Fanfares and Finesse , livre ebook

Fanfares and Finesse
ELISA KOEHLER
Fanfares and Finesse
A Performer s Guide to Trumpet History and Literature
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS
Bloomington and Indianapolis
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press Office of Scholarly Publishing Herman B Wells Library 350 1320 East 10th Street Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
Telephone orders 800-842-6796 Fax orders 812-855-7931
2014 by Elisa Koehler All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Cataloging information is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-0-253-01179-4 (cloth) ISBN 978-0-253-01185-5 (ebook)
1 2 3 4 5 19 18 17 16 15 14
To my first trumpet teacher, John (Jack) Garner, U.S. Army Band, U.S. Army Blues, Retired
Contents
List of Illustrations
Author s Note
Acknowledgments
1. Fanfares and Finesse: An Introduction
2. The Natural Trumpet
3. The Modern Baroque Trumpet with Vent Holes
4. The Cornetto
5. The Slide Trumpet
6. The Quest for Chromaticism: Hand-Stopping, Keys, and Valves
7. Bugles, Fl gels, and Horns
8. The Cornet
9. Changing of the Guard: Trumpets in Transition
10. Smaller Trumpets
11. Pitch, Temperament, and Transposition
12. Early Repertoire and Performance Practice
13. Baroque Repertoire
14. Classical Repertoire
15. Signals, Calls, and Fanfares
16. Strike Up the Band
17. The Modern Orchestral Trumpet
18. Jazz and the Trumpet
19. Solo Repertoire after 1900
20. Brass Chamber Music
21. Trumpeting in the Twenty-First Century
Appendix A: Important Musicians
Appendix B: Significant Events in Trumpet History
Appendix C: Museums with Instrument Collections
Appendix D: Selected Recordings: An Annotated List
Appendix E: Period Instrument Resources
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Illustrations
Figures
Figure 1.1. Representative early brass instruments: natural trumpets, cornet, and cornetto
Figure 1.2. Modern trumpets in B-flat, C, E-flat, and piccolo trumpet in A
Figure 2.1. Bach B-flat trumpet
Figure 2.2. Natural trumpets from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
Figure 2.3. Bach C trumpet and natural trumpet by Frank Tomes pitched in C
Figure 2.4. Parts of a natural trumpet
Figure 2.5. Comparison of Baroque and modern mouthpieces
Figure 3.1. Long- and short-model Baroque trumpets with vent holes
Figure 3.2. Playing position for long- and short-model Baroque trumpets with vent holes
Figure 3.3. Tomes Baroque trumpet (four-hole system) and accessories
Figure 3.4. Egger Baroque trumpet (three-hole system) and accessories
Figure 4.1. Cornetts pitched at A4 = 440 Hz and A4 = 466 Hz
Figure 4.2. Comparison of different cornett mouthpieces
Figure 4.3. Kiri Tollaksen demonstrating effective cornett hand position
Figure 4.4. Cornett fingering chart key for example 4.1
Figure 5.1. Reproduction of a Renaissance slide trumpet by Henry Meredith
Figure 5.2. Stanley Curtis demonstrating the traditional playing position of a Baroque slide trumpet
Figure 5.3. Reproduction of a corno da tirarsi by Rainer Egger
Figure 5.4. Crispian Steele-Perkins performing on an English slide trumpet
Figure 6.1. Late eighteenth-century trumpet demi-lune by Richard Seraphinoff
Figure 6.2. Reproduction of a keyed trumpet by Richard Seraphinoff
Figure 6.3. A P rinet piston valve and intervalve tubing
Figure 6.4. Demonstration of a P rinet piston valve
Figure 6.5. Three different rotary-valve instruments
Figure 7.1. A shofar
Figure 7.2. French copper bugle ( clarion ) from the mid-nineteenth century
Figure 7.3. Ralph Dudgeon performing on a keyed bugle pitched in B-flat
Figure 7.4. A F rst Pless posthorn in B-flat
Figure 7.5. A flugelhorn with four valves made by Getzen
Figure 7.6. Michael Tunnell playing a modern piccolo horn ( corno da caccia )
Figure 8.1. A classic Victorian-era cornet in B-flat by William Seefeldt
Figure 8.2. An E-flat cornet with rotary valves made by Hall and Quinby
Figure 8.3. Echo bell cornet by Henry Distin
Figure 8.4. Two views of a pocket cornet by Besson
Figure 8.5. Two Conn cornets demonstrating a more trumpetlike design
Figure 8.6. Soprano brass instruments from the Henry Meredith Collection
Figure 8.7. Comparison of mouthpieces for trumpet, flugelhorn, and cornet
Figure 9.1. John Miller demonstrating the playing position for the long F trumpet
Figure 9.2. A view of the back of the long F trumpet in figure 9.1
Figure 10.1. Cover of Roger Voisin s first solo album
Figure 10.2. Piccolo trumpets by Kanstul and Getzen
Figure 10.3. Nineteenth-century cornets in B-flat and E-flat
Figure 10.4. Schilke trumpet in E-flat and Yamaha trumpet in F
Figure 10.5. Schilke E-flat trumpet with detachable D bell and valve slides
Figure 10.6. Kanstul piccolo trumpet in A with detachable bells and slides for G and B-flat
Figure 15.1. Jari Villanueva playing a bugle from the American Civil War
Figure 16.1. The Elmira Cornet Band (1861)
Figure 16.2. Creatore s Italian Band (ca. 1903)
Figure 17.1. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra (1907)
Figure 17.2. Straight mutes
Figure 18.1. A collection of mutes inspired by jazz playing
Figure 20.1. Album cover for The Antiphonal Music of Gabrieli
Figure 21.1. Trumpet family portrait
Tables
Table 6.1. Major developments in valve systems
Table 8.1. Major developments in cornet design
Table 8.2. Descriptions of soprano brass instruments shown in figure 8.6
Table 11.1. Historic pitch standards
Table 11.2. Transposition table for B-flat and C trumpets
Table 13.1. Cantatas by J. S. Bach that include trumpet parts
Table 13.2. Bach cantata movements that feature music later incorporated into the B Minor Mass
Table 16.1. Comparison of instrumentation between the Gilmore Band and the Sousa Band
Table 17.1. Top fifteen orchestra excerpts for trumpet requested by North American orchestras
Table 19.1. Selection of significant solo works written for the trumpet after 1850
Author s Note
When I was an undergraduate trumpet student at the Peabody Conservatory in the 1980s, modern brass playing was in the midst of an exciting evolution. Wynton Marsalis and H kan Hardenberger were just beginning their solo careers, and every trumpeter in school wanted to play in a quintet like the Canadian Brass. Although jazz studies weren t offered at that time, the versatile trumpeters who could improvise always seemed to have an edge over the classical specialists. New recordings and repertoire seemed to be released every week, and of course, we all wanted to master the piccolo trumpet like Maurice Andr and rule the orchestra like Adolf Herseth.
At the same time, my teacher, Wayne Cameron, would tell inspirational tales during lessons about the heroic trumpeters of the Baroque era playing impossibly difficult natural trumpets as well as the great cornet soloists of the nineteenth century and their phenomenal virtuosity. He was always emphasizing the music and its history, always thinking outside the box. Studying orchestral excerpts was like peering out through the bars of a cage at the grand panorama of symphonic music beyond the trumpet s limited repertoire.
But I had so many questions! What did the big F trumpet from the late nineteenth century really sound like? Why did everyone perform the cornet part for Stravinsky s L histoire du soldat on a C trumpet, and should they? Why did Brahms write such conservative trumpet parts while his Russian contemporary Tchaikovsky was raising the roof? And what on earth was Trompete in H anyway? Who was Victor Ewald, and why didn t any major composers write brass quintets? Did Igor Stravinsky ever hear Louis Armstrong perform live? Like the forlorn trumpet solo in Ives s Unanswered Question, I couldn t find any easy answers at the time.
Trumpet history was outside the mainstream in the early 1980s, but there were whispers of brave musicians who were beginning to play the old instruments again and study historic performance practice, like Don Smithers, Edward Tarr, Christopher Monk, and Crispian Steele-Perkins. Tarr s landmark history of the trumpet had just been published in English translation, and more articles concerning historic subjects were published in the International Trumpet Guild Journal and the Brass Bulletin . Professional recordings of period instruments began to appear while David Monette was simultaneously breaking new technological ground in modern trumpet design. With the founding of the Historic Brass Society in 1988 and the development of the internet a few years later, access to resources concerning period instruments, and better yet, the instruments themselves, increased. The tide was beginning to turn.
Now, as I write this, the availability of information about trumpet history and repertoire has never been better. The Cambridge Guide to Brass Instruments appeared in 1997; Crispian Steele-Perkins published his book, Trumpet, in 2001; and Edward Tarr s essential history, The Trumpet, appeared in its third edition in 2008. John Wallace and Alexander McGrattan released their detailed history (also titled The Trumpet ) in 2012, and Sabine Klaus published the first book in her important five-volume series, Trumpets and Other High Brass, the same year. Add to that Gabriele Cassone s The Trumpet Book (2009), along with numerous articles in the Historic Brass Society Journal, the International Trumpet Gui