When researching historical music, it is important to consider the instruments being used by the musicians. By no means do I implore all trumpeters to buy authentic 16th century instruments to play music from Christian IVs courtly trumpet corps, although doing so might prove to be an interesting project. However, considering the differences of such instruments compared to our modern ones and even having the opportunity to experiment with such equipment can provide valuable insight into how the trumpeters of 1600 might have played. Keeping in mind the capabilities of late renaissance trumpets, I believe it is entirely possible to recreate a relatively authentic performance of late 16th and early 17th century trumpet music with modern instruments but for the purpose of this project, I will not be comparing the original instruments to the commonly used modern trumpets with valves such as are used in most present-day ensembles, but to the so called “baroque trumpets” as are used in Early Music ensembles.
Earliest instruments and their development
As far back as at least the ancient Romans, trumpets have been instruments of war. But the term “trumpet” is rather vague when describing historical instruments because it encompasses so many different instruments from different cultures. Fundamentally, a trumpet is a tube of material, most commonly metal but not exclusively, that flares into a “bell” shape on one end and the player blows or rather buzzes air into the other end. Thus, the term trumpet can refer to hugely different instruments such as the Roman buccina which was made of metal and curves around the player, the shofar, an ancient Jewish trumpet made of ram’s horn or the Scandinavian näverlur which is a straight trumpet made from spruce and covered in birch bark. Despite being so different, in almost all cultures that had trumpets, they were used as instruments of war. Trumpets were perhaps the loudest instruments or tools that any pre-industrial society could make, making them ideal to be heard amidst the chaos of battle. The longer a trumpet is, the lower the fundamental frequency is. Since trumpets can only produce the notes of the harmonic series, it is much easier to produce more notes on longer instruments. This is why many cultures have utilised as long trumpets as they could reasonably make and carry. In Europe, during the middle ages a long straight trumpet often referred to as Buisine or Añafil, descending from the persian trumpet Nafir, was favoured. But it is a long instrument and quite clumsy to carry, especially if one wants to play from horseback. The technique of bending brass tubing by taking advantage of various boiling points of different metals was adopted by trumpet makers in the late 14th century.1 This meant that trumpets could be made longer by making them into a sort of “folded” shape. These folded trumpets were much easier to carry and to play from horseback. Being longer, they could also play more notes and thus, more complex military signals. The folded trumpets dominated the early modern era and until the 19th century, trumpets would change remarkably little.
The shape of the “folded” trumpet, is that of which many might recognize as baroque trumpets. For about 400 years, most trumpets were made in roughly the same way. They may look like they are simply a long tube of metal folded around itself but they are actually comprised of 6 different components which are assembled together with tapered joints and held together by friction. The components have had many different names but are most commonly referred to today as: the Bell, two tubed yards of equal length, two tubed bows and the mouthpiece. Each component is slightly tapered on one end to fit into another component, creating joints that hold the instrument together. Having assembled these six components, one is presented with a playable trumpet, but throughout the ages, trumpet makers have added various smaller components for decoration, structural stability and functionality. However, these smaller components do not affect the playability of the instrument and they differ depending on the maker, period and country.
(above, right)
Made of solid silver with detailed ornaments, this trumpet was made by Anton Schnitzer in 1581 and is a fine example of the kind of trumpet the richer courts of Europe could afford. 8
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(left)
Made by Hans Hainlein in 1632, this trumpet exhibits a similar bell shape to the Schnitzer trumpet. 9
It is tempting to lump instruments together period by period, “renaissance”, ”baroque”, etc., but as we see by examining the Jacob Steiger trumpets of 1578 and the Hainlain trumpet of 1632, the style of trumpets did not change in the beginning of the 17th century. Only a handful of trumpets from the 16th century are known to exist today and at least two of them are spectacular pieces of craftsmanship most likely not meant for playing. The oddly shaped trumpets of 1585 and 1598 made by the Nuremberg makers Anton Schnitzer the Elder, and the latter, a copy made by his son, also named Anton Schnitzer 10, are sometimes referred to as “serpentine” or historically “pretzel” 11 trumpets because of their unique shape (pictured below) and it is quite certain that they were not made this shape for playability but to demonstrate the skill of the maker, especially at bending brass tubing. Another spectacular example of craftsmanship is the Schnitzer trumpet of 1581, which is made in the conventional way and shape but is a unique showcase of detailed ornamentation, made of silver and engraved along the entire length of its tubing, adorned with real gold. The remarkable condition in which these three trumpets have been conserved is further proof of how little they were played.
Serpentine trumpet by Anton Schnitzer (1585)
Owned by Italian trumpet player Cesare Bendinelli (c.1542–1617). 12
So what makes the trumpets of the 16th and early 17th century different from the trumpets of the high baroque? If we look at the 1599 trumpet by Anton I Schnitzer 13, a well made but not excessively ornamented instrument most likely made for regular use with a hole on the bell which has been patched up, suggesting actual use, it has a tube diameter of 12.90mm 14. Compared to the commonly reproduced baroque trumpets by Johann Wilhelm Haas, c.1700, and Johann Leonhard Ehe II, early 18th century 15, which both have a tube diameter of 11.80mm, one might assume that 16th century trumpets had a larger bore size. However, the trumpets of 1578 by Jacob Steiger 16 and the Lissandro Milanese trumpet of 1589,17 well made instruments by less famous makers, have a tube diameter of 11.90mm 18 and 11.60mm,19 respectively. In fact, if we look at trumpets from the 16th century all the way to the early 19th century, most of the instruments have a tube diameter between 11-12 mm without suggesting a general pattern by period, the Schnitzer trumpet of 1599 being an outlier.
There is also no apparent pattern in the copper/zinc ratio in the brass used in trumpet making during the 16ht-18th century 20. Due to the limited understanding of brasses until the late 18th century and the methods used to prepare brass, the consistency of the alloy was rather inconsistent 21 so it is most likely instrument makers used whatever stock they could get their hands on or were provided with. However, we can be sure that the brasses used for trumpet making up until the 19th century had a maximum of about 30 percent zinc because that is the upper limit of what the methods used to make brass could theoretically produce 22. Some trumpets from the late 17th and 18th century have been sampled for their copper/zinc ratio 23 and they all have a zinc ratio of between 20-30 percent, there is no indication that it would have been different in the 16th and early 17th century because the methods employed were the same. On the topic of material, trumpets made of silver also seem to have been fairly common at richer courts from at least the second half of the 16th century 24 and throughout the baroque period. Not enough extant silver trumpets exist to make any presumptions of a standard regarding the purity of the material or if they were usually brass instruments coated in silver. The Jacop Steiger trumpets of 1578 are made of brass but coated in silver so that they appear to be “silver trumpets”, however, there are also examples of trumpets made of solid silver such as the before mentioned Schnitzer trumpet of 1581 and a trumpet made by Johann Wilhelm Haas in ca.1700 25. There are contemporary accounts describing silver trumpets at grand occasions such as at the wedding of Prince Christian, son of Christian IV, and Princess Magdalena Sibylla of Saxony 26 but we cannot be sure of the nature of those trumpets, if they were made of solid silver or perhaps only coated. However, it is worth noting that silver is a precious metal and as such, it would have been regulated in order to prevent deception.
The only significant difference between trumpets from the renaissance and the baroque is the one that we can plainly see, the shape of the bells. In the 16th century and up until at least the second half of the 17th century, trumpet bells had a much wider throat with a consistent, gradual tapering and a shallow flare at the end. Their shape is in line with what many might recognize as sackbut bells, and in fact, according to historical trumpet and trombone builder Tony Esparis, trumpet and sackbut bells may have been interchangeable, even swapped between instruments at convenience. The garland (a protective ornament placed at the flare of a bell) on a trombone built in 1551 by Erasmus Schnitzer 27 has a hole, filled with tin, which a wire might have been pulled through in order to tie the bell to a bow such as on a trumpet. This is a feature normally seen on trumpets, thus suggesting that the garland may previously have been used on a trumpet. Later baroque trumpet bells have a much smaller throat which expands less than on earlier instruments until the very end of the bell, where the bell expands greatly with a sharp flare, as noted in Robert Barclay's graph comparing different bell shapes of instruments from 1599-1746 28 .
Erasmus Schnitzer (1551)
Detail of filled perforation on the bell of the trombone 29
Unfortunately, it is difficult to accurately measure the tapering of extant instruments, and none of the instruments I could find had accessible data on this measurement so we have to rely on our eyes to compare the shape of bells. Fortunately, the diameter of the end of the bell of many instruments has been measured so we can confidently say that the opening of trumpet bells gradually became wider throughout the baroque period, with some outliers such as the Steiger trumpets having 106 mm wide bells, relatively big compared to the Milanese and Schnitzer trumpets of the 16th century. It must also be pointed out that the sample size of 16th and early 17th century trumpets is quite small and thus it can be dubious to make too many presumptions as we cannot be sure how much elements such as bell size differed between makers.
Then the questions remain, why did the bells change and what difference does it make regarding sound and playability? Despite having a deeper flare and wider rim, high baroque bells do not necessarily have more metal. In order to expand the flare, the metal is flattened further out by way of hammering, thus increasing the surface area of the metal but thinning it at the same time 30. This made the bells very thin at the flare, making them extremely susceptible to being bent or even cracked. In order to make the bells more sturdy, trumpet makers attached a protective piece of metal around the flare of the bell called a garland. 16th century trumpets also had a garland but due to the bigger flare and thinner bells of the late 17th and 18th centuries, builders had to make bigger and sturdier garlands. Thinner bells would make for a brighter and more resonant sound, however, soldering a bigger piece of metal such as the garland to the bell would dull the resonance, seemingly contradicting the purpose of the flare. Furthermore, the garland was often heavily ornamented, adding even more weight to it for decoration, or on some exceptionally ornate instruments such as the Haas trumpet of ca. 1700 31 it was gilded, even further weighing down the bell. It may well be that the thinning of the metal was not the point of the flare, but rather a consequence of widening the rim to compensate for the narrow throat of the bell. Generally, larger bells with a wider throat and thicker material make a darker and fuller sound, projecting well in the low and mid registers but narrow, thin bells produce a more brilliant and bright sound which carries well in the higher register but becomes rough and hard to support in the lower register. A wider rim projects sound further, which may explain why builders in the baroque widened the rim of trumpet bells despite narrowing the throat.
Bigger bells are thus well suited for 16th and early 17th century trumpet playing as high notes were not yet considered to be the most important aspect of the trumpet and trumpet music was much closer connected to military signals played in the low register. Furthermore, the very same instruments would have been used for playing signals during battles, requiring great volume in the low register. In courtly trumpet music, the principal voice, playing in the low to middle register, was the most important voice so it is not unreasonable to assume that the ideal sound characteristic of the instrument would have been developed depending on the demands of that voice.
It is not until the mid to late 17th century that we see that trumpet repertoire starts to demand higher playing, with virtuosic sonatas by composers such as Johann Christoph Pezel (1639-1694), Pavel Josef Vejvanovský (c. 1639-1693) and Maurizio Cazzati (1616-1678). It is certainly no coincidence that bell shapes developed alongside the needs of the music. The brighter sound of the narrower bells and the wider rim allowed the trumpet to stand out in the high register, showcasing the virtuosity of the player. Another possible reason for the change of bell shapes could be because wider bell throats add more conicity to the instrument, stretching the overtone series. According to Karl Nödl, in his book Metallblasinstrumentenbau about brass instrument building, if the upper register of a brass instrument is too low, a possible solution is to narrow the bell profile 32. It could be that as the high register was starting to be used with other instruments, builders had to adjust the tuning of their instruments.
Perhaps more interesting to the aspiring renaissance trumpet performers of today are the mouthpieces. Although a mouthpiece is an intrinsic component of the trumpet, it is not necessarily considered to be a part of the instrument itself. As most brass players will recognize, a mouthpiece is a highly personal thing, somewhat comparable to shoes: there is no one-size-fits-all. This was certainly as true in the 16th and 17th centuries as it is today and extant mouthpieces vary quite a lot in shape and size. Most extant instruments are not accompanied by a mouthpiece, and if they are, there is no guarantee that they are by the same maker. Just as today, players must have alternated between mouthpieces depending on their needs and comfort. On a shipwreck from c. 1580-1600, found near the island of Texel, Netherlands, three 16th century mouthpieces were found alongside the Lissandro Milanese trumpet of 1589 35. All three mouthpieces vary in shape and size but were probably played by the same player on the same trumpet. One is considerably larger than the other two, closer to what we might recognize as a sackbut mouthpiece, it may be that the player used this one to play in the very low register of the trumpet. Daniel Speer mentions in his Grund-richtiger Unterricht der Musicalischen Kunst (1697)36, that one should use a trombone mouthpiece to play the fundamental note of the trumpet. Despite the fact that Speer wrote his book around a hundred years later, the principals and physics of the instrument would have been the same and I can say from personal experience of playing my trumpet with a copy, made by historical trumpet and trombone builder Aron Vajna, of the mouthpiece from the Anton Schnitzer trombone of 157937 that this gives a very unique and robust sound in the low register. Having often carried several mouthpieces in my case, not being able to make up my mind on which one I like the most, I take some personal comfort in knowing that at least one trumpeter in the 16th century did the same.
16th and 17th century mouthpieces may vary in shape and size, but there are still general patterns which set them apart from later mouthpieces. One thing is clear, up until at least the early 19th century, trumpet mouthpieces were much bigger than they are today 38. Modern trumpet mouthpieces typically have an inner cup diameter of between 15-17.5 mm, throat diameter of 3.5-4 mm and a rim width of 5-6 mm 39 40. Marin Mersenne gives use some measurements of a trumpet mouthpiece in his Harmonie universelle (1636-1637)41, he suggests a considerably bigger mouthpiece than any modern trumpet mouthpiece, with an inner cup diameter of 22.5 mm, throat diameter of 6.7 mm and a depth of 11.2 mm 42. This size is consistent with what we see with 16th and early 17th century extant mouthpieces, typically ranging between 20-23 mm inner cup, 5-8 mm throat and 10-19 mm depth. The differences between mouthpieces are notably bigger than on modern mouthpieces, because with the bigger size, there is more leeway for variation and because they were handmade, even carved with a handheld knife 43. The size itself does not set “renaissance” mouthpieces apart, later baroque and even classical mouthpieces display the same general range of measurements. An early 19th century trumpet player would probably not be dismayed by Mersenne’s mouthpiece, and would likely have played on something similar 44.
There is however a crucial development in trumpet mouthpiece making during the 17th century, which is not reflected in their size. During the 17th century, mouthpieces with what we call today a backbore started to emerge. The backbore is a tapered interior section, expanding from the throat of the mouthpiece until the opening which leads into the receiver of the trumpet. This creates pressure inside the cup of the mouthpiece, funneling air into the instrument at an accelerated rate. This pressure is reflected to the player as what brass players would recognize as “resistance”, making for a less open feel and blow but providing more ease in the upper register and crisper articulation. Comparative data on two replicas of a 16th century trombone mouthpiece, one with a modern backbore and the other an exact copy, gathered by Hannes Vereecke, shows that a tapered backbore amplifies higher resonances, making the high register more pronounced 45. 16th century mouthpieces do not have a tapered backbore, instead their throat opens directly into a straight tube or simply into the tuning bit of the instrument. Compared to a tapered backbore, as brass players today are accustomed, this type of mouthpiece has an immensely open feel, providing a round and powerful sound in the low and middle register but requiring a huge amount of air. It is also tremendously difficult to play high on such a mouthpiece, and even if one is able to do so, the result is a rather weak and undefined sound.
Schematic of a modern mouthpiece 46
It would be a mistake to refer to mouthpieces without a backbore as renaissance mouthpieces because such mouthpieces existed at least well into the 17th century, with several extant examples surviving from the 1660s 47. The development of the backbore was definitely not clear cut, and it may be that mouthpieces without a backbore were used for much longer for more rudimentary instruments and purposes such as military and signal playing, as the tools for making a backbore were expensive and the technique required to do so took a lot of skill 48, suggesting that this might have been a practice done only by master craftsmen. However, it cannot be a coincidence that alongside the development of the backbore, we see a clear development in composed music for the trumpet, leaning more and more towards the high register, as the advantages of the backbore are simply so significant in this register.
The more open mouthpieces of the 16th and early 17th century are however the perfect utilitarian tool for signal playing, the primary function of the trumpet during the time. They allow for extremely loud playing in the middle register, in which most signals would have been played because the low register offers too few notes to have enough variety of signals, and the high register is too fragile and difficult for consistent signal playing. The openness of the mouthpieces, aided by their size, also offers stability in the middle register, allowing the player to play confidently without the risk of “cracking” their notes. Military signals had to be heard over a large amount of distance, through screams, gunfire and cannonfire, and these mouthpieces are certainly made to facilitate such loud playing. The very same mouthpieces would have been used by courtly trumpeters, as they also served in the military, so it is important to take the capabilities of the mouthpieces into account when interpreting courtly music from the 16th and early 17th centuries, especially when improvising.
Finally, we have to consider the pitch of the instruments and if it is relevant to the interpretation of trumpet consort music. I find myself hesitant to assign a definitive pitch in terms of A=hz and which key the trumpets of the 16th and early 17th century were because it is rather arbitrary. The extant instruments from the time range from having a tubing of around 180 cm - 200 cm long, which would put them at around E-Eb at modern A=440. I say that it is arbitrary to assign a key to these trumpets because that would depend on the common pitch practice of any given place or time, which varied throughout Europe. For example, if the given pitch at a place were to be A=465, the trumpet would be in D, but a trumpet of the same length would be considered to be in F if the pitch were A=392. I am by no means an expert on historical pitch, but the length of trumpets seems to have been roughly similar throughout Europe, perhaps because the vast majority of them were built in Nuremberg. Geert Jan van der Heide, historical trombone and trumpet maker, assigns the pitch of D at A=465 to a 16th century trumpet, thus corresponding to cornetts and recorders according to him 51. This is problematic on two fronts: Firstly, if we examine any of the earliest music were trumpets could have played with cornetts and recorders, such as Monteverdi’s Toccata from L’Orfeo (1607) or Schütz’ Danket dem Herren, denn er ist freundlich from Psalmen Davids (1619), it does not hold up. If the trumpets were in D at A=465, they would be a whole tone too high to fit with the other instruments, they would need to be in C, with a tubing of around 220 cm, in order to fit with the other instruments, assuming they were pitched at A=465. Secondly, up until these two pieces, there is no evidence of trumpets ever having played with other instruments such as cornetts and recorders, so there is no reason to believe that the pitch of 16th century trumpets would have corresponded with them. This does not mean that early 17th century pieces could not have been played on trumpets with the tubing length of 180-200 cm, because the pitch of trumpets can be adjusted by adding extra tubing in the form of crooks or bits, or possibly raised with the use of mutes, but this only highlights how problematic it can be to assign a certain key or pitch to instruments which were not necessarily even considered to be musical instruments.
However, we are left with a bit of a paradox regarding the pitch of early 17th century trumpets. Written music suggests that trumpets should have been pitched at around C in A=465 in order to fit with other instruments but the extant instruments are a whole tone or more higher. One possibility is that, as mentioned before, they were simply crooked down one tone, but if this was common practice, then this begs the question: where are the extant crooks? Praetorius’ figure VIII, from his second book of Syntagma Musicum (1614-1620) supports this argument, as it displays a whole tone crook alongside a trumpet (see left hand image below). But if a lower pitch was as common as the written music suggests, then one would think that they would simply have built the trumpets at that pitch. Ironically, Praetorius’ Syntagma Musicum also supports this argument by stating that a “short time ago” it became common in many courts to use longer trumpets, sounding a tone lower, sometimes even two 52, so it may well be that already in the beginning of the 17th century trumpets with the tubing length of circa 220 cm were becoming commonplace. Extant instruments of that length exist from the late 17th and 18th centuries and it must have been common as most of high baroque music corresponds to that pitch, such as the music of Johann Sebastian Bach and Georg Friedrich Händel.
Praetorius also states that “field” trumpets 55 remained at a higher pitch. It could be that longer trumpets were only used at richer courts for “art” music and the reason extant instruments from the early 17th century are shorter is simply because military or field trumpets were more numerous. Martin Agricola also makes a distinction between a field or “felt” trumpet, “clareta” and a “Thurner horn” in his Musica instrumentalis deudsch 56 published in 1529, almost a hundred years before Praetorius (see right hand image above). However, his picture is not well enough drawn and lacking any sort of measurements to tell us anything concrete about the difference of these instruments. All three trumpets seem to look roughly the same regarding length and shape. All folded trumpets were made in the same way, up until the 19th century, as described before, so perhaps the difference between these instruments was simply the quality of their make. There would have been no reason to use the finest trumpets on the field of battle as a quality instrument is not needed to blow signals and good trumpets were expensive and could easily become damaged in war. If it is true that military trumpets were a tone higher as Praetorius says, and corresponded with extant instruments of 180-200 cm, then that is a tradition that has lasted until this very day, as modern natural trumpets called fanfare trumpets are usually in Eb/E 57 and are sometimes played in military ceremonies around Europe.