The Trumpet
Published on Oct 14, 2016
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The Trumpet
Jide Obatolu
The trumpet is a brass instrument commonly associated with classical and jazz music, and also has a very lengthy history. A ton of people play it and it probably went through just as many changes. First, we've gotta know how it all started, right?
Great, On to the good stuff!
- The first trumpets weren't actually trumpets. They were essentially horns, and those were what our modern magical aerophones we now call "trumpets" evolved from. This stuff dates back to about 1350 BC in Egypt, where they were straightened out to their full over-a-meter length. Nobody knows who made it because of how far back the history goes (I warned you!), but people guess they were mainly used for signalling armies over a distance.
And then...
- The first "musical" trumpets came in around 1100 AD. So many versions of it were created that it was hard to keep track of all the contributors. These changes are essentially what turned the trumpet from a war horn to a musical instrument. However, a few people who made very drastic changes to the design were credited as the "creators."
Who got all the credit, huh?
- The original idea of bending the trumpet to make it more compact and easy to use came from Michael Woggel and Johann Andreas Stein in 1777. Because it caused a bunch of problems, people created valves, which became the "bread 'n butter" for trumpet-kind and led to what we have today.
All About Valves
- Charles Clagget tried in 1788 with his Chromatic Trumpet and...wasn't the most successful.
- Heinrich Stoelzel and Friedrich Bluhmel invented the box tubular valve in 1818.
- Joseph Reidlin tried in 1832 with the rotary valve, which is still popular in Europe.
- Finally, Francois Perinet invented the common piston valves we see today in 1839.
Now, what is a trumpet?
- Trumpets are in the brass family and are aerophones, meaning you use sounds from your mouth - like "buzzing" - to make noise with it. Usually being made of brass, it can also be silver, copper, nickel or even gold. Trumpets are curved and thus look smaller and compact. Normally, they have 3 piston valves attached in the middle used to control pitch, and are also usually tuned to B flat or C, playing on a chromatic scale from fourth F to sixth C.
A really cool guy
- Someone any newbie trumpet player should look up to is Ryan Anthony. He was born in 1970 inside the States, has been playing trumpet since he was 7, won the General Motors competition at 16, joined Canadian Brass in many ensembles, became an assistant educator in the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music and is even still alive today! He is currently Principal Trumpet in the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and a Yamaha artist.
A little extra
- The flugelhorn and cornet resemble a trumpet and are usually tuned in B flat as well. The tones are, however, different.
- The trumpet's military use hasn't been forgotten. Bugles have been used for the same purposes, and are also used for ceremonial and symbolic purposes.
