The Art of the Baroque Trumpet Vol. 1 Virtuoso Trumpet Music
Telemann / Molter / Fasch / Leopold Mozart Torelli / Purcell / Handel
Few instruments have changed as much with time as
the trumpet. Before the introduction of valves in the earlier part of the
nineteenth century, only the notes of the harmonic series were available, with
widely separated notes in the lower register and notes closer together in the
higher. The modern valve trumpet can play consecutive notes in the lower
register and is shorter in length than the Baroque trumpet, the descriptive
name now given to trumpets surviving from the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries and modern copies.
The nature of the Baroque trumpet allowed the
playing of melodies with consecutive notes only from c" upwards and made
severer technical demands on a performer. In addition to other problems, the
harmonic series contains higher notes that are slightly out of tune and need
correction. This means that the strength of breath must be carefully controlled.
The differences of technique between the earlier
and modern trumpet mean that it is difficult for one player to have equal
mastery of both. The introduction of finger-holes by Otto Steinkopf in 1960 has
made correction of some notes easier, but the natural trumpet still remains a
demanding instrument. The difficulty of the instrument is the probable reason
that the works here included by Molter and Fasch are now recorded for the first
time on natural trumpet.
The earliest use of the trumpet in concert ensemble
seems to have been at the beginning of the seventeenth century in Germany and then
specifically in church music. About 1630 the Italian player Girolamo Fantini
wrote sonatas for trumpet and for trumpet and basso continuo which he published
in 1638 in his Modo per imparare a sonare di tromba. It was not,
however, until about 1660 that the trumpet made an appearance in polyphonic
instrumental music, probably first in Vienna and a little later in the Moravian town of Kremsier (Kromeric) and in Dresden. In Bologna Maurizio
Cazzati published three sonatas for trumpet, strings and basso continuo in his Opus
35, but regular composition of trumpet sonatas in Bologna began only in 1680.
Most compositions for one or more trumpets were
written at this period in Kremsier and Bologna, where the two most
important composers were Vejvanovsky and Torelli respectively. Giuseppe Torelli
and Tomaso Albinoni began to develop the solo concerto about 1690, a form later
varied and perfected by Vivaldi, but after 1710 relatively few trumpet concerti
were written by Italian composers, suggesting that the trumpet had by then lost
its position as a Solo instrument, several trumpet concerti were written in
Germany, however, until the beginning of the 1760s.
Georg Philipp Telemann, more respected in his day
than Bach, was employed in Harnburg for the greater part of his prolific
career. On his death in 1767 he was succeeded as music director of the five
city churches by his godson Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. His Concerto for
trumpet, hvo violins and basso continuo has the traditional four-movement
form of the Baroque church sonata, a slow movement leading to a fast, followed
by a further slow movement and a fast final movement. In the first movement the
melody is entrusted to the trumpet, with a more equable share of melodic
material in the second and fourth movements. A full manuscript score has been
handed down to posterity by the collector J. S. Endler, who made a complete
copy of it. O. Bill of the Hesse County and University Library suggests that the score would
have been written about 1720, when Endler was active in Leipzig, or at least before
he moved to Darmstadt in 1723. In his own
first autobiography, written in 1718, Telemann says that he w rote several
concerti during his stay at the court of Eisenach, from 1708 to 1712, but
continued writing for Eisenach while he was employed at Frankfurt-am-Main and
during the first ten years of his residence in Harnburg. It might, therefore,
be conjectured that the present concerto was written for Eisenach, as the
stylistically similar Concerto for trumpet, two oboes and basso continuo. The
soloist was almost certainly Nikolaus Schreck, who was ernployed at Eisenach between 1710 and
1716 and after that until his death at Gotha, where he was described as
concert trumpeter. It would seem that Telernann's concerto is the first such composition
in Germany.
Johann Melchior Molter was born at Tiefenort,
near Eisenach, in 1696 and entered
the service of the Margrave of Baden-Durlach in Karlsruhe. The latter sent him
to study in Venice and Rome, appointing him
Kapellmeister on his return in 1722. The disbanding of the orchestra in the
difficult years of the War of the Polish Succession led to Molter's appointment
as Kapellmeister at Eisenach. In 1753 he returned to Karlsruhe, where he
re-established a small orchestra and taught. His compositions include concerti
for several instruments and some fort y of these are preserved, among them five
concerti for two trumpets written at Eisenach and three for single trumpet
written about 1750. These latter are generally similar in form, with a homophonic
style and simple, clear harmonies, in music that is in part imbued with energy
and in part with strong feeling. The solo trumpet has a larger part in the first
two movements, while third movements are shorter, with shorter solo passages.
Technically the concerti are demanding and considerable sustaining power is
needed in the slow movements. These works were written for Carl Pfeiffer of the
Karlsruhe court orchestra.
Johann Priedrich Pasch was born in 1688 at
Büttelstadt, near Weimar, and was trained at the Thomasschule in Leipzig under Kuhnau, later studying
with Graupner and Grünewald at Darmstadt. After various appointments, he became, in 1722,
Kapellmeister in Zerbst, where he remained until his death in 1758. Pasch w
rote music of all kinds, including a quantity of church music, much of which is
now lost. In common with some of his contemporaries, he began to move away from
Baroque style towards a pre-classical style of composition. In the concerto he
starts with the form developed by Vivaldi but develops a style of his own with
less distinction between the solo and tutti parts. An example of this may be
heard in his Concerto for trumpet, hvo oboes, strings and basso continuo. Compared
with other music of the period from 1740 to 1745, the concertoshows some of the
traits of the newly developing style. It may have been composed for a trumpeter
at the court of Zerbst or for a visiting performer.
A native of Augsburg, where he was born
in 1719, Leopold Mozart, father of Wolfgang Amadeus, was a prolific composer.
By 1757 he is said to have written a large quantity of church music, oratorios,
theatre pieces, sinfonias, thirty large serenades and many concerti, the last
especially for transverse flute, oboe, bassoon, French horn and trumpet. He was
employed in the court orchestra in Salzburg from 1743, becoming court
composer in 1757 and assistant Kapellmeister in 1763. His Trumpet Concerto
in D major dates from 1762. It has on I y two movements and is
scored for trumpet, two horns and strings. The introductory movement, an Andante,
starts with a main theme, an ornamented scale, developing into sequences
until the entry of the solo trumpet. There is no real second theme and the
movement is like some kind of rodimentary sonata. In homophonic writing the
highest part, generally the trumpet, dominatesal most completely, with a more
melodious solo line in the first movement and shorter melodies for the soloist
in the second. There are at the same time fanfare and signal themes, very much
like those to be found in the contemporary sinfonia concertante. It is supposed
that the concerto was written for the Salzburg court trompeter Johann Andreas
Schachtner,a friend of the Mozart family, but it might equally have been
written for some other trompeter in Salzburg, such as Caspar Kostler.
Giuseppe Torelli, born in Verona in 1658, was
employed in the orchestra of the basilica of San Petronio in Bologna, first, in 1686, as
a viola-player, until the disbanding of the orchestra in 1696, and then, from
1701 to 1709 as a violinist. Between 1696 and 1701 he was active in Vienna and Ansbach.
Torelli's Suonata con stromenti e tromba of 1690 is his first known work
for solo trumpet. The composition has the same order of movements as the church
sonata, the first beginning with a theme that recurs several times, in the manner
of a ritornello. The theme is taken up by the trumpet, which has several
distinctive passages. The second movement is a fugue, with a subject that
occurs in the work of other composers, such as Alessandro Stradella and
Arcangelo Corelli, and, in a slightly different form, Vincenzo Albrici. The
third movement is for strings only, but in the fourth movement the trumpet
returns. The concerto is Torelli's finest contribution to the repertoire and
also his technically most exacting.
It is arguable that Henry Purcell is the foremost
English composer since William Byrd and, until the twentieth century, the last
of the great English composers. He was a pupil of John Biowand succeeded him as
organist at Westminster Abbey in 1679. Among his compositions are odes for
chorus and orchestra, cantatas, songs, sacred music, chamber sonatas, music for
harpsichord and theatre music. Most compositions for trumpet by Purcell occur
as episodes in vocal or dramatic compositions, in interludes for use in the
theatre. This is probably the case with his Trumpet Sonata in D major,
thought to have been written in 1694, the year before his early death, as
part of such a work.
A pupil of Zachow in his native Halle, where he was born
in 1685, George Frideric Handel, as he later became, showed early promise as a
musician. From 1702 to 1706 he was employed at the theatre in Hamburg, followed by four
years in Italy. In 1710 he became
Kapellmeister to the court of Hanover, but in the same year made his first
visit to London, where he took up
permanent residence in 1712. He enjoyed considerable success at first with his
Italian operas, later turning his attention to the new form of English
oratorio. His trumpet solos are mostly associated with arias such as The
trumpet shall sound from Messiah and Let the bright Seraphim from
the oratorio Samson. There is, however a five-movement suite for trumpet
and orchestra with the title Mr Handel's Celebrated Water Piece, published
in 1733 by D. Wright of London. A second edition followed between 1740 and
1745, published by J. Johnson. The overture is from the second suite of the Water
Music, written in 1717. The fifth movement is a re-arrangement of a march
in B flat major from the opera Partenope, composed in 1730. The origin
of the other movements is unknown, but it is quite possible that Handelleft a
set of pieces with the publisher for further re-arrangement. It was not
uncommon for him to re-use music from earlier works or in theme or substance
from the works of others.