As we have seen, it is clear from the writings of both Bendinelli and Praetorius that trumpet sonatas are meant to be played by an ensemble. Therefore, the first step in interpreting or playing the sonatas of the Danish manuscripts is to decide on how many voices there should be and which voices they should be. As we have also seen, according to Bendinelli, a sonata should be played by 5 trumpeters, or multiples thereof, probably in case of a multi-choir type setting, and the number 5 is certainly consistent in descriptions of trumpet ensembles throughout the 16th and early 17th century. The Trompeterautomat of 1582 displays two groups of 5 trumpeters, in the personnel list of Christian IV there is a reference to a 10 man trumpet corps coming from Germany and a 5 man trumpet corps from England 1, there is also a record of 5 trumpeters playing at the festival of Saint Feliciano in Spoleto in 1544 2. However, Praetorius recommends 5, 6 or 7 trumpeters for a sonata 3 and Speer also recommends 6 or 7 4. There are documented cases of 6 trumpeters playing at festivities, such as the welcoming of guests arriving by boat to the wedding of prince elect Christian of Denmark and Magdalena Sibylla of Saxony in 1634 5, and for the reception of a French ambassador in Prague in 1600, Emperor Rudolf II employed 18 trumpeters in three groups of 6 to play at the banquet 6. However, 5 is the minimum in order to fully and correctly harmonize a principal fanfare.
Before approaching such harmonizations, it is worth considering which notes can be produced on the natural trumpet. The options consist of the natural harmonics of the fundamental tone of the instrument. Those marked in red are noticeably "out of tune", an ordinary phenomenon of natural overtones:
Principal: The leading voice, the one that plays the fanfare or melody such as the one written in the Thomsen, Lübeck and Bendinelli manuscripts. Praetorius refers to this voice as the tenor proper because the other voices must improvise from this one. The principal plays in the same range as military signals and toccatas. The principal is played by the most senior trumpeter, the Hoftrompeter, as he must know the music and lead the ensemble.
Alto e basso: Speer names this voice mittel-stimm, a fitting name as this voice is the true middle voice. This voice imitates the principal, always playing one harmonic overtone lower (it is important to realise that the natural trumpet is incapable of producing whole tones or semi tones in this register; thus, the player will play one harmonic overtone lower, effectively playing always a third or fourth lower than the principal, naturally following a perfect counterpoint)
Vulgano: Speer names this voice the Foul-Stimm, translated to English as “lazy-voice”, seemingly a silly name, it is however quite appropriate as the vulgano always plays the 3rd harmonic, lying a fifth above the grosso. This is the easiest and most natural note to produce with a historic mouthpiece, requiring very little effort.
Flatter-Gross: This voice may be the reason for the variance of 5 or 6 trumpeters. The player of the flatter-gross always plays the fundamental note of the instrument, which is one octave lower than the grosso bass. Both Speer and Praetorius list this voice, but Bendinelli does not. It is quite impossible to play this note on a trumpet mouthpiece, even a historical one, thus Speer recommends using a bass trombone mouthpiece. This voice is not needed to properly harmonize the ensemble, since the grosso bass already plays the root, one octave above. Having experimented with a group, adding the flatter-bass greatly increases the intensity and perceived loudness of the ensemble, producing a magnificent and imposing sound. Flatter, meaning flutter, is an appropriate name, as playing this note creates a powerful rippling effect.
Clarino: The most virtuosic voice, the clarino player must always play above the principal. This voice is highly variable depending on the skill of the player as they may play as high or fast as they please or are able. It is the only voice which plays in the fourth octave, meaning that it is possible to play a stepwise melody; thus the player must possess some level of musicality as they are capable of playing dissonances with the other voices. Praetorius states that the clarino often plays in octaves with the principal, pointing out that the results would be better with a proper counterpoint. Bendinelli also writes that the clarino should seek to avoid parallel octaves with the lower parts, and that those intervals are not used by those who understand music. Speer lists two clarino voices, second and first clarino, the first clarino going above the 12th harmonic, in other words, the G above the staff in treble clef. Speer wrote his Grund-richtiger Unterricht der Musicalischen Kunst around a hundred years later than the manuscripts under inspection; by the end of the 17th century high clarino playing up to the high C had become popular and is seen in plenty of compositions from the time. However, this was not the case for the late 16th and early 17th century, and there is no evidence that playing above the 12th harmonic was commonplace. Bendinelli gives an example of the “perfect notes” of the clarino, going only up to G, the 12th harmonic 10. Here, the mouthpieces are an important clue, as the mouthpieces of the 16th and early 17th century are extremely difficult to play in the very high register, but by the end of the 17th century the backbore had been developed, greatly increasing the possibilities of high clarino playing.
The voices of the trumpet ensemble as demonstrated by Daniel Speer (1697): 11
There is plenty of evidence of kettle-drums, or timpani, playing with the trumpet ensemble. Praetorius states that the trumpeters may play with or without timpani 12, implying that they were not an essential part of the group. Historical documentation often mentions trumpets and drums playing together, but also often solely trumpets. There are sometimes references to trumpets and drums playing together in processions, however, the sonatas were not for playing in processions. None of the primary sources on 16th and early 17th century trumpet ensemble playing mention how the timpani were played and Bendinelli does not mention them at all. Since the sonatas were played at dances, it is safe to assume that the drums had to keep the beat, adding a rhythmic layer with improvised ornaments. Nevertheless, Praetorius writes that the timpani should follow the principal 13, meaning that ultimately the principal controls the tactus.
We see the same voices under the same names in Claudio Monteverdi’s opening toccata from L'Orfeo (1607), with the exception of the principal going by Quinta, an alternative name sometimes also used by Bendinelli and Praetorius. This is the earliest fully realized, written music for a trumpet ensemble: 14
The Thomsen, Lübeck and Bendinelli manuscripts only have the principal part written for their sonatas, the rest are meant to be improvised. To better understand the structure of the sonatas, let us examine Thomsen’s 6th sonata, whose first phrase has already been presented above, in the videos exemplifying the various voices: 15
Written down is only the fanfare melody, or tenor proper, “rechte Tenor” as Praetorius called it, which is played by the principal player, the leader of the group. First order of business is to decide on which notes exactly are the ones written on the page. There exists no clef which will make the melody playable on a natural trumpet as it is written. Instead we have to consider the staff lines from the perspective of a trumpeter with limited musical education. Each staff line represents a harmonic overtone, or simply a note on the trumpet. The lowest line would be a C, in other words the 4th harmonic, the second line would then be an E and the third a G; keeping in mind that the natural trumpet is incapable of producing any notes between them. So far, it resembles a C1 clef, however, we run into a problem on the fourth staff line. Following the pattern of a C1 clef, there should be a B on the fourth line but the natural trumpet is not capable of playing that note. The following harmonic note after G would be a very low Bb. Musically, a C makes more sense because the Bb would create an unresolved dissonance with the grosso voice. Further supporting that the fourth line should be a C is the fact that none of the contemporary sources use Bb. Bendinelli and Lübeck clearly write their sonatas with a C1 clef, using only the notes C-E-G-C and neither of them writes a Bb throughout their entire manuscripts. Fantini lists all of the notes of the trumpet in the beginning of his treatise x, from the fundamental harmonic C all the way up to a high C, but he omits the Bb. Mersenne does the same in his Harmonie Universelle 16 and so does Speer 17.
One could argue that the lowest staff line should be a G, the third harmonic, closer resembling a C2 clef which would also fit with the written clef in the manuscript. However, in practice this does not fit; it would make the principal too low, leaving no room for the alto e basso and vulgano voices, and create a large gap between the clarino and principal. Furthermore, it would place the cadences on a G, harmonically sounding strange since the fundamental is a C. Even further disproving this argument would be the clarino and principal duets on folios 183-184, where the clarino has stepwise movement between the upper staff lines, closer resembling the possibilities of the instrument if there were a C on the bottom staff line. It is however worth noting that the writing of the clarino parts in those duets is highly problematic, no matter where you place the clef, and, to play them, one must follow the patterns according to the capabilities of the instrument. So the conclusion is that in Thomsen’s sonata, the bottom staff line represents a C, the second line an E, the third a G, and the fourth a C.
Thomsen, duets for principal and clarino: 18
The sonata is made up of a fanfare melody that is repeated 8 times, each time rhythmically ornamented and expanded upon. This sonata structure is consistent in all three manuscripts, with the number of repetitions varying, but they are always made up of a single fanfare which is repeated multiple times and becomes more rhythmically convoluted throughout the piece. The fanfare melody is divided into four short phrases, with a cadence after the second and fourth phrase. With only a few exceptions, this is consistently the case in all of the sonatas throughout the three manuscripts. Praetorius names such a fanfare melody a Post, and says it should contain 16 beats, or tactus, dividing it into two half posts with 8 beats and four quarter posts with 4 beats 19. Thomsen’s sixth sonata displays Praetorius’ division of the post. Throughout his manuscript, Thomsen always uses the same cadential figures, concluding the first half-post with a rhythmic figure consisting of a whole note followed by two half notes, and the second half-post with a whole note followed by a single half note and a rest. Both Bendinelli and Lübeck use this second cadential figure to finish all of their post melodies as well, suggesting that it may have been the standard way for the principal to signal the end of the post melody to the improvising ensemble. The first cadential figure is not seen in the Lübeck and Bendinelli manuscripts, however, as they often end their first half-posts with a similar figure, consisting instead of three half notes. Each variation of the post melody ends with a repeat sign. Bendinelli writes that the principal should play first and then the others follow 20. Considering that the other voices must improvise on the melody of the principal, it is logical that they had to first hear the melody, as they would not have had any music. Thomsen’s sixth sonata is in a duple metre, but there are also many sonatas in a triple metre and Bendinelli sometimes changes from a duple metre to a triple metre towards the end of his sonatas.
It has been established that trumpeters were not necessarily musically trained, then the question is how did they improvise the voices? The natural trumpet is a somewhat intuitive instrument in the sense that in order to play it, one does not need to press any keys or holes and it is only capable of playing the notes of one tonality. If one were to only play military signals and improvised music, there would be no need to understand any sort of music theory, only to play intuitively what one hears. The trumpeters of the late renaissance did not think in musical notes such as we understand them today, they thought in trumpet tones. We see this in the Thomsen manuscript, where he struggled to place the notes correctly on the stave, according to real intervals which were to be produced. Bendinelli also writes that the alto e basso voice always plays one tone lower than the principal, meaning of course that they should play one harmonic tone lower, not a whole tone 21. Mersenne actually numbers all of the notes on the trumpet 22 and then writes common military signals out in those numbers instead of notes, as may be seen on the following images. Trumpeters used different names for their tones rather than the actual names of the notes; it is likely that the names of the voices are derived from these tones. Fantini writes the names of the tones up to middle G, the 6th harmonic, in this order: Sotto basso, basso, vurgano, striano, toccata, and quinta.23
Mersenne's notation of signals (both in conventional notation and number notation): 24
Regarding what each voice actually improvises, it is quite straightforward, the clarino being the only voice requiring a bit of musical knowledge and practice. The Flatter-Gross, Grosso and Vulgano are drone voices, constantly maintaining an open fifth. They only play their respective notes, and have no options for variety as the notes are too far apart from each other in the low register of the trumpet. According to Monteverdi’s Toccata from L’Orfeo 25, Speer’s Aufzüge 26 and the Trompeterautomat by Schlottheim, they maintain a constant drone without any rhythmic variation. The principal is the only voice which does not improvise, playing the written or memorized melody. The alto e basso is like a shadow of the principal, always playing a tone lower, homophonically. Improvising this voice is quite intuitive, as long as one starts a tone lower than the principal, one only needs to follow the movement of the melody and rhythm. Monteverdi’s Toccata completely breaks this rule, which is set forth by Bendinelli, Speer and Praetorius. This could be a reflection of a local practice in Mantua or an indication of Monteverdi’s creative liberty in regards to his composition. Instead of following the general practice of an alto e basso part, the third voice closely resembles the toccatas written by Bendinelli 27 and Thomsen 28. Perhaps Monteverdi included a local trumpet toccata in his composition or composed the part in the trumpet toccata style.
Improvising the clarino part takes a bit of skill because it requires a certain amount of virtuosity to be able to play fluently in the high register and it is the only voice which is able to play a stepwise melody, meaning that it is also the only voice capable of playing bad counterpoint. Praetorius writes that the clarino embellishes the principal with ascending and descending diminutions and coloraturas 29, a fitting description for Bendinelli’s examples of clarino playing, which are all variations of stepwise melodies leading from C up to G and back down to C, with occasional skips 30. Monteverdi’s clarino also displays this characteristic. Bendinelli lists the notes of the clarino as being C-D-E-F-G 31, however, he goes up to an A as a neighbouring tone in one of his later diminution examples. Monteverdi also uses the A as a neighbouring tone, however, the clarino player must be careful when using the A in his improvisation, as it is by nature extremely low on the trumpet, only usable as a passing embellishment. Bendinelli treats the clarino similarly as the post melody is treated by the principal, starting with a fairly simple scheme which is expanded upon and further diminished on each repetition of the post. The Thomsen manuscript also has a few examples of clarino parts, not for a sonata, but nine short duets for principal and clarino, evidently using the principal as a sort of cantus firmus, since the principal has been written for further duets but the clarino is unfinished 32. The tactus does not always line up in both voices, and the clarino is at times almost impossible to understand because the notes are not consistently written on the same staff lines. However, judging from the similar patterns Thomsen and Bendinelli write, and the possibilities of the instrument, it is clear that Thomsen is also writing mostly stepwise diminutions between C and G, using skips a bit more freely, and occasionally using the A as a passing ornament. Speer’s clarino parts from his Aufzüge are not a good indication of clarino playing in the 16th/early 17th centuries because they are written in 1697 and the high register of the trumpet had developed a lot by the end of the 17th century, having become stylistically more important than the principal with increased possibilities due to new mouthpieces and a growing appreciation for virtuosity.
Based on these conclusions, recordings were made to demonstrate how this all works out together in context, showcasing excepts from Thomsen's 6th Sonata. They show how the principal player introduces the basis of the improvisation (as it is written in the manuscript), receiving an answer from the complete ensemble. Each player demonstrates a different role in the ensemble, as the principal, alto e basso, vulgano, grosso, and clarino:
The full form of the trumpet sonata also includes an Intrada as a sort of introduction and a Rotta to conclude it. Praetorius writes that trumpeters play their intratas before their sonatas as an introduction and after as a conclusion 33. There are no written intradas allocated to specific sonatas in the manuscripts, but Bendinelli writes one before the sonata section of his book 34, later mentioning that all of the trumpet players play together in an intrada and confirming what Praetorius writes, that the sonatas are concluded with the intrada, which is played after the rotta 35. Fantini includes an intrada before his sonata Imperiale, stating that the sonata follows after the intrada and after finishing the sonata, the intrada should be played again 36. The Thomsen manuscript contains one Ingange, meaning intrata in Danish, but it is included in the military signal section of the manuscript 37. Mersenne also includes an intrada with his military signals 38, indicating that intradas might have been a part of the signal repertoire and were thus orally transmitted, not needed to be written down with the sonatas. Interestingly, Mersenne’s and Thomsen’s signal sections follow exactly the same scheme, both starting with an Intrada, and then listing a Boute-Selle (a signal to saddle the horses), followed by A Cheval or Montacavalla (a signal to mount the horses), and then A l’lestendart or Allestandare (a signal to gather at the flag), but the signals themselves are not at all the same.
The Rotta is an improvised coda to the sonata. It consists of a short descending rhythmic motif leading from the middle G down to E and ending on C. The motif is repeated a few times with rhythmic variations, usually consisting of longer note values on each repeat. Like in the sonata, the principal plays first and the rest repeats but according to Bendinelli, the clarino should rest during the rotta 39. Lübeck writes a short rotta for each of his sonatas, almost always using 16th notes in the first variation, dotted quarter notes and 8th notes in the second and ending with quarter notes and 8th notes. This scheme is consistent with Bendinelli, but he wrote a sonata made entirely of different rotta variations to be applied to other sonatas 40. The word rotta is derived from the Italian word rompere, meaning to break 41, and that is exactly what the rotta does, it breaks up the post melody, signaling the end of the sonata to the ensemble.
Aside from sonatas, the Bendinelli and Thomsen manuscripts also contain some military signals and toccatas, ceremonial pieces to be performed at various occasions according to Bendinelli 42. The signals all have a meaning and they were used to relay commands to soldiers during military campaigns, thus they are not at all meant for ensemble playing. Toccatas are short pieces in a similar style to the signals, but usually going higher, up to the 6th or 8th harmonic, whereas the signals rarely go above the 4th, and exhibiting more movement between notes. Toccatas were also used in war but they did not relay commands like the signals, they were used as celebratory flourishes, to be used when victorious in battle or as diversions 43, to distract the enemy. The signals and toccatas are written in a free rhythm and Bendinelli states that they are to be performed with little regard to the beat and that it does not matter if the player is half a bar ahead or behind 44. In his preface, Bendinelli also excuses himself for his writing of the military signals and toccatas, as he has written them up for convenience but it is impossible to accurately play them in tempo if one is to play them as freely as they should. Thomsen has obviously tried to write them in a free tempo as well by placing intermittent fermatas throughout each signal and toccata. Mersenne writes his signals in a much more stable tempo 45, indicating little freedom, but he was not a trumpeter himself and Harmonie Universelle is more of a general summarization of musical knowledge, rather than a guide to stylistically play trumpet music. The “dran” is an ornament frequently seen indicated in both Bendinelli’s signals and toccatas, as well as in Thomsen’s, and according to Bendinelli, it is useful for such music but it is not used higher than on the striano 46, which is the 4th harmonic, or C, according to Fantini 47. The dran is indicated by a short low note leading to a longer upper note, with a line similar to a slur, written between them. Bendinelli describes it as hardly touching the first note and passing it to the other with an accent, pronouncing the syllable “dran” 48. The effect is similar to that of attacking a note from a lower harmonic instead of a clean articulated attack. Thomsen often uses the dran in cadential figures, leading a low G to a C and it may also be used in the sonatas, when appropriate. The dran ornament occurs frequently in Fantini’s military signals as well 49.
Montacavalla signal from the Thomsen manuscript, featuring the dran ornament:50
Toccata from the Thomsen manuscript: 51
