On 24.04.2005, at 19:38, Andrew Stiller wrote:
On Apr 24, 2005, at 9:48 AM, Johannes Gebauer wrote:
Not that I really know anything about this, but I was under the impression that a Zugtrompete is in fact a trumpet, with a sliding device. I have seen such instruments played.
This is correct. That such instruments actually existed is beyond question. That they are what Bach had in mind is strongly supported by his use of them: to double the soprano line in chorales, and where the soprano line takes a cantus firmus. Note that this not only puts the instrument up in the trumpet range, but makes allowance for its technical limitations by providing it only slow notes to play.
Is this not the same instrument as the "flat trumpet" used by Purcell at times, particularly in the funeral music for Queen Mary? That would make it a trumpet with a sliding leadpipe and therefore only a single pipe extension rather than the double slide extension that had long since proven ideal for the trombone. The drawback with the slide trumpet is that the entire body of the instrument had to be moved, and of course that the entire chromatic scale could not be used because the single-pipe slide couldn't be drawn out far enough. I believe this would take its first appearance back to the early 15th century, when experiments with the venerable trumpet led to both the earliest trombones and the earliest slide trumpets.
While I agree with Andrew's comment about slow notes, I generally question any statement about "technical limitations" that are not based on studying the instrument in question and learning first-hand how limiting they actually are. The most egregious case of this is the unsupported statement that "the baroque flute is difficult to play in flat keys," a statement still taken as gospel by Arthur Mendel in his articles on Bach's St. John Passion in the '50s and '60s, but one known to be untrue by those who actually play the instrument. It is more accurate to say that flat keys produce a different affekt from sharp keys, a statement that does not necessarily lead to the Db piccolo as the former statement actually did!
This is off the top of my head, and not by any means guaranteed.
John
Andrew Stiller
Kallisti Music Press http://home.netcom.com/~kallisti/
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