THE ROMANTIC TRUMPET - Historic Brass Society

TARR 247
straight and had an unspecified number of keys over tone-holes close to the bell. At the bell end,
according to Baines' account (Brass Instruments, 191), was "a bell like a bowl onto which fitted another
bowl which had small holes in it and could somehow be moved to lower the pitch." In the mid 1960s,
I was once offered an instrument very closely fitting this description by the owner of a Paris antique
shop. Straight and made of an alloy resembling pewter, it was about 140 cm long. There were two
keys of slightly different sizes close to the bell opening, and both were enormous; the larger (the one
closer to the bell end) must have been about 4 cm in diameter, the smaller 3. They were operated by
touch-pieces fastened close to the mouthpiece end and connected to them by long rods, and they raised
the pitch by a half step and a whole step, respectively. The bell was shaped normally, not "like a bowl".
At that end, covering the bell, was a sieve-like contraption which could be opened and closed via a
simple string attached to the mouthpiece end. The owner of the shop called the instrument a trompette
d'eglise. Unfortunately, at the time I had no notion of the Amor-Schalk and the instrument looked so
bizarre that I passed it up. (The story of "the one that got away" is not confined to fishermen!)
79. Dahlqvist, "Keyed Trumpet," pp. 4-9, provides full details. A strange instrument off the beaten
track is no. 1063 of the Berlin collection (see Krickeberg and Rauch, Katalog p. 150, also ill.), a
trumpet in G made in the long, once-folded conventional shape in 1817 by J. Bauer of Prague. It has
four keys, three of which are activated by one hand, and one by the other.
80. Dahlqvist, "Keyed Trumpet," pp. 12-13.
81. Ibid., pp. 13-14.
82. Ibid., p. 14. The German term was organisirte Trompete.
83. Ibid., p. 15. In this Eictraconcert, Weidinger (called "Meidinger") performed the following works:
Haydn's Trumpet Concerto; Hummel's Trio; and, together with the singer Mr. Werner, a scene with
obligato trumpet, "Tromba to sei fra tutti gl'instrumenti," by Sussmayr. See Das Gewandhausorchester
Leipzig, 1781- 1881 (Leipzig, 1881), p. 197.
84. Dahlqvist, "Keyed Trumpet," p. 15.
85. Dahlqvist, "Keyed Trumpet," pp. 12, 16.
86. "Die Weidinger'sche Inventionstrompete"; see ibid., pp. 17-18.
87. For details on Khayll, Werner, and works written specifically for them, see ibid., pp. 380-384; and
on the Gambati brothers, p. 20. See also Edward Tarr, The Trumpet (London and Portland, Oregon,
1988), pp. 151, 153; and the amusing and well-documented article by Cynthia Adams Hoover, "A
trumpet battle at Niblo's pleasure garden," The Musical Quarterly 65 (1969): 384-395. The "battle"
was in August 1834 between Alessandro Gambati on the keyed trumpet and John Norton on the slide
trumpet; Norton won.
88. Dahlqvist, Bidrag, 1: 384. The call number of the original set of parts in the Museum of Czech
Music of the Prague Historical Museum is XLIX.D.410. Various parts bear the date of 1831, which
must refer to the date of copying, not composition, and the title page bears the name of one Mathsam,