Brass instrument | |
---|---|
Other names | clairon, [1] clarin trumpet, [1] clarino, [1] chiarina |
Classification | Brass |
Hornbostel–Sachs classification | 423.121 (Natural trumpets – There are no means of changing the pitch apart from the player's lips; end-blown trumpets – The mouth-hole faces the axis of the trumpet. Some may have been (423.22) slide trumpets, in an attempt to gain more notes.) |
Developed | Developed from the buisine or by experimenting with the idea of a metal tubular instrument with bends to shorten length |
Related instruments | |
Sound sample | |
|
Clarion is a name for a high-pitched trumpet used in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. It is also a name for a 4' organ reed stop that produces a high-pitched or clarion-like sound on a pipe organ in the clarion trumpet's range of notes. [1] [2]
The word clarion has changed meanings over centuries and across languages. Today, in modern French clairon refers to the bugle, [1] while in Italy chiarina refers to modern trumpets of historic design, made from bent tubing and without valves, similar to the natural trumpet. Resembling these instruments is the modern fanfare trumpet, like the chiarina or natural trumpet, but with the option of using valves.
Clarion became a musical term to refer the upper register of the standard trumpet. [1] However, a clarin trumpet did exist with a narrower bore than the standard trumpet and a "broad, flat mouthpiece," designed to "play the high partials." [1]
In war the trumpet historically had a harsh sound, often described as, "like the braying of an ass." [3] [4] As technology improved the ability of trumpets to take pressure and reach more notes and higher notes, that higher-pitched sound became the focus of the term clarion. [5] By the 14th century, it was described as high-pitched, shrill, or clear sounding. [6]
In general (and not all early writers agreed) the clarion was a shorter trumpet with narrower bore. [6] For example, a 1606 author named Nicot wrote that while the term clarion had once referred to a group of high pitched trumpets with a narrower bore, by his day it was the higher pitches in a sound range that any trumpet should be able to play. [6]
The narrowing of the bore and the manufacturers' control of how gradually it widened changed the tone of new instruments. [7] Rather than braying, the trumpets took on the sound of courts, sounding much like the modern fanfare trumpet. During the development process, longer "shrill" trumpets such as the añafil or buisine trumpets were folded into more compact forms. By 1511, Virdung had published engravings of these folded instruments, one labeled "clareta", which became the clarion. [1] Tonally, clarin or clarino also came to refer to melodic playing in the upper register of the trumpet "with a soft and melodious, singing tone" [6]
By 1600 the term clarin came to be a musical term used by composers for "the highest trumpet part" in Germany and Spain and was limited to German and Spanish composers from the 16th–19th centuries. Clarino was used by Italians, but not for trumpets. [6]
After the fall of Rome, when much of Europe was separated from the remaining Eastern Roman Empire, both straight and curved tubular-sheet-metal trumpets disappeared, and curved horns from natural materials like cowhorn and wood were Europe's trumpet. [8] [9]
The straight sheet-metal tubular-trumpet persisted in the Middle East and Central Asia as the nafir and karnay, and during the Reconquista and Crusades, Europeans began to build them again, having seen these instruments in their wars. [9] [10] The first made were the añafil in Spain and buisine in France and elsewhere. Then Europeans took a step that hadn't been part of trumpet making since the Roman (buccina and cornu); they figured out how to bend tubes without ruining them and by the 1400s were experimenting with new instruments. [9] [11]
Whole lines of brass instruments were created, including initial examples like the clarion the natural trumpet, slide trumpet and sackbut. [9] [12] These bent-tube variations shrunk the long tubes into a manageable size and controlled the way the instruments sounded. [12]
Francis Galpin theorized that straight trumpets, business, of different lengths became different instruments. [13] Shorter instruments with narrower tubing became the clarions and field trumpets (the clarions being the narrower of the two). [13] Longer, lower pitched trumpets became the trombone. [13] Comparing the field trumpet and the clarion, Galpin said both were used in fanfare music, the broader tubed and longer field trumpet taking lower notes, the clarion the higher notes. [13]
European experiments with bent-tube instruments in turn influenced Islamic musical instruments, resulting in the S-curved nafir or karnay and the Turkish boru. [11]
"Clarion" derives from three Latin words: the noun clario (trumpet), the adjective clarus (bright or clear), and the verb claro (to make clear). Throughout Europe, an eclectic set of variations on clarion came into use. The meaning of these variations was not standard. It is not clear whether they are meant to refer to an actual instrument or simply the high register of the trumpet. [18]
The various iterations of "clarion" occur alongside the idiomatic usage of "trumpet" in the literature and historical records of several countries. The presence of these terms in concert with each other throughout such passages gave rise to a consensus that there must be a clarion trumpet which is distinct in construction from a standard trumpet. In France, historical records include phrases like "à son de trompes et de clarons", for instance. In his French dictionary, Jean Nicot wrote that the clarion is used among the Moors and the Portuguese (who adopted the Moors' custom). Nicot defines the clarion as a treble instrument, which is paired with trumpets playing the tenor and bass. Nicot also specifies that the clarion was used by the Cavalry and Marines. [19]
In The Knight's Tale , Chaucer writes, "Pypes, trompes, nakers, clariounes, that in bataille blowen blody sounes", which adds to the notion that clarions must somehow be distinct from trumpets. [20]
This idea was bolstered by artworks of the time, which show a variety of trumpets in different shapes and sizes. There are even records from trade guilds like the Goldsmith's Company of London which specify that a clarion is 70% lighter than a trumpet. However, there is no precise understanding of what any of these variations meant. The fundamental confusion is over whether or not they refer to an actual instrument or to a style of playing in the high register of the trumpet. Even the Spanish historian Sebastián de Covarrubias confused the meaning in his Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española , writing that the clarin was a "trumpetilla", a tiny trumpet capable of playing in the high register or that the term could simply refer to the high register of the trumpet. [21]
The confusion over the usage of these terms seemed to mainly dissipate in the Baroque era, when "clarino" (plural: "clarini"), and its variants, came to be specifically understood as the practice of playing the natural trumpet in its high register. [22]
Natural trumpets were originally war trumpets used to signal with a short repeating pattern. [23] They were largely the same among European countries, consisting of two tones, a fifth apart. [23] Calls were started with the lowest. [23]
Before the modern naming systems were invented that allow us to describe a note with a letter, trumpeters assigned names to notes that their trumpets played. [3] [23] The names described a note's relationship to the other notes. [3] [23] Similar names were used in different countries, though the changed based on language. [23]
The first named were the lowest, made by a long horn that could only play one note. When a second note was added, it was named in relationship to the original note, as the note that follows. [23] Although military in use initially, trumpets were put into trumpet ensembles, with places in the ensemble based on the notes they played. The basic series by the 1600s was:
In the 16th century, a clareta or "sopranoor clarino" in C was tuned to the 8th partial, c" or c5 , and might reach as high as the 13th partial. [24] [25] In a 5-trumpet ensemble of trumpets as long as 8 feet, it would be paired with a standard trumpet. The long trumpet was tuned an octave lower, and called sonata, quinta or principale). The other trumpets were the basso trumpet, vulgano trumpet, and alto e basso trumpet. [25]
Trumpets in the 16th century had a narrow range of notes that could be played. The larger straight trumpets, like the buisine likely played one or two notes. The bent-tube trumpets likely had an increased range of about 4 playable notes in the "Late Middle Ages", the "naturals 1-4." [24] Innovations such as the slide trumpet and different mouthpieces helped increase the notes available. [24] Better built trumpets also gained notes as they could increasingly be overblown. [24]
There was less need of the specialized clarion as trumpets improved in the Baroque period. The principal register of the trumpet extended to the seventh pitch of the harmonic series. The trumpet's clarino register then ran from the eighth to the twentieth pitch in the series. [22]
Among today's trumpets, the piccolo trumpet occupies the same position in relation to standard trumpets that the clarion did, tuned one octave above the standard trumpet.
By the late 1500s, Ottoman armies were playing these new folded trumpets (or natural trumpets) in place of their former nefir trumpets. The nefir was closely related to the añafil.
In today's Turkish, nefir means "trumpet/horn" and "war signal". [11] In military music, the straight natural trumpet nefir is distinguished from the general Turkic word for "tube" and "trumpet," boru. [11] Boru refers to the looped military trumpet, which is due to European influence, [11] while the derived borazan ("trumpeter") is understood today in Turkish folk music as a spirally wound bark oboe. [26]
In the 17th century, when the Ottoman writer Evliya Çelebi (1611 – after 1683) wrote his travelogue Seyahatnâme , the nafīr was a straight trumpet that was played in Constantinople by only 10 musicians and had fallen behind the European boru (also tūrumpata būrūsī), for which Çelebi states 77 musicians. [27] Nefir, or nüfür in religious folk music, was a simple buffalo horn without a mouthpiece, blown by Bektashi in ceremonies and by itinerant dervishes for begging until the early 20th century. [27]
The trumpet is a brass instrument commonly used in classical and jazz ensembles. The trumpet group ranges from the piccolo trumpet—with the highest register in the brass family—to the bass trumpet, pitched one octave below the standard B♭ or C trumpet.
The cornett, cornetto, or zink is a wind instrument that dates from the Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque periods, popular from 1500 to 1650.
The word lituus originally meant a curved augural staff, or a curved war-trumpet in the ancient Latin language. This Latin word continued in use through the 18th century as an alternative to the vernacular names of various musical instruments.
The bugle is a simple signaling brass instrument with a wide conical bore. It normally has no valves or other pitch-altering devices, and is thus limited to its natural harmonic notes, and pitch is controlled entirely by varying the air and embouchure.
The chalumeau is a single-reed woodwind instrument of the late baroque and early classical eras. The chalumeau is a folk instrument that is the predecessor to the modern-day clarinet. It has a cylindrical bore with eight tone holes and a broad mouthpiece with a single heteroglot reed made of cane. Similar to the clarinet, the chalumeau overblows a twelfth.
The bazooka is a brass musical instrument several feet in length which incorporates telescopic tubing like the trombone. Radio comedian Bob Burns is credited with inventing the instrument in the 1910s, and popularized it in the 1930s. It was also played by jazz musicians Noon Johnson and Sanford Kendrick.
The buisine and the añafil were variations of a type of straight medieval trumpet usually made of metal, also called a herald's trumpet. While arguably the same instrument, the two names represent two separate traditions, in which a Persian-Arabic-Turkic instrument called the Nafir entered European culture in different places and times.
Ottoman military bands were the first-recorded military marching bands. Though often known as the mehter, it refers only to a single musician in the band. In the Ottoman Empire, the band was generally known in the plural as mehterân, though those bands used in the retinue of a vizier or prince were generally known as mehterhâne. The band as a whole is often termed mehter bölüğü or mehter takımı. In Western Europe, the band's music is also often called Janissary music because the janissaries formed the core of the bands.
The baroque trumpet is a musical instrument in the brass family. Its designed to allow modern performers to imitate the natural trumpet when playing music of that time, so it is often associated with it. The term 'baroque trumpet' is often used to differentiate an instrument which has added vent holes and other modern compromises, from an original or replica natural trumpet which does not. Notable baroque trumpet players include Alison Balsom, Niklas Eklund, Brian Shaw, and Justin Bland.
Zuffolo (also chiufolo, ciufolo) is an Italian fipple flute. First described in the 14th century, it has a rear thumb-hole, two front finger-holes, and a conical bore. It is approximately 8 cm in length and has a range of over two octaves, from B3 to C6 (Marcuse 1975c). A larger instrument of the same name, with a lowest note of C5 appeared in the early 17th century (Fuller-Maitland, Baines, and Térey-Smith 2001).
Joseph Haydn composed the Concerto per il Clarino in 1796 for the trumpet virtuoso Anton Weidinger. Joseph Haydn was 64 years of age. A favourite of the trumpet repertoire, it has been cited as "possibly Haydn's most popular concerto". Although written in 1796, Weidinger first performed the concerto four years later on March 28, 1800.
The chromatic trumpet of Western tradition is a fairly recent invention, but primitive trumpets of one form or another have been in existence for millennia; some of the predecessors of the modern instrument are now known to date back to the Neolithic era. The earliest of these primordial trumpets were adapted from animal horns and sea shells, and were common throughout Europe, Africa, India and, to a lesser extent, the Middle East. Primitive trumpets eventually found their way to most parts of the globe, though even today indigenous varieties are quite rare in the Americas, the Far East and South-East Asia. Some species of primitive trumpets can still be found in remote places, where they have remained largely untouched by the passage of time.
The karna or karnay is a metal natural trumpet. The name is first mentioned in the biblical book of Daniel, used in the Middle Ages to the Persian military bands and in the Indian Mughal Empire to the representative orchestra naqqāra-khāna and which is still used by this name in ceremonial music in Central Asia and northern India.
The saxotromba is a valved brass instrument invented by the Belgian instrument-maker Adolphe Sax around 1844. It was designed for the mounted bands of the French military, probably as a substitute for the French horn. The saxotrombas comprised a family of half-tube instruments of different pitches. By about 1867 the saxotromba was no longer being used by the French military, but specimens of various sizes continued to be manufactured until the early decades of the twentieth century, during which time the instrument made sporadic appearances in the opera house, both in the pit and on stage. The instrument is often confused with the closely related saxhorn.
The saxtuba is an obsolete valved brass wind instrument conceived by the Belgian instrument-maker Adolphe Sax around 1845. The design of the instrument was inspired by the ancient Roman cornu and tuba. The saxtubas, which comprised a family of half-tube and whole-tube instruments of varying pitches, were first employed in Fromental Halévy's opera Le Juif errant in 1852. Their only other public appearance of note was at a military ceremony on the Champ de Mars in Paris in the same year. The term "saxtuba" may also refer to the bass saxhorn.
A musical instrument is a device created or adapted to make musical sounds. In principle, any object that produces sound can be considered a musical instrument—it is through purpose that the object becomes a musical instrument. A person who plays a musical instrument is known as an instrumentalist. The history of musical instruments dates to the beginnings of human culture. Early musical instruments may have been used for rituals, such as a horn to signal success on the hunt, or a drum in a religious ceremony. Cultures eventually developed composition and performance of melodies for entertainment. Musical instruments evolved in step with changing applications and technologies.
A horn is any of a family of musical instruments made of a tube, usually made of metal and often curved in various ways, with one narrow end into which the musician blows, and a wide end from which sound emerges. In horns, unlike some other brass instruments such as the trumpet, the bore gradually increases in width through most of its length—that is to say, it is conical rather than cylindrical. In jazz and popular-music contexts, the word may be used loosely to refer to any wind instrument, and a section of brass or woodwind instruments, or a mixture of the two, is called a horn section in these contexts.
A fanfare trumpet, also called a herald trumpet, is a brass instrument similar to but longer than a regular trumpet, capable of playing specially composed fanfares. Its extra length can also accommodate a small ceremonial banner that can be mounted on it.
Nafir, also nfīr, plural anfār, Turkish nefir, is a slender shrill-sounding straight natural trumpet with a cylindrical tube and a conical metal bell, producing one or two notes. It was used as a military signaling instrument and as a ceremonial instrument in countries shaped by Islamic culture in North Africa, the Middle East and South Asia. In Ottoman, Persian and Mugulin miniatures, the nafīr is depicted in battle scenes. In Christian culture, it displaced or was played alongside of the curved tuba or horn, as seen in artwork of about the 14th century A.D.
Chazozra, also hazozra, hasosrah, hasoserah, plural chazozrot, hasoserot was a natural trumpet used in religious rituals by the Israelites, made of bronze, silver or silver alloys. The chazozra is mentioned 31 times in the Old Testament and is translated tuba in the Vulgate. The first written description of the chazozra is probably recorded in the 4th book of Moses. The prophet Moses is from Elohim prompted: "And the LORD spoke to Moses and said: Make two trumpets of beaten silver..."
Herodotus likened the sound of the ancient trumpet to the braying of an ass.
Karranay...curved trumpet of Turkey...sounded like the braying of an ass...
[Summary: King Tut's trumpets and also close reproductions were tested using modern mouthpieces as well as without a mouthpiece. The latter was how they originally were played. Using a mouthpiece allowed more notes to be played, but one of the original trumpets was damaged from the pressure made by playing the highest note. Without the modern mouthpiece, only two notes were playable.
The brilliance of the trumpets tone is caused by its narrow, mainly cylindrical bore...
There is no evidence available on the use of the trumpet in Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire. It made its appearance again from the Orient, via the Crusades, beginning in the eleventh centuru
According to Sachs, the trumpet disappeared from Europe after the fall of Rome and was not reintroduced until the time of the crusades, when instruments were taken from the Saracens...the Slide trumpet was developed with a mouthpipe that telescoped inside the first length of tubing to enable the player to alter the instrument's length while playing.
It is generally acknowledged...that the cylindrical bore instruments were borrowed from the East. Perhaps those buccins Turcs and cors sarrasinois which the Crusading chroniclers record included the nafīr and karnā...
The looped trumpet is a European development adopted by Eastern cultures; from the 14th century new forms of trumpets with curved tubes started to appear in Europe, and European instruments then began to supersede the straight trumpet in Islamic societies...
Horn of brass - Nafir. Culture: Moroccan. Origin: North Africa / Maghreb / Morocco. before 1955. approx. 176cm (69 5/16in.))
In the 16th century the trumpet's range increased up to the 13th natural...from the 8th partial upward was called clarino...a special clarino mouthpiece, a narrow-bore cup-shaped mouthpiece with a sharp-angled rim