Huggy Bear

Wow.....what a craftsman!

Love,
Huggy Bear

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GordonH

I don't think any of the UK orchestras were playing on F trumpets at that time. The Bb/A was standard by the first world war.

I have done the London symphony.
Its a good blow.

By the way I have been looking at this issue myself.
There are a few Eb low trumpets around but they are all very large bore.
A true F trumpet of the type being discussed here would be about the same bore as a Bb trumpet and there are only a few specialist makers doing them (and they are subsequently very expensive).

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ilikethetrumpet

[Along the same line, Samuel Barber's Capricorn Concerto is published with the part in C concert, but with a note that it can be played on a Bb trumpet and one passage (with a low E concert) must be played on a Bb. So then, why do the published parts not include a Bb transcription? Ok, ok, we should all be up on our sight transposition skills, but given the modern tonality of the piece, it's tough enough already![/quote]


Off-topic, but perhaps interesting: the new (1997, I think) Schirmer edition of the Capricorn, that includes a piano reduction, actually, includes a Bb part as well. I tossed around programming that piece last year, read through it with some folks, and was so flummoxed by that low concert E that I brought it in to a masterclass with Phil Smith. Ever a polite and gracious man, Mr. Smith did not at all hide his disdain for the piece and the note in particular. In fact, he relayed a story about a famous player--it probably was Vacchiano, but it was a masterclass I was too nervous to remember everything--who Samuel Barber had gone to for advice about the practical range of the trumpet while writing the piece. After the piece was completed, the player, betrayed told Barber: "You didn't tell me it was muted!"

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JustinSmith

TENOR TRUMPET GETZEN 300-Eb & F - RESTORED - eBay (item 230110313155 end time Mar-21-08 08:59:18 PDT)

Is this a more modern version of what you guys were talking about?

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rowuk

I wasn't talking about a horn like that. I think the Getzen is more intended for getting projection on the horn parts in marching band!
Here is what I was talking about:

Tief-E/F-Trompete bei eBay.de: Trompeten (endet 21.03.08 21:45:00 MEZ)

or

Blechblas-Instrumentenbau Egger

Egger calls this instrument erroneously an "alto trumpet" and labels the use for the lower instruments which is also not historically correct.

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BrassOnLine

I agree with Buccinator.
F trumpets were so usual at Wagner's time, but not at R. Strauss age.
Strauss (and many other) Use to writo to play without complicated armors, so they assumed everybody can (and should) transpose.

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buccinator

Hey folks,

just an example of a low F pitched trumpet for the serious orchestral trumpet player.....Thein Brass

this fantastic German manufacturer THEIN...offers this four valve rotary trumpet in Bb, mentioned above.....

Luis M. Araya

What it was used in England for most of the 19th century was mainly the slide trumpet, (the Harper Brothers et al., look Ed Tarr´s THE TRUMPET, pgs, 151-153.)

I think it would be nice to start the tradition of using again the orchestral (end of 19th century) F trumpet:

from Dotzauer trumpets:

A Player's Guide to Rotary Valve Trumpets

Low F Trumpets

We have also added to our inventory rotary valve orchestral trumpets in low F. These instruments represented the final stage of development of the eight-foot length trumpet of the baroque and classical periods and were the standard trumpet used in the late 19th and early 20th century orchestra before the now-common half-length Bb and C trumpets came into general use. Comment on the then-new short trumpets was not universally favorable, and many conductors and players criticized the lack of authentic trumpet tone quality of the half-length instruments.
Trumpet historians have recently concluded that the low F orchestral trumpet, together with its less-common companion in Eb, was in fact the last true member of the historical trumpet family and that modern half-length trumpets, with their mixture of cylindrical and conical bore tapers (American-style piston valve trumpets have an average of 29% cylindrical tubing exclusive of valve slides, 21% conical tubing exclusive of the bell branch, and 50% in the sharply conical bell branch) are in fact a hybrid of trumpet and cornet design and represent a new type of instrument which is a radical departure from the true trumpet family. As with any type of innovation, there was a trade-off of priorities, both for better and for worse. The newer four-foot instruments provided greater security in the upper register than the older eight-foot pitch instruments for the less-accomplished players of that day, but at a considerable sacrifice in tonal quality and musical properties.

The use of Bb rotary valve trumpets for the late romantic Austro-German repertoire and the earlier natural trumpet literature has become extremely widespread among American orchestral players in the last decade or so. We suspect that the reintroduction of the low F trumpet will be the next logical step in the revival of the authentic performance practice of late 19th and early 20th orchestral trumpet playing. The level of playing technique as well as the design skill and quality control of trumpet makers have increased substantially in the last one hundred years, and present-day players can bring a much greater degree of accuracy and control to the F trumpet than was common in the late nineteenth century.

The low F orchestral trumpet is not the same instrument as a contralto F trumpet; they are two different instruments for two different purposes. The so-called contralto trumpets pitched in low F or Eb, as well as bass trumpets pitched in low D, C, or Bb are of much larger bore sizes. Whereas there are bass trumpet parts in the late Wagner operas and the works of a few later composers, contralto trumpets have never found general acceptance as an orchestral instrument. They do, however, have some utility in trumpet or brass choir music. The true orchestral trumpet in low F, on the other hand, is a narrow bore instrument with the same musical flexibility and solo properties as the shorter trumpets and in addition has a much richer and fuller tone, a more complex, burnished quality. In fact, the Dotzauer low F trumpets have exactly the same .429" bore diameter as their Bb and C rotary valve trumpets! The overall length of the tubing, however, is about half again as long as the Bb trumpet, affording better projection with a darker, richer overtone structure as well as accurate response and greater pitch stability.

Those musicians who have never seen an F trumpet before are always amazed to find that, on first glance, it appears to be a Bb trumpet, having the same bell size and physical length. Only by looking closely at the longer valve slides and extra tubing can one see that it is designed to play at a lower pitch. It bears the same relationship to the Bb trumpet as the F side of a double horn does to the Bb side. A double F/Bb trumpet would be ideal, but the additional size and weight would make it clumsy and tiring to hold, seeing as it is not held in the lap like a double horn. We suspect that some et players might develop a "double horn" technique, playing most passages on the F trumpet and switching to a Bb instrument for occasional high register work.

The full length F trumpet was the preferred instrument of players and composers from the invention of the valve trumpet up until about the time of the First World War. If one looks at the symphonies of both Sibelius and Vaughan-Williams, for example, the earlier works specify F trumpets and the later ones Bb trumpets. Richard Strauss, who used the F trumpet extensively in his scores, notes in his 1904 revision of the Berlioz Treatise on Instrumentation that, at that time, first players were generally using Bb trumpets and second and third players were using F trumpets, regardless of the score notation. Clearly the turn of the century saw a transitional phase during which both types of instruments were in use either interchangeably or simultaneously. Once one has experienced playing the Franck Symphony, the Wagner Parsifal Prelude, Strauss's Tyl Eulenspiegel, or the Sibelius Second Symphony on an F trumpet, the tonal limitations of the short length trumpets for this late romantic literature become readily apparent.

The low F trumpet also can be used as an excellent full-length eight-foot instrument for the performance of natural trumpet parts of the classical and early romantic periods from high F down to Bb. The various valve combinations, which substitute for the tuning crooks of the natural trumpet, allow the modern player to "crook" the instrument from F down to B natural; pulling out the tuning and valve slides easily allow playing in Bb as well. This technique recreates the tonal properties and playing technique of the full-length natural trumpet without the dynamic limitations that an historical instrument would have when used in a modern orchestral context.

A further if somewhat less authentic use of this instrument would be for a modern-instrument performance of the solo trumpet part of the Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 of J. S. Bach. This writer has for over twenty-five years maintained that this part was supposed to sound an octave lower than it is customarily played today. A number of performances in recent years, starting with a recording supervised by the British musicologist Thurston Dart shortly before his death more than twenty years ago, have in fact been done precisely that way, although with the substitution of modern horn for trumpet. The use of the low F orchestral trumpet would in fact keep the work in the provenance of the trumpet world, provide a tonal quality closer to that of the same-length baroque F trumpet, and restore the proper balance and octave placement of the four solo parts as well. We suspect that many trumpeters will continue to play the solo part in the higher octave simply because it represents a macho tour de force for the accomplished player; musically sensitive players and conductors, however, may well wish to opt for a performance which places a premium on musical values rather than exhibitionism.

And they are not so expensive:

Josef Dotzauer Historical Brass Instruments

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