The Continuing Influence of the Natural Trumpet

Most brass histories focus on the revolutionaries, the trailblazers, the composers who first utilized new instruments and helped thus to introduce them into the orchestra. Thus, brass histories focus on composers like Hector Berlioz and his use of the cornet. French opera composers were the first to introduce the valved trumpet into the opera orchestra. Schumann and Wagner first introduced the valved trumpet into the German orchestra, and to modern trumpeters (looking back with our own observer biases) Mahler is the Great Emancipator, taking the lowly, unappreciated valve trumpet (in Bb), and giving it a voice in the orchestra with solos, great bombastic tutti passages, and delicate moments of pathos. 

The new Stomvi "Mahler" Titanium C Trumpet. You can only play Mahler on it.

However...

The natural trumpet did not die in the 1820s. It was not extinct in the 1850s, when Richard Wagner began writing the Ring cycle. When Joachim Raff wrote his symphonies during the nineteenth century, he wrote including the valved trumpet, but still wrote in the common ‘classical style’ where trumpets only play tonic and dominant, or scale degrees 1 and 5. When Bedřich Smetana wrote his 6-part suite Má Vlast in the 1870s and constantly changed the key of the trumpet parts, he was mimicking the natural trumpet parts of Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert. Here are several of my favorite examples of the continuing influence of the natural trumpet. 

• 1850: Friedrich Sachse (Hanover) performs his own concerto for “simple trumpet” at the Leipzig Gewandhaus. Sachse was the brother of Ernst Sachse, composer of the 100 Etudes still used by trumpeters to practice transposition. Berlioz mentioned both brothers in his Memoirs, during his travels in Germany. The fact that two of the more famous German trumpeters are famous for their valve trumpet and natural trumpet playing, is testament to the staying power of the valveless trumpet. 

• 1857: François Dauverné publishes his Méthode in Paris. Roughly 2/3 of the book is exercises for the natural, valveless trumpet. Only the latter third is exercises for the slide and (low-pitched) valve trumpet. Even though Dauverné is responsible for playing some of the earliest valve trumpet parts at the Paris Opéra, you can almost hear him saying, “yes, the valve trumpet is an important creation and should be studied, but the main principles of trumpet playing are learned on the natural trumpet.”

Dauverné's Slide Trumpet

• The so-called Leipzig “conservatives”: Schumann, Mendelssohn (although he died in 1847, he could be considered the spiritual leader of this group), Niels Gade (under appreciated), Joachim, Brahms. Although perhaps it’s unfair to consider all of these composers together in the strictest terms, it’s true they used the valve trumpet as if it were 7 natural trumpets collected together (in other words, use the valves to transpose the instrument, but continue to only use the notes of the harmonic series). In Brahms’ case (who died ten years before Joseph Joachim) he continued to write for the trumpet in this manner into the 1890s. Compare Brahms’ trumpet writing in his 4th Symphony (1885) against the writing in Bruckner’s 7th (1884), against César Franck’s Symphony in D Minor, Tchaikovsky’s 5th, Mahler’s 1st, Strauss’ Don Juan (all completed in 1888). These composers were very comfortable with the natural trumpet idiom and didn’t want to change their styles to fit the trend.

• Wagner used natural trumpets in a variety of keys, mostly playing fanfares onstage and behind the scenes. 

• 1881: Saint Saëns writes his Septour which calls for valve trumpet (in low E-flat), but still contains many fanfares and calls, evoking the trumpet’s former task as a military instrument. 

• 1886 & 1911: Dates of Vincent D’Indy’s Suite in an Olden Style and Rondino, both written in the style of the natural trumpet. 

• 1889: The premiere of Mahler’s First Symphony (then called a symphonic poem, Titan) in Budapest. The offstage trumpet calls heard at the beginning of the first movement (5th bar of Rehearsal 1, at Rehearsal 2, and at Rehearsal 3) lie completely within the harmonic series and could be performed on natural trumpets. I believe Mahler did this on purpose, as he uses the trumpet for militaristic fanfares regularly in his symphonies. 

• 1922: Ralph Vaughan Williams finishes his Pastoral Symphony (No. 3). There is a cadenza in the second movement for natural trumpet (bugle) in Eb, the music of which is based upon Vaughan Williams’ recollection of hearing a military bugler practicing octaves and not quite hitting the mark (and playing 7ths instead). Many trumpeters simply play the solo on the valved instrument nowadays, but RVW did say he wanted to hear natural trumpet for the slightly-out-of-tune 7th harmonic. 

• 1959: Britten writes his Fanfare for St. Edmundsbury for three trumpets, each of which cleverly only plays notes in the harmonic series (but the parts themselves would need to be played on three differently pitched natural trumpets: F, C, and D). This idea is directly in the same vein.

So the natural trumpet did not die out overnight. It could be considered to have died a slow death, during which the valved trumpet was born and rose to prominence. Musicians tend to be very conservative in regards to their tastes, trends, and styles. I wonder where music will be in another hundred years. 

I guess that’s why the early music movement is such an interesting study. Instead of composers writing new music and instruments becoming more complex, they reverted to their older, earlier, simpler incarnations. 

We are living in the present but, especially in the arts, the present is cumulative, the result of the addition of all the previous eras until the modern day. 

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