THE ROMANTIC TRUMPET - Historic Brass Society

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built in a once-folded shape. This happened in England around 1800; such instruments
were officially adopted by the army in 1812. In France, a corresponding instrument (clairon)
was introduced to the military in 1822. In Germany, such instruments were called
Signalhorn. All these instruments were usually pitched in B 6 (often C on the Continent). The
twice-folded regulation British bugle with its small bell, familiar today, was not introduced
until 1858. 21
The earliest French method for clairon is the brief Mithode de clairon avec et sans clefs,
published around 1835 by H. Schiltz. No methods for natural flugelhom, by whatever name
it may have been called, seem to survive from Germany. 22
Use of natural trumpets. Whereas the Baroque trumpet, which had generally been
employed in a trio formation, had usually been pitched in E 6 or D (crooking down to C),
toward the end of the eighteenth century the instrument began to be shortened so that
higher keys could be used. The small F trumpet, which had existed much earlier and had
been employed by J.S. Bach in his Second Brandenburg Concerto (1721) and referred to
as clarino piccolo or kurze Trompete in certain works by Johann Samuel Endler (1694-1762)
and Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767), 23 now became more widely used, also crooked
in E, but with a different bore and bell shape. NiccolO Piccinni (1728-1800) wrote for
trumpets in C, D, El', and F in his opera 1phigenie (first performed in Paris on 23 January
1781), and Andre-Ernes t-Modeste Gretry (1741-1813) used the pitches C, E, F, and even
G in his Pierre le Grand (Paris, 1790). 24
In orchestral music of the period around 1800, trumpets are generally employed in
pairs, like the other wind instruments, and primarily to strengthen the sound of the full
orchestra. Prominent parts are only rarely melodic, many finales of Classical symphonies
ending instead with brilliant trumpet fanfares on broken chords. First trumpet parts hardly
go above g" (their basic range starting with g', the lower notes e' and c' occasionally being
used), while second trumpet parts of the entire Classical period are spiced with wide,
treacherous skips and have an average range of g-e". According to what we would like to call
the "octave convention" of the time, an occasional low c in second trumpet parts—for
example, in the minuet of Mozart's "Jupiter" Symphony (1788)—was notated as if it were
to sound an octave lower. 25 The out-of-tune eleventh partial (f') is only seldom employed.
This "new style" of writing for trumpets was praised by E.T.A. Hoffmann, who felt that
melodic parts in the high register were not suitable for the trumpet, 26 but condemned by
Joseph Frohlich, who lamented the loss of the singing style of the first trumpeter in the
clarino register (c"-c'''). His words:
Unfortunately, in recent times the Primarius has been forced to practise the
production of low notes, so that the... Secundarius likewise has to become a
Dughettist. Thereby all the boundaries are effaced; and it is true that one can
find Principalists in the widest sense of the term, but hardly any more [does
one find] trumpeters who play in their assigned registers with that [high