On Feb 26, 2007, at 1:58 PM, John Howell wrote:
At 1:22 PM -0500 2/26/07, Kim Patrick Clow wrote:
I'm curious if having Trumpets in G Major is unsual for baroque music?
I know E Flat is kind of rare, Bach used that in the Magnificat for
example. But I'm curious why the composer just didn't transpose this G
Major sinfonia to D, where trumpets were more common.
Thanks very much,
Kim
Rare enough that I've never seen it, at least. (And Bach did not
write for trumpets in Eb in the Magnificat; when he added the trumpet
parts he transposed the piece into D and did some additional
rewriting, as he always did, making it a second version.) And to this
day, I don't think anyone has ever seen an example of the high F
trumpet that we assume Brandenburg 2 was written for.
According to the trumpeter Johann Ernst Altenburg (1795, paraphrased in
Terry, _Bach's Orchestra_), "a 'Concerttrompeter' required only three,
or at most four [instruments], in G, F, D and B flat. For movements in
A major, the G or 'English' trumpet, raised to the higher key by means
of a 'Sordun', was available; for G major, the same without the mute;
for F major, the F or 'Field' or 'French' trumpet; for E major, the
same lowered a semitone by a shank; for E flat major, the same crooked
down a tone; for D major, 'the German Cammerton D trumpet'; for C major
the same crooked down a tone. Altenburg remarks on the absence of a
'short' B flat trumpet for music in that key, and recommends the
performer to play an o ctave lower, on the 'long' instrument."
Note that in this list the F trumpet is smaller/higher than the
standard D trumpet. Presumably Altenburg knew what he was talking
about, and the question should therefore be whether there is any
evidence for valveless F trumpet writing an octave *lower.*
As for the high G the 2d Brandenburg requires, there are numerous
examples of its use on trumpets of various sizes--not necessarily in F,
but what does that matter?
Andrew Stiller
Kallisti Music Press
http://home.netcom.com/~kallisti/
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