music, there have been fundamentally two streams – one which advocates the rich tone and gentle quality of the old seven foot natural trumpet, and another which places emphasis upon technique, and upon making the music playable on modern instruments without drastic re-training of the musicians at hand. The reasons for the revival of the natural trumpet will be discussed in this paper, along with various approaches to problems of range, accuracy, and timbre.

Baroque trumpet technique as we know it today is a rediscovered art. It would have remained a lost at if generations of musicians from Mendelssohn to Edward Tarr had not held the music of the baroque in high regard. Trumpeters at the time of the “great Bach revival” spearheaded by Mendelssohn were not prepared for the high tessitura of baroque trumpet parts. Trumpet players and makers of trumpets were thus presented with the first important challenge from their ancestors: play the high notes. Late in the nineteenth century the German Julius Kosleck led the way in performances of the difficult trumpet parts of Bach’s B minor mass by using makeshift instruments. 1. Philip Bate, The Trumpet and Trombone London/New York: Ernest Benn Ltd/W.W. Norton & Co. Inc. 1972 176 – 178. Changing attitudes about tone color and balance led some to copies of natural trumpets, modified by the addition of valves for added stability. The desire to perform the music as it was conceived led others to museum instruments and exact copies.

Before original instruments and copies were used widely, the school of high-pitched valved trumpets of the mid-twentieth century, Roger Voisin, Maurice Andre, and Adolf Scherbaum, popularized baroque trumpet music by means of the long-playing phonograph, and music not heard for hundreds of years was made available for an eager audience. The importance of the phonograph must not be overlooked: because of the recording of difficult and therefore rarely-performed music, generations of young trumpet students received inspiration that was not available to their teachers. Although note-perfect performances are spliced together by record producers from several “takes” by the greatest of performers, the audio documentation has been provided to the student to admire, imitate, and better. Fifteen years ago [1963], the suggestion of a performance of Bach’s second Brandenburg Concerto using a natural trumpet would have been universally received with laughter. Currently [1978], there are at least three recordings of it that use a natural trumpet, as well as many excellent valved-trumpet recordings.

Since many different types of trumpets are discussed in the paper, the following chart has been provided to illustrate the appearance of each instrument, giving the approximate date of introduction and the name of the maker and/or user.

Buisine – Image from Trumpet and the Trombone by Philip Bate. This instrument, from the Boston Museum, has been identified as a fake but the shape is essentially correct for illustration.

A straight trumpet with two valves added, possibly the shape used by Kosleck.

Jaegertrompette – a highly controversial instrument since the only surviving original was destroyed by allied bombing in Dresden during WWII: A very rare instrument by any account.

Modern trumpet in high B flat made by Couesnon, Paris.

A replica made by Matthew Parker of a typical 17th century natural trumpet in D.

The great Bach revival of the nineteenth century did more than rekindle appreciation of baroque music. It forced contemporary musicians to perform music in a style not immediately accessible to them. The high tessitura and florid passages of trumpet parts were a great problem for orchestral players accustomed to the simple triadic formulas of classical and early romantic-era composers. Trumpet players had long ceased to be trained to play in the fourth octave of the seven foot trumpet where diatonic formulas are playable without valves. Among the reasons for this were the subordination of the trumpet parts within the orchestra and the development of classical style fifty to seventy-five years earlier.

The revival of baroque music during the nineteenth century took place mostly in Germany, though there were of course many other important centers of baroque trumpet playing. The German composers were the first to be rediscovered, and mostly by Germans themselves.

Performers and Institutions at the end of the Eighteenth Century.

The most detailed contemporary report of the socio-economic support of trumpeters at the end of the eighteenth century in Germany comes from the pen of Johann Ernst Altenburg, one of the last of the knightly order of trumpet players.

There were two orders of trumpet players in Germany. One order was that of the municipal Stadtpfeifers, commoners who had to obtain Imperial permission to play the trumpet because of the privileged position of the second order, the powerful knightly (Royal) “Kameradschaft,” which was divided into field trumpeters and court (or chamber) trumpeters. These players were part of a complicated social order in the final stages of decay at the time of Altenburg’s writing. Briefly, according to Altenburg, the novice was apprenticed to a master for at least four years. He could serve as a court trumpeter, if a position was available, where he would play mostly table music, but also at jousting tournaments and for the drinking of toasts. 2 [Johann Ernst Altenburg, Trumpeter’s and Kettledrummer’s Art, translated by Edward Tarr (Nashville: The Brass Press 1974) 30.] But before he could call himself a field trumpeter, and therefore have the advantage of taking on an apprentice, he had to serve in a military campaign.3 [Altenburg 31]

Altenburg’s chief theme throughout his 1795 treatise was a persistent dedication to maintaining the position of the knightly trumpeter through rigid enforcement of all guild rules and imperial privileges. He quoted many legal codes where were established over a long period of time, often repeating the same laws. (There were occasional legal exceptions to the rules dating from at least as early as 1426 when the free Imperial city of Augsburg obtained imperial privileges for its municipal trumpeters from the Emperor Sigismund.4) [Altenburg 30.]

Altenburg also documented the end of guild trumpet playing from a military point of view. His attention to recruitment restrictions, training requirements, and the resulting supply of trumpet players should indicate to readers that, at least in Altenburg’s opinions, there were great deficiencies in these areas. Due to social and political change, employment for new players was not likely:

“Some armies do not have any trumpeter at all I daresay; or else he has to attend to the kettledrummer’s duties as well. Positions for a trumpeter at court are nowadays a privilege of only the very few - partially because there are not so many courts at all today as there used to be…”5 [Altenburg 52.]

Primarily supported by the military, the knightly trumpeters were among the first to be unemployed as royal courts declined in number

Chapter six of Altenburg’s treatise is titled “On the Decline and Misuse of the Art.” He spoke of ignorance and misuse, another often repeated theme in his treatise:

“Ignorance about music, on the part of listeners as well as of musicians themselves, has also contributed to this decline… It is furthermore a certainty, that when a trade has once started to decline, it is generally taken up by less gifted people.”6 [Altenburg 47.]

The second order of trumpet players, the municipal musicians, in Germany called the Stadtpfeifers, were not without long-standing high standards. Their membership was also closely controlled through long apprenticeships and difficult entrance examinations. Stadtpfeifers, unlike the knightly trumpeters, were expected to be competent players of the violin, oboe, transverse flute, trumpet, horn and other winds. The three most important of these according to Charles Sanford Terry, were trumpet, horn, and oboe.7 [Charles Sanford Terry, Bach’s Orchestra (London: Oxford University Press 1932) 17.] Stadtpfeifers were occasionally granted permission to play trumpets either in general or for special civil and ecclesiastical ceremonies. The great trumpet players who played most of the high florid parts written by J.S. Bach, such as Gottfried Reiche, were members of the municipal musicians’ guilds. The difficult “Abblasen” held in the had of Gottfried Reiche in the portrait by Elias Haussman is of the kind played at 10:00 A.M. and 6:00 P.M. from the “Rathaus” tower at the Marktplatz in Leipzig as part of the fire watch duties of municipal trumpeters.8 [Terry 21. The Abblasen was a fire tower watch trumpeter’s fanfare.8a Reiche’s portrait appears as the cover illustration on an album [LP] by Don Smithers entitled “Bach’s Trumpet.” In that portrait Recihe is shown holding a coiled natural trumpet. Philips 6500 925.]

8a:

Reiche is especially important, both as an excellent player and as one for whom Bach surely wrote many of his most challenging trumpet parts. Reiche was a “Kunstgeiger” (a lower paid member of the guild, who usually played only stringed instruments) from 1700 to 1706 at Leipzig, and a Stadtpfeifer from 1706 until his death in 1734.9 [Terry 14] His artistry was appreciated during his apprenticeship in an unusual way. In 1694 when Elector Johann Georg IV died and a full year of official mourning, when meant no music making, was ordered, Reiche above all others was paid a substantial sum to remain in Liepzig.10 [Don Smithers, The Music and History of the Baroque Trumpet before 1721 (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press 1973) 53.]

Neither knightly nor municipal guilds were able to continue a style of music once it had lost its vogue. The institutions may have continued but the music tastes and styles eventually no longer required well-trained trumpeters capable of playing in the clarion register.11 [In some ways the institutions have continued to the twentieth century, including military bands and a few city bands. The longest standing trumpet fire tower watch has been retained in the Polish city of Krakow. From the highest point in the medieval city (the north tower of the church of St. Mary the Virgin), the “Hejnal” has been played to the four compass points on the hour, twenty-four hours a day, three hundred sixty-five days a year since 1421 (except during the Napoleonic era) with the melody abruptly ending at the point at which the trumpeter warning the city of the invading Tartars was shot in the neck with an arrow. The Krakow fire-trumpeters now use modern Czech B flat valved trumpets to play the “Hejnal.” The noon signals are broadcast “live” over the state radio and television. Smithers 130-131]

Nineteenth and Twentieth-Century Experiments

Without trumpeters trained to play in the clarino register that had been so popular until the mid-eighteenth century, the nineteenth century musicians active in the great Bach revival were faced with a paradox: the music was undeniably sublime and they wanted to play it, but they did not have the means. They tried transposing trumpet parts down an octave, but this was impractical and the result disappointing. Sometimes the parts were distributed among the woodwinds, but the tone color was entirely incorrect and the lack of the commanding sound of brass instruments would have let important passages slip by unnoticed.

With the Bach revival two schools of thought about baroque trumpet music were born. One sought the answer to the high notes and accuracy by mechanical means; the other was to be concerned with the sounds the baroque composers worked with, and the with ways later generations of performers could simulate those sounds. Mendelssohn’s first performance of Bach’s B minor mass took place in 1829, and by 1850 Besson and Co. of London had already produced a valved piccolo trumpet in high F for Bach’s second Brandenburg Concerto. 12 [Sir George Grove, Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 5th ed., edited by Eric Blom (New York: St. Martin’s Press 1962), Vol. vii, 563, plate 74.] Apparently high-pitched valved trumpets began to appear as soon as there was interest in Bach’s music, but it was not until October 19, 1871 that the German cornet `a pistons player, Julius Kosleck, first played a natural trumpet in the key of D for the Musical Artists’ Association of Berlin. Kosleck ws the first nineteenth century player to attempt to use a natural trumpet to play the music of Bach. He experimented with techniques long forgotten, but instead of creating curiosity about his technical and esthetic discoveries, his performance created an extremely heated debate. The critic Otto Lessmann, writing in Neue Berliner Musikzeitung October 25, 1871 said:

“Koslect easily performed parts from our old church music that our modern players are mortally afraid to attempt.”13 [Bate 176.]

This review was translated and appeared in L’Echo Musical in Brussels, and the open debate between Lessman and Victor Mahillon began. Philip Bate says that although Lessman was “neither well informed nor particularly accurate,” close examination of the correspondences leads to the conclusion that Kosleck played a modified medieval buisine.14 [Bate 176.] The debate was especially heated because Lessmann claimed the trumpet, and the lost art of clarino playing, had beed rediscovered. Victor Mahillon was apparently the first sceptic to question to question the authenticity of the instrument used at that time by Kosleck. In an essay which appeared in the spring of 1935, W.F.H. Blandford defended Kosleck:

“It is not necessary to attribute to him any willful deception. He may have been one of the many players who have no special antiquarian knowledge of their instruments, and his primary object was to demonstrate technique and not trumpets.” 15 [ W.F.H. Blandford, “The Bach Trumpet," “The Monthly Musical Record” (March-June 1935), cited in Bate 177.]

In September of 1884 Kosleck played first trumpet for the ceremony at Eisenach for the unveiling of a statue of J.S. Bach. The trumpet that he played on this occasion was publicly acknowledged as of his own design. The trumpet was pitched in A and had two valves, and was apparently very much like the “Buisine” of thirteen years earlier. In 1885 Kosleck played the new valved instrument (with a mouthpiece he guarded closely) at the Albert Hall, London, in the bicentenary performance of Bach’s B minor mass. In 1886 Walter Morrow, distinguished British trumpeter, produced a similar trumpet for the Leeds festival. However, the bore and bell curve of Morrow’s trumpet were more like those of contemporary trumpets than Kosleck’s modified medieval buisine.16 [Bate 176-181] At about the same time (1885), at the Paris Opera, the player Teste used an instrument in high G made by Besson for a performance of Bach’s Magificat.17 [Annthony Bains, Brass Instruments – Their History and Development (London: Farber & Farber 1976) 239.] Mahillon and Co. produced a trumpet in D in 1892, at first with two valves and later with three.18 [The sources used here do not illustrate most of the instruments cited. The author suggests that the French and English high-pitched valved trumpets of the nineteenth century were made with vertical [piston] valves as the Besson 1885 trumpet shown on page three above.* German trumpets may have used rotary valve construction as illustrated on page three above* in the Menke-Alexander Brothers trumpet of 1934. * page three in original manuscript – here see illustrations following “Introduction”]

Mainz made a trumpet in high F for the second Brandenburg Concerto.19 [Baines 239.] This was followed in 1897 by the appearance of a trumpet in high F by Millereau at Paris.20 [Groves 563] another by Mahillon, this time in high Bb, was used in 1905 for the second Brandenburg Concerto at the Brusssels Conservatoire Concerts.21 [Baines 239.]

In 1934 Werner Menke’s History of the Trumpet of Bach and Handel appeared. It was an essay used to introduce two “new” instruments conceived by the author and built by Alexander Brothers Mainz. His instruments were updated versions of Kosleck’s valved trumpets, but this time with a long essay in defense of the inventor. He designed a trumpet in D and one in F, both with tubing the length of the eighteenth-century models and, as in Kosleck’s instruments, two valves were added for stability. Menke’s bell shapes, however, were the “average of about twenty” mid eighteenth century trumpets.22 [Werner Menke, History of the Trumpet of Bach and Handel (London: New Temple Press 1934) 219.] He left mouthpiece design and choice up to the individual. The book reflected Menke’s pre-World-War-Two Germanic pride:

“…it has been established that the Teutonic races have been gifted by nature with special peculiarities fitting them for blowing (trumpets) which have been denied to other peoples.” 23 [Menke 55.]

Changing Attitudes

Menke’s instruments were not used by many players, and his essay was largely ignored until many years later. Before Menke there had been much work with high-pitched valved trumpets, but only Kosleck’s before him had used even a modified trumpet of seven foot length.

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