Chromatic Trumpets in the RenaissanceAuthor(s): Curt SachsSource: The Musical Quarterly, Vol. 36, No. 1 (Jan., 1950), pp. 62-66Published by: Oxford University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/739752Accessed: 26-11-2016 04:52 UTC

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted

digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about

JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at

http://about.jstor.org/terms

Oxford University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to TheMusical Quarterly

This content downloaded from 188.118.81.43 on Sat, 26 Nov 2016 04:52:59 UTCAll use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

IranTrumpet

CHROMATIC TRUMPETS IN THE

RENAISSANCE

By CURT SACHS

IT HAS been taken for granted that trumpets in times before the introduction of valves in the 19th century were generally

"natural" instruments with only the few skeletal "overblown" tones that we know today from bugle calls. Practically all the trumpets preserved in museums prove this assumption to be true, although hardly any of them goes back beyond 16oo; and their testimony is corroborated in all centuries by paintings with fanfare-blowing trumpeters in battle or courtly pomp, the trumpets boastfully raised and an arm stretched out to support them with one hand where the balance is kept best.

Nevertheless many, if not most, trumpets on the paintings and reliefs of the 15th and early 16th centuries are different. They are not held bell-up with a single hand; they rather point down and are curiously supported by two hands, one close to the mouth and one at the first U-turn. We find them depicted almost regularly at courtly dances and banquets in trios of one trumpet and two shawms of different length.

The trio itself is in keeping with the usual three-part polyphony of the time (even after 1500). It is also in keeping with some of the few instrumental pieces written down in the 1 3th century, such as In seculum viellatoris (cod. Bamberg)' and the coda of the dance in the Bodleian Library.2 In the five measures of this latter piece, the participation of a trumpet would not raise any question: the cantus repeats the one note f' again and again in true trumpet fashion, while two larger shawms might accompany below. But in all other cases that we know of, a few fanfare-like overblown notes

would not suffice, even if we surmise the polyphonic technique of an improvised English discant in parallel thirds and sixths above

1 Archiv fiir Musikwissenschaft, I (1918), 21 (Johannes Wolf).

2 ibid., 23.

62

This content downloaded from 188.118.81.43 on Sat, 26 Nov 2016 04:52:59 UTCAll use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

IranTrumpet

Chromatic Trumpets in the Renaissance 63

the melody: an F trumpet (the obviously usual variety) becomes dia- tonic only from f" on, that is, from above the customary range of the highest polyphonic part.

The collaboration of a trumpet in part-music of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance is certain, yet its inability to play a normal melodic voice part is equally certain. How can this puzzle be solved?

Bach and his older contemporaries had a similar problem when- ever they wished to give more force and luster to the soprano part of a chorale. As a satisfactory expedient they availed themselves of a tromba da tirarsi or "slide trumpet", which was an ordinary folded trumpet with an extraordinary mouthpiece: the latter's "throat" (the part entering the tube of the instrument) was long enough to serve as a trombone-like, telescopic slide. While one hand pressed the mouthpiece firmly against the lips, the other hand moved the trumpet to and fro, so that the bared part of the throat added to the total length and therewith lowered the series of available notes by one or more semitones. Only a single specimen survived in the Instrumental Museum of Berlin and it probably perished in a bombing raid with the bulk of the museum's treasures: a slide trumpet dated 1651 from the Stadtpfeifer of Naumburg, Saxony.3 Its normal tuning was E-flat (alto) according to modern pitch; the slide could be pulled out to the fourth position (as trombonists would say); that is, the trumpet could be instantaneously trans- formed into a D, D-flat, or C instrument (a manipulation that corresponds to what a modern trumpeter does with each of his three valves). Thus any melody in the upper range of the trumpet was easily obtainable.

Were there similar devices in older times? The present writer has felt certain in these last thirty years that there were. As early as 192o, in the first edition of his Handbuch der Musikinstrument- enkunde4 and later in his History of Musical Instruments,5 he referred to a Venetian quattrocento painting in the Kaiser Friedrich

3 Curt Sachs, Sammlung alter Musikinstrumente bei der Staatlichen Hochschule fiir Musik zu Berlin. Beschreibender Katalog, Berlin, 1922, p. 225 and pl. 24; Curt

Sachs, Bachs Tromba da tirarsi, in Bach-Jahrbuch, V (1908), 141-43. 4 Leipzig, 920o.

5 New York, i940.

This content downloaded from 188.118.81.43 on Sat, 26 Nov 2016 04:52:59 UTCAll use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

IranTrumpet

64 The Musical Quarterly

Museum in Berlin, a crowded Adoration of the Magi by Antonio Vivarini and Giovanni d'Allemagna.6 Two of the trumpeters in the retinue of the Kings, waiting for their turn to play, shoulder their instrument bell-up with one hand and with the other hold the mouthpiece lest it should slip out. These mouthpieces, appar- ently the only ones ever shown unconcealed, have throats about as long as those of the Naumburg slide trumpet, and since so long a throat is useless for any other purpose, it must have served as a slide, too.

Although this painting proves the existence of slide trumpets in the 15th century, it does not show what we would like to see: two different sliding positions in playing an instrument (which indeed cannot be represented on the same painting) or at least in playing two otherwise identical trumpets in a set. I can now offer a documentary illustration of such different positions in the beauti- ful woodcarvings at St. Wolfgang on Lake Aber in Upper Austria by the great Tyrolese master Michael Pacher (c. 1435-98).7 The triptych was commissioned on December 13, 1471, and finished in 1481. Above its central scene, the Coronation of the Virgin, two angels, facing one another and obviously meant to form a pair, play trumpets of identical shape and size, folded in narrowest S-form like the modern ones. But the way they are handled is by no means modern: the two hands are not held together to form a safe support by keeping the instrument in the right direction and by pressing it towards the lips. On the contrary: one hand, close to the lips, supports the mouthpiece with two fingers; the other hand, almost as far down as possible, grasps the first U-turn of the tube, with the palm facing the player. The only convincing explanation of the different handling seems to be that the first hand, way up, presses the mouthpiece so firmly against the lips that no movement away from the lips can part it from the mouth; and that the other hand, held with the palm facing the player, must be ready to pull the instrument out and in, that is, to make it slide down and up along the well-greased throat of the mouthpiece. Indeed, the two instruments in Pacher's Coronation, which we called of identical

shape and size, differ in one detail: on the left trumpet the distance

6 Best reproduction in R. van Marle, Italian Schools of Painting, Vol. XVII, The Hague, 1935.

7Best illustration in Robert Stiassny, Michael Pachers St. Wolfganger Altar, Vienna, 1919, pl. VI.

This content downloaded from 188.118.81.43 on Sat, 26 Nov 2016 04:52:59 UTCAll use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

IranTrumpet

Photo Catherine Brooks

Angels with Trumpets, from Michael Pacher's Coronation of the Virgin (see p. 64)

This content downloaded from 188.118.81.43 on Sat, 26 Nov 2016 04:52:59 UTCAll use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

IranTrumpet

Chromatic Trumpets in the Renaissance 65

from the mouthpiece to the second (upper) U-turn is approximately as long as from hair to chin on the angel's face (which amounts to c. 9 inches with adults); the right trumpet has no such distance except for the negligible length of the mouthpiece itself. In other words, the right trumpet is being played "in first position" without using the slide, while the left trumpet is being pulled out. (See the illustration opposite this page.)

The absolute measurements of the two instruments are uncertain

since we do not know whether the angels are meant to be children or adults. But relative measuring yields the essential fact that the pulled-out and the original tube are in the ratio 9:8. In other words, they play in what trombonists would call third and first position. Stretching the arm to reach the fifth position (major third) would be hardly possible; but the fourth position (minor third) might be obtainable, just as in the case of the Naumburg trumpet. This would result in the natural overblown tones of, say, F for the first position, and in those of E, E-flat, D for the second, third, and fourth positions:

3 Z A 4 5 64 L

I I ITI if if I I I

The scale is uninterruptedly chromatic from the fourth open tone on and has only the insignificant gap of one semitone between the third and fourth open tones, which a skilful player can easily bridge by an adequate pressure of his lips. The evidence of Pacher's altar reaches far beyond the two trumpets that its angels blow. The typical handling-one hand against the lips and the other hand far down to pull the trumpet to and fro (which makes sense only with a sliding technique) ap- pears indeed on most trumpets depicted in the 15th and early 16th centuries. Well-known examples are Israel van Meckenem's Court Dance," Memling's Concert of Angels for the church of Najera (Museum of Antwerp), with three trumpets, two folded, one straight,9 M. Zasinger's Decapitation of St. John the Baptist,'o

8 Reproduced in the present writer's World History of the Dance, New York, 1937, pl. 21.

9 The History of Musical Instruments, New York, 1940, pl. XVIII.

o10 Our Musical Heritage, New York, 1946, pl. VII.

This content downloaded from 188.118.81.43 on Sat, 26 Nov 2016 04:52:59 UTCAll use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

IranTrumpet

66 The Musical Quarterly

and Heinrich Aldegrever's Wedding Dancers." Numerous other examples could be added.

If we must conclude that the time around 1500 made frequent use of slide trumpets, the clumsy doggerel verses in which Martin Agricola's Musica instrumentalis deudsch described the brasses in 1528 might have a hitherto unsuspected meaning:

Etliche aber haben der 16cher keyns Nur allein oben vnd vnden eyns Auff diesen wird die melodey / allein Durchs blasen vnd ziehen gefiiret rein Als sein Busaun / Trumeten vnd Claret'l

which might be Englished as:

Some have no holes at all, I trow, Save one on top and one below: Claretas, trumpets, and trombones By breath and sliding yield their tones

Obviously, Agricola does not confine the sliding motion (ziehen and fiihren) to trombones; the words seem also to refer to the trumpets that he calls trumeten and claret.

The trombone, which, in its modern form with one U-turn

reaching behind the player's ear, appeared in the 15th century, is thus not a new invention but only a logical development of the slide trumpet. Larger trumpets, designed to play in tenor or bass range, could not avail themselves of a sliding mouthpiece: the throat would necessarily be much longer-even twice as long-and there- fore beyond the reach of the arm.

Since the sliding U-turn was from all viewpoints infinitely superior to the sliding mouthpiece, the alto trombone displaced the slide trumpet almost entirely. Even Michael Praetorius's compre- hensive Syntagma Musicum of 1618-2o no longer mentions the old device.

Thus the historians of music should familiarize themselves with

the fact that in the times of the Burgundians and the Netherlanders musicians availed themselves of trumpets in the rendition of poly- phonic music; and modern performers should feel free to use their regular valve trumpets when interpreting that music.

11 ibid., pl. XV.

12 Robert Eitner's reprint, Leipzig, 1896, pp. 31, 176. Diesem instead of diesen in the third line is obviously a misprint. The claret is mentioned and illustrated by Virdung and Agricola but not described in detail.

This content downloaded from 188.118.81.43 on Sat, 26 Nov 2016 04:52:59 UTCAll use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

IranTrumpet