Introduction
Trumpet players today are spoiled with a wealth of repertoire, with plenty of music from the 17th century up until the 21st being readily available at their disposal, ranging from concertos, chamber music, consort pieces to orchestral works. But the trumpet has existed for thousands of years and has been used to perform music since at least the late middle ages. The 16th and early 17th centuries are a period not well known to most trumpeters, but it is an era rich in trumpet music yet to be thoroughly explored and incorporated into the modern repertoire. From this period, there are three manuscripts jointly containing the oldest written music for trumpets, by the trumpeters Magnus Thomsen (1562-1612), Henrich Lübeck (d. 1619) and Cesare Bendinelli (c. 1542-1617). The chief topic of this research are the Thomsen and Lübeck manuscripts, both having been written in Denmark at the royal court of Christian IV (1577-1648). These manuscripts present us with the problem of being unlike any other piece of music written for the trumpet after the dawning of the baroque era, and thus they require a certain familiarity with the period and a fair bit of creative interpretation to be understood. The objective of this research is to bridge the knowledge gap between modern trumpet performance practice and 16th/early 17th century courtly trumpet practice to better understand how trumpet music was performed at the court of Christian IV. This research strictly deals with military and courtly trumpet music, focusing on Danish performance practice and other areas such as Germany which are closely connected stylistically and culturally. The practice of trumpets in Stadtpfeifer groups was intentionally left out, as that is a thoroughly unrelated genre, having split from the culture of military trumpeting well before the period of study. The aim of examining the Thomsen and Lübeck manuscripts is to make them more accessible to modern day players and hopefully expand the common repertoire of all trumpeters.
The methods employed to conduct this research mainly consisted of comparing primary sources on 16th and 17th century trumpet playing and applying them to the music of the Danish manuscripts. Playing the music according to the instructions of contemporary writers such as Michael Praetorius (1571-1621), Girolamo Fantini (1600-1675) and Cesare Bendinelli proved for a practical approach as opposed to a purely theoretical one, providing a deeper understanding of the capabilities and practicalities of the trumpet within the music under study. In addition to primary sources, secondary sources, such as peer-reviewed journal articles and books by experts in the field are also consulted. Organology is also an important part of this research; original instruments from the 16th and early 17th centuries are compared to later instruments and modern replicas in order to better understand the music for which they were intended and to find clues about their technical and aesthetic possibilities. A mouthpiece based on 16th century measurements and made with historic techniques by historical brass instrument builder Tony Esparis is used to play the music under study in order to gain a practical feeling for the playing techniques and sound of the time.