Page:EB1911 - Volume 27.djvu/343

Rh







We have no precise information as to the form which the lituus, one of the ancestors of the modern trumpet, assumed during the middle ages, and it is practically unrepresented in the miniatures and other antiquities, though there is a miniature in the Bible, presented in 850 to Charles the Bald, which places the lituus in the hands of one of the companions of King David. We are not, however, warranted in concluding from this that the Etruscan instrument was in use in the 9th century. The lituus or cavalry trumpet of the Romans seems to have vanished with the fall of the Roman Empire, for although the name occasionally finds a place in Latin vocabularies, the instrument and name are both unrepresented in the development of musical instruments of western Europe: its successor, the cavalry trumpet of the 15th and succeeding centuries, was evolved from the straight busine, an instrument traced, by means of its name no less than by the delicate proportions of its tube and the shape of the bell, to the Roman buccina (q.v.). The straight busines, if we may judge from the presentments made by various artists, were not all made with bores of the same calibre, some having the wider bore of the trombone, others that of the trumpet. They abound in the illuminated MSS. of the 11th to the 14th centuries. The uses to which they are put, as the instruments of angels, of heralds, of trumpeters on horseback and on foot, at court banquets and functions of state, form additional proof of their identity. Fra Angelico (d. 1455) painted angels with trumpets having either straight or zigzag tubes, the shortest being about 5 ft. long. The perfect representation of the details, the exactness of the proportions, the natural pose of the angel players, suggest that the artist painted the instrument from real models.

The credit of having bent the tube of the trumpet in three parallel branches, thus creating its modern form, has usually been claimed for a Frenchman named Maurin (1498-1515). But the transformation was really made much earlier, probably in the Low Countries or north Italy; in any case it had already been accomplished in the bas-reliefs of Luca della Robbia intended to ornament the organ chamber of the cathedral of Florence where a trumpet having the tube bent back as just described is very distinctly figured. From the beginning of the 16th century we have numerous sources of information. Virdung cites three

kinds of mouthpiece instruments &mdash; the Felttrumet, the Clareta, and the Thurner Horn; unfortunately he does not mention their distinctive characters, and it is impossible to make them out by examination of his engravings. Probably the Felttrumet and the Clareta closely resembled each other; but the compass of the former, destined for military signals, hardly went beyond the eighth proper tone, while the latter, reserved for high parts, was like the clarino (see below). The Thurner Horn was probably a kind of clarino or clarion used by watchmen on the towers. The Trummet and the Jäger Trommet are the only two mouthpiece instruments of the trumpet kind cited by Praetorius. The first was tuned in D at the chamber pitch or &ldquo;Cammerton,&rdquo; but with the help of a shank it could be put in C, the equivalent of the &ldquo;chorton&rdquo; D, the two differing about a tone. Sometimes the Trummet was lowered to B and even B♭. The Jäger Trommet, or &ldquo;trompette de chasse,&rdquo; was composed of a tube bent several times in circles, like the posthorn, to make use of a comparison employed by Praetorius himself. His drawing does not make it clear whether the column of air was like that of the trumpet; there is therefore some doubt as to the true character of the instrument. The same author further cites a wooden trumpet (hölzern Trommet}, which is no other than the Swiss Alpenhorn or the Norwegian luur. The shape of the trumpet, as seen in the bas-reliefs of Luca della Robbia, was retained for more than three hundred years: the first alterations destined to revolutionize the whole technique of the instrument were made about the middle of the 18th century. Notwithstanding the imperfections of the trumpet during this long period, the performers upon it acquired an astonishing dexterity.

The usual scale of the typical trumpet, that in D, is