TRUMPET COLLECTION - Chandos

Some of our SAYDISC unusual, traditional & exotic albums and AMON RA authentic performances on
original instruments. Visit www.saydisc.com or write for more details and suppliers:
CD-SDL 325 Like Waves Against The Sand - trad music from China - pipa, erhu, yanqin, percussion
CD-SDL 327 Enchanted Carols - musical boxes, handbells, handbell choir, street pianos, brass band
CD-SDL 333 Ringing Clear - Handbell tune and change ringing in various styles
CD-SDL 343 On Kielder Side - Northumbrian Pipe music from Kathryn Tickell
CD-SDL 353 Fleur Du Jura - Parisian style cafe music from Danielle Pauly - French accordion Queen
CD-SDL 358 Keep The Home Fires Burning - music of the 1st World War from the original recordings
CD-SDL 360 Under The Greenwood Tree - Carols and dances from Thomas Hardy manuscripts, etc
CD-SDL 367 Kurokami- Traditional music of Japan -koto/shakuhachi/shamisen
CD-SDL 373 Music From The Time Of The Spanish Armada -The York Waits renaissance town band
CD-SDL 374 The Music Of The Hurdy Gurdy - Nigel Eaton & friends—bourreés to Vivaldi
CD-SDL 376 Disappearing World - Unique recordings of music from 17 endangered cultures
CD-SDL 378 Church Bells Of England - 16 famous peals, Cotswolds, Bristol incl. St. Pauls, Westminster
CD-SDL 383 Sing Lustily & With Good Courage - Favourite 18th c. hymns - Maddy Prior/ Carnival Band
CD-SDL 387 Traditional Arabic Music - Hassan Erraji with Arabesque - ud, nay, saz, darbouka, bandir, etc
CD-SDL 388 Music Of the Andes - Caliche - pan-pipes, charango, quena, bombo drum, etc
CD-SDL 391 Traditional Songs of Scotland - Ray Fisher with bagpipe, violin, accordion etc
CD-SDL 393 English Country Dances - The Broadside Band - favourite Playford dances
CD-SDL 396 Vocal Traditions of Bulgaria - exciting music from the Archives of Radio Sofia
CD-SDL 400 English National Songs - Lucie Skeaping & John Potter with The Broadside Band
CD-SDL 402 Traditional Songs of England - Jo Freya with fiddles, concertina, hurdy-gurdy, viols, etc
CD-SDL 403 Spirit of Polynesia - The David Fanshawe trilogy of traditional Pacific music, volume 1
CD-SDL 405 Sea Songs & Shanties - from the last days of sail -Bob Roberts, Cadgwith Fishermen, etc
CD-SDL 406 Traditional Songs of Wales - Siwsann George with Welsh triple harp, crwth, hurdy-gurdy, etc
CD-SDL 408 The Victorian Musical Box - numerous rare disc and cylinder musical boxes
CD-SDL 409 Songs and Dances From Shakespeare - The Broadside Band and singers
CD-SDL 413 Cockney Kings of Music Hall - the original recordings
CD-SDL 417 A Celtic Christmas - from Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Isle of Man, Cornwall and Britanny
CD-SDL 419 Old English Nursery Rhymes - Vivien Ellis / Tim Laycock and The Broadside Band
CD-SDL 422 Compline & Other Chant: Latin & English, nuns of Stanbrook/monks of Prinknash Abbeys
CD-SDL 427 Folk Music of Tibet - field recordings of songs and instrumental music
CD-SDL 429 Carillon Bells of Britain - Kilmarnock, Aberdeen, Perth, Bournville, Loughborough
CD-SDL 430 The Celtic Harp - The Celtic heritage of harp music from Wales, Ireland and Scotland
CD-SAR 10 Clarinet Collection - Alan Hacker (historic clarinets) with keyboard, etc
CD-SAR 18 Guitar Collection - Nigel North (historic guitars) with Maggie Cole (keyboards)
CD-SAR 35 Bassoon Collection - Frances Eustace
CD-SAR 53 Music For Mandolin - Alison Stevens - mandolin duets, mandolin & fortepiano
CD-SAR 62 A Golden Treasury of Elizabethan Music
CD-SAR 63 A Golden Treasury of Medieval Music
CD-SAR 69 A Golden Treasury of Ancient Instruments
STEREO CD-SAR 30
TRUMPET COLLECTION
The Clarion Ensemble—historic brass
DIGITAL
RECORDING

The Clarion Ensemble
Deborah Roberts
Soprano
Jonathan Impett
1. Natural trumpet—Max & Heinrich Thein, Bremen 1983 (after J. W. Hass)
2. Cornetto—Christopher Monk, Churt
3. Keyed Bugle—Joseph Greenhill, London c.1825
4. Clapper shake-key cornopean—Charles Pace, London c.1840
“Handley’s Improved”
5. Posthorn in A—John Webb, London 1986
6. English slide trumpet—John Webb, London 1986 (after Lloyd, 1830)
7. Cornet—Gautrot ainé, Paris c.1870 (imported by Distin & Co, London)
8. Valved trumpet in C—Vincent Bach, Mount Vernon N.Y. c. 1930
Susan Addison
Tenor sackbut—A. Egger, Basel (after Hainlein)
Tenor trombone—A. Hall & Son, Birmingham c.1900
Helen Verney
Cello—Milanese, late 17th C
Paul Nicholson
Virginals—Onofrio Guarracino, Italy 1668 and Adlam Burnett,
Goudhurst 1976, after Andreas Ruckers, Antwerp 1611
Harpsichord—Jacob Kirckman, London 1756
Pianos—Clementi & Co, London 1822/ John Broadwood & Sons,
London 1848/ Erard, London 1866
Trumpet family instruments 3-7 from the Padbrook Collection, Wootton Bassett,
Keyboard tuning by Andrew Garrett and Simon Neal
Keyboard instruments from the Richard Burnett Collection at
Finchcocks, Goudhurst, Kent
Manuscript of Donizetti piece supplied by the Bate Collection
competition amongst sopranos to
perform with the Harpers. When a music
festival tried to reduce Harper senior’s
fee on the grounds of the small number of
notes he was required to play, he
requested a copy of the score so that his
innkeeper and coachman might be
willing to accept half fees.
Whilst orchestral trumpeters clung to
their noble triadicity, even long after their
instruments were equipped with
transposing valves, cornet technique
advanced apace, largely in the hands of
horn players. Jean Baptiste Arban was its
most celebrated exponent to date; he
became professor at the Paris
Conservatoire and published a tutor still
widely used. The voice was of course the
model of cornet players, both in terms of
style and repertoire, and the nineteenth
century instruments have a vocal quality
which was lost when players began to
aspire to the dynamic range and
brilliance of the trumpet. Popular airs
were the staple diet, as vehicles for
technical display or material for the fast
increasing population of amateurs. Arban
later devoted himself entirely to
composing original works—such as
“Sneezing” for piano. A later American
virtuoso, Herbert L. Clarke, was a soloist
with J. P. Sousa’s band.
As late romantic music became more
complex, the cornet largely left the
symphony orchestra to develop its own
character in bands with early jazz.
Meanwhile the trumpet, having fully
assimilated this virtuosity, found a new
voice. In the heroic orchestral roles of
Mahler, Strauss and Scriabin, it
represents once more power and nobility,
but now that of the individual.
© Jonathan Impett
2 7

enaissance. Despite the closely related
lip technique, clear demarcation largely
prevented trumpeters enjoying the wide
range of musical roles—from the
brilliance of Venetian canzonas to the
intimacy of Monteverdi’s “Et e pur
dunque vero”. Whilst virtuoso trumpet
technique was first being explored, the
cornetto was at the peak of its
development.
Apart from a small repertory of
exceptionally virtuosic and somewhat
futile concertos, the musical and
symbolic role of the trumpet had been
narrowly stereotyped by the end of the
eighteenth century—imprisoned in its
home key, from which composers were
gaining ever more distance, and
representing rules whose future was
increasingly in question. Even so, in
1803 Schubert could still assert that
“today, a trumpeter is almost a holy
man”. Attempts to widen its chromatic
capability were made largely by players.
Wooggel successfully adapted the
handstopping technique of horn players,
and Weidinger, for whom Haydn wrote
his concerto, added keys to reduce the
sounding length as on a woodwind
instrument.
A combination of unwillingness to
compromise the nobility of the trumpet
and the general professional inertia led to
such techniques being developed more
rapidly on “lowlier” brass instruments.
The “Royal Kent Patent Keyed Bugle”,
introduced in 1810, thrived untilengineering
advances permitted its
gradual replacement by the valved
cornet-à-pistons, which had virtually
achieved its modern form by the middle
of the last century. It effectively began
life as a coiled posthorn, to which were
added the descending valves invented by
Stolzel in 1815. A unique combination of
these two solutions was the “clapper
shake-key” cornet, developed by the
British virtuoso McFarlane.
An ingenious solution to the
problems of the natural trumpet was the
double-slide used by English players,
putting the natural harmonics “into tune”,
and to a lesser extent filling in the gaps.
Most famous amongst its exponents were
the Thomas Harpers, senior and junior,
who between them spanned most of the
nineteenth century. Their renown was
based largely on performances of the
great Handel and Purcell obbligato parts
(Bach was thought unplayable), and
contemporary music expressing the same
heroic sentiments as with Bishop’s tale of
Edric and Matilda. Both larger than life
characters, there was vigorous
Recorded at Finchcocks, Goudhurst, Kent, Dec. 1986
Recorded & Produced by Gef Lucena (Amon Ra) and
David Wilkins (Valley Recordings)
Photos by Andrew Sydenham
Booklet designed by Genny Lucena
Made in EC
ISRC: GB-AJX-87-030- 01 to 12
© 1987, AMON RA RECORDS, THE BARTON, INGLESTONE COMMON,
BADMINTON, S.GLOS. GL9 1BX, ENGLAND
Fax: 01454 299 858 E-mail: Saydisc@aol.com
www.saydisc.com
1 Girolamo Fantini From “Modo per Imparare a sonare di Tromba” (1638) [4’17”]
Sonata detta la Renuccini (unmuted), Brando detto il Baglioni (muted)
Balletteo detto il Gisilieri (muted), Corrente detta la Schinchinelli (muted)
Brando detto il Rucellai (unmuted)
natural trumpet, sackbut
2 Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643
Et e pur dunque vero - From “Scherzi Musicali” (1632) [8’12”]
soprano, cornetto, cello, Flemish virginals (copy)
3 Girolamo Frescobaldi (1583-1643)
Canzona a canto solo cornetto, sackbut, Flemish virginals [3’27”]
4 Henry Purcell (1659-95) To arms, heroic Prince [3’34”]
From “The Libertine, or the Libertine Destroyed” (1692)
soprano, natural trumpet, cello, Kirckman harpsichord
5 Alessandro Scarlatti (1660-1725) Si suoni la tromba [3’48”]
soprano, natural trumpet, cello, Italian virginals
6 Sir Henry Bishop (1786-1855) Arietta and Waltzer
(“the subject adapted from a Bohemian Air”) [5’08”]
From “The Miller and His Men” (1813)
6
3

(“Performed on the Patent Keyed Bugle by Mr. Wallis”)
keyed bugle, Clementi piano
7 Gaetano Donizetti (1797-1848) lo L’udia [4’04”]
From “Torquato Tasso” clapper shake-key cornopean, Clementi piano
8 Heinrich Koenig, arr. C. Le Thiere Post Horn Galop [1’47”]
posthorn, Broadwood piano
9 Sir Henry Bishop arr. Thomas Harper Jr.
Thine For Ever (1873) soprano, English slide trumpet, Broadwood piano [6’54”]
10 Jean-Baptiste Arban (1825-89) Fantaisie sur l’opera Rigoletto de Verdi
(1868) cornet, Broadwood piano [8’55”]
11 Herbert L. Clarke (1867-1945) Cousins (1912) [4’15”]
cornet, trombone, Erard piano
12 Georges Enesco (1881-1955) Legende (1906) C trumpet, Erard piano [6’28”]
Total duration: 60’53”
The trumpet, used with little change up to the end of the eighteenth century, was a
refinement of that known for centuries in Europe and still longer in the Middle East—
simply a narrow cylindrical tube with a mouthpiece at one end and a flared bell section
at the other. Despite a gradual lengthening from a single straight tube, to an S-shape
and then to the doublewound instrument we recognise as the baroque trumpet, its
essential nature remained the same, producing a series of overblown partials in
harmonic relationship to the fundamental.
This limited range of musical material, and the clearly-defined extra-musical
associations of the trumpet are at the heart of its development. The present recording
is therefore a collection not only of trumpets, but of their cousins, whose existence and
functions mark out the boundaries.
Through its vital role as a military signalling instrument, and thence as a symbol of
triumphant power (temporal or spiritual), the trumpet and its practitioners had, by the
late sixteenth century, achieved uniquely elevated status—or rather, more humbly, had
become vital symbols of the status of their employer. The evolution of the courtly
trumpet ensemble reached a peak in 1623 with the institution of the “Kameradschaft”
by the Holy Roman Emperor, effectively conferring diplomatic status on players, and
restricting their use to the presence of the
nobility. A musical turning point for the
trumpet seems to have come during the
previous hundred years, when players
serving more ceremonial and less bloody
purposes availed themselves of the fact
that, by lengthening the instrument
(lowering the fundamental), they could
obtain more melodically useful
harmonics without having to play any
higher, escaping the dictatorship of the
trumpet-call.
Girolamo Fantini was the head
trumpeter of the Grand Duke of Tuscany.
His widespread renown as a rare virtuoso
is bespoken by the publication in 1638 of
a large volume of his music (we must
remember that the amateur trumpeter was
effectively illegal). The apparent
modesty of these pieces must be balanced
by an awareness of contemporary
comprehension of their technical
difficulty, and the exclusivety of the
occasions for which they were written: a
prized possession of the Grand Duke
playing pieces dedicated to other noble
families. In 1635, Mersenne mentions a
performance for Cardinal Borghese, in
which Fantini, accompanied on the organ
by Girolamo Frescobaldi, demonstrated
his ability to play “all the notes”—not
simply those of the harmonic series.
To a great extent, the “art” of the
baroque trumpet lay in the representation
of the relationship between man and
nature (or “superhuman” power), as the
player bends the natural harmonics
towards musical intervals. Furthermore,
some players found that they could
actually insert notes between the
available harmonics: such moments of
“suspension of nature” include the
chromatic phrases ending the middle
section of Scarlatti’s “Si suoni la
tromba”, and in the “Rucellai” of Fantini.
For these reasons, the baroque
trumpet heard on this recording is an
unashamedly “natural” instrument, rather
than the fingerholed trumpet developed
during the 1960s and now used
ubiquitously. The use of a mute was
already conventional for indoor
performances, for funerals and for covert
night attacks. It is difficult for us to
imagine how powerful the association of
the sound of the trumpet must have been
in the war ravaged Europe of the
seventeenth century. This must have lent
great immediacy to the opening of
Purcell’s “To Arms” and equal passion to
the struggle of the heart in “Si suoni la
tromba”.
The Cornetto was the virtuoso
instrument par excellence of the late
4 5

TRUMPET COLLECTION
The Clarion Ensemble—historic brass
TRUMPET COLLECTION The Clarion Ensemble
CD-SAR 30
1 Girolamo Fantini From “Modo per
Imparare a sonare di Tromba” [4’17”]
natural trumpet, sackbut
2 Claudio Monteverdi
Et e pur dunque vero [8’12”]
soprano, cornetto, cello, Flemish virginals
3 Girolamo Frescobaldi
Canzona a canto solo
cornetto, sackbut, Flemish virginals [3’27”]
4 Henry Purcell
To arms, heroic Prince [3’34”]
soprano, natural trumpet, cello, harpsichord
5 Alessandro Scarlatti
Si suoni la tromba [3’48”]
soprano, natural trumpet, cello, virginals
6 Sir Henry Bishop
STEREO CD-SAR 30
Arietta and Waltzer [5’08”]
keyed bugle, Clementi piano
7 Gaetano Donizetti lo L’udia [4’04”]
clapper shake-key cornopean, piano
8 Heinrich Koenige Post Horn Galop [1’47”]
posthorn, piano
9 Sir Henry Bishop Thine For Ever
soprano, slide trumpet, piano [6’54”]
10 Jean-Baptiste Arban
Fantaisie sur l’opera Rigoletto de Verdi
cornet, piano [8’55”]
11 Herbert L. Clarke Cousins ) [4’15”]
cornet, trombone, Erard piano
12 Georges Enesco Legende
C trumpet, piano [6’28”]
Total duration: 60’53”
The Clarion Ensemble
Deborah Roberts Soprano Jonathan Impett Historic brass
Susan Addison Sackbut, trombone
Helen Verney Cello Paul Nicholson Keyboards
AMON RA RECORDS, THE BARTON, INGLESTONE COMMON,
BADMINTON, S.GLOS. GL9 1BX, ENGLAND.
Fax: +(0)1454 299 858 E-Mail: Saydisc@ aol.com Website: www.saydisc.com
Made in EC
TRUMPET COLLECTION The Clarion Ensemble
CD-SAR 30