For anyone wondering about the holes covered by his right hand fingers, they're a modern invention made to fine tune some notes, because the notes in the harmonic series are a bit higher or lower than the same notes in 12-tone equal temperament, so the holes are now included so they can sound more in tune to our modern ears.
So this means that to sound like it did in the time of Bach, they would not use the vent holes, and we would hear some notes that sound a little out of tune to us now.
They were thought to be modern invention, but they already existed in the late baroque period, there is a document from around 1770 where a ‘holeless trumpet’ is mentioned, so they obviously also knew ones with holes. Anton Weidinger invented his keyed trumpet some years later (the instrument Haydn and Hummel wrote their concertos for) which had even more vents, which were then closed by keys.
If you are interested in the holes on the trumpet, they are use to finetune the notes. As the notes go higher the notes are detuned. I believe that those holes later developed into actual valves. The same situation is with the natural horn.
Donald Schneider As far as I can tell, the OAE's goal is to replicate the sound, not the difficulty. Several of their instruments utilize small modifications that make them easier to control, while still retaining the authentic sound.
I came here looking for an example of the clarion trumpet used in the Brandenburg concertos. I had no idea that the recorder was used instead of the traverso, but of course it was; 😵 it makes so much more sense to have a flute with a little more carrying power. Bravo! Lovely playing! 👏
I think they discovered the small holes in baroque trumpets only recently and this explained how they were able to play so many notes in the upper register, something which had baffled musicians for a long time.
There are players who play baroque trumpet without vent holes, and play beautifully and accurately. Using vent holes is a little like using a later, keyed, wooden flute to play baroque music. It doesn't sound like the modern instrument, but it certainly doesn't sound like the instrument that baroque composers wrote for, either. Neither fish nor fowl.
Time 4:15 *The natural trumpet in F was replicated in more compact form* as a configuration of the U. S. Field Trumpet 1892, which used two loops in the tube to shorten the net length (versus the Baroque orchestral trumpet, which used only one loop with small vent ports for finessing pitch).
An air leak in a brass instrument is never a good thing, it does not change the pitch, it only ruins the tone. I suspect there are no holes, he is just fingering out of habit.
I own/play two modern trumpets. Last night I saw a live performance of Bach's "Jauchzett Gott..." with period instruments including what I dimly recognized as a natural or baroque trumpet. *The player was also moving his fingers.* I thought at first he might be moving rotary lever valves (such as on a modern French horn). Now I'm here. Guaranteed the fingers & holes have a purpose, though I'm not sure what. Indeed an open hole would ruin the sound, it's not like a recorder or reed instrument. Harmonically it functions the same as a bugle, with apparently longer tubing/deeper register. So I'm not sure about the holes but clearly this mystery needs to be solved!
This is a bit late, I suppose, but better late than never. There are, in fact, holes in this instrument. The problem is that the harmonic series is a physics phenomenon which doesn't really care about whether certain notes are "in tune" to your ear or not. Modern instruments deal with this in different ways, but this instrument uses small holes. Theres a difference between a faint leak, and an outright hole. Essentially what the holes do is force a low pressure node to move to a position where the vibration is now more in tune. Besides, a modern Bb trumpet doesn't use your pinky fingers, while a natural trumpet does simply so you can reach all of the holes. At 0:03, you can actually see the three holes. Two larger, and one smaller further down.
I really love "The art of the baroque trumpet" (Nonsuch [label]) Edward Tarr is ace. The book "Heroic Art of Trumpet and Kettkedrum playing" by Ernst Altenburg (1795) is a fun read. There is a Berlin Post stamp with the score of the 2nd. Brandenburg and a pic. of Gottfreid Reicha holding his horn like trumpet. You can clearly see one tone hole.
Good video, batter than many on this series, where the players almost seem to only know things about their instruments that they got from reading the first line on the Wikipedia entry, or else they are so in love with self-derogatory bits of doggerel about their instruments that they present them as fact (much in the way that airplane pilots love to say things like their aircraft 'glides like a brick' even though they know that is very untrue). My only real criticism of this video is the lack of mention of the presence and function of the finger holes, and failure to actually mention the term 'clarino" when discussing the upper range playing, and failure to really describe how the much longer natural/baroque trumpet tubing, compared to modern trumpets, is necessary in order to allow the instrument's clarino range to fall into a musically useful range.
Isn't it funny that modern compositions (especially soundtracks) "mimic" Baroque melodies and we immediately connect that sound to that time and circumstance... but it's not because it was a "style", it was because the instruments back then literally couldn't do anything more variant?
lol, bit off topic but it seems so weird to me hearing other people's voices in between the shots. While you're filming these great videos do people just chatter on in the background? or is a secretary office nearby? =D
These baroque trumpets are actually a modern invention to play historical music on without the intonation problems the ACTUAL instruments of the period had. They had NO way of controlling the pitch aside form the changing of the lips, so the natural overtone series they produced often “escaped” the exact pitches of the scale the other instruments were playing with. A number of inventions came along to solve this problem, such as the slide trumpet (which later evolved into the trombone), the keyed trumpet (which apparently fell out of favor because everyone thought it sounded goofy), and finally the valves trumpet of the early 19th century which we still use today.
Don't forget that the holes allow him to articulate much stronger, harder and louder without chipping the pitches (that is he can play it like he does a modern instrument). But most importantly, the holes make it so that the player doesn't have to practice as much on the instrument so as to achieve (and maintain) a usable technique and performance quality acceptable to modern audiences. Not that that is actually easy.
There were ways of adjusting the pitch of some of the overtone frequencies. But not many. On the famous picture of the trumpeter Gottfried Reiche he holds a rolled-up trumpet with holes.
Ekvitarius - I’d be very cautious about assuming that past players were less able than current players. Additionally I would suggest that slide trumpets originated from the trombone (sackbut) family.
Did I miss you explain the holes on the side? This looks like a a perfect no moving parts for the pbone company. And for hobiest like me with tubing and time.
Thanks for the question +57dogsbody Answer from David: The "ball like thing" is merely an aid to holding the trumpet securely and doesn't actually have any musical function. This dates back to when Trumpeters would of occasionally played on horseback and they would grip the instrument around the ball to stabilise it.
It's called a boss. The English drilled a hole in it and put the first yard through it to firm it up. The Germans put a block of wood between the yards and wrapped cord around it. They are in imitation of the wooden trumpets where they would hold each side of the split and hollowed wood together with osier whips (rings of oak branches coiled to make a firm hoop.
a trumpet without valves, and having only one harmonic series... is that not a bugle? its just a bugle that hasn't been coiled as tightly. and don't tell me about conical vs cylindrical bore.... i still think its a bugle.
I have heard many times when I was in any class or band that relates to music is that the first trumpets look so much like a trombone. It kind of seems weird though! I like it! But I am wondering what trumpets looked like before the Baroque, like in the Bible periods. I know in Scripture it talks about trumpets, flutes, and cymbals. So it is kind of making me curious how instruments looked like back then.
You didn't mention that all folk tunes can be played on these (made of wood to heard livestock). Especially, the low range of the trumpet (5' long) was used to play well-known tunes in the round, such as "Row, Row, Row Your Boat", "Brother John", "The Farmer in the Dell" etc. Since triadic chords are created (and are perfectly in-tune as opposed to the 22 cents sharp Pythagorean-tuned fixed pitched instruments), they are the basis of harmony in our modern scale. No one knows this. You ought to play these tunes on short trumpets to demonstrate how old this is. All of these tunes in the round which survive in children's tunes clearly show the fanfare motif of rising triads.
But the perfect 4th is a "Pythagorean" interval not a "natural" one as you laid out, so row row your boat wouldn't work on the natural trumpet. I mean I guess you could play a sort of lydian row row row your boat with the sharp 4, George Russell would like that
It's a disgrace that he doesn't mention the fact that this instrument is totally bogus. You can see him using the holes, yet not a word about them! This is an insult to people who play the real thing. At the close he even talks about all the other later inventions!
This would have been interesting if I hadn't just watched the ginormous contrabassoon vid, it makes you immune to being impressed by normal sized instruments.
Joshua ten doornkaat so it’s just a half step lower for you. Don’t see how that bothers you. (Also I don’t see how that should be an issue. If people with perfect pitch lived in the baroque era, weren’t they sensitive to A=415 tuning as well? What about the classical era with A=430, or Versailles pitch, Venetian pitch, etc)
I don't see how you can claim it as a "replica" when there is no evidence of any vent holes on original Baroque trumpets. The video on the Baroque horn says that it was played without the hand in the bell, which meant you had to accept the vagaries of tuning that follow. Why is such an approach not taken by the AoE with their Baroque trumpets? It seems to be particularly disingenuous not to mention the holes at all in the video, even though the holes are clearly visible at the beginning of the video, and clearly employed later on when playing the Brandenburg concerto.
The trumpet was my first love instrument. However, I am afraid to say that I was forced to give it up to play the guitar. So, the trumpets you played, I always learned that those were called fanfare trumpets. Is that right? I always wanted to play one of those instead of the Bb instrument.
