Seventeenth-Century English Trumpet Music

Seventeenth-Century English Trumpet MusicAuthor(s): Don SmithersSource: Music & Letters, Vol. 48, No. 4 (Oct., 1967), pp. 358-365Published by: Oxford University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/733230Accessed: 26-11-2016 04:48 UTC

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SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLISH TRUMPET MUSIC

BY DON SMITHERS

COMPARATIVELY recent attention given to seventeenth-century Bolognese compositions for trumpet has led to the realization that Italy was not alone in producing music of this kind. Although no other city in Europe can boast of the singular distinction of so large a repertory and so many sinfonie, sonate and concerti con tromba by nearly a dozen first-rate composers, the number of similarly scored works of the period that exist beyond Italy's borders is considerable. In the libraries and archives of Darmstadt, Kromeriz, Ljubljana, London, Oxford, Uppsala and Vienna an astonishing number of trumpet pieces by non-Italian composers of the period have been discovered, as well as pieces by Italians whose music had been imported, or had themselves worked in those areas. At London, Oxford and Cambridge, for example, there are several Italian trumpet sonatas, or sonatas modelled after those of Italian origin, with relatively few differences from sonatas of the Bolognese school. There are manuscript and printed concordances in Britain of works of Italian origin that clearly represent the Bologna and Modena schools of trumpet writing. In the Bodleian Library at Oxford there is one of two known sources of a Torelli sonata for trumpet and strings; also at Oxford, in Christ Church Library, is a manuscript score of a sonata con tromba by Pietro Ziani-the only known con- cordance of a copy in Uppsala, Sweden. At St. Michael's, Tenbury there is a manuscript set of parts to Corelli's trumpet sonata in D major, as well as several other vocal and instrumental works by the Bolognese composers Cazzati, Colonna, Nenna and Perti. English composers in the seventeenth century saw and heard much of this music and emulated the Italian style in many pieces for occasional entertainments, including overtures and incidental music to masques, odes and operas.

Of the many manuscript and printed collections of trumpet sonatas, sinfonie, concerti and the like, that are to be found in the British Museum, the most recent acquisition, a manuscript set of parts containing almost a dozen sonatas, represents the largest single source of seventeenth-century trumpet music of English origin. This collection, at present unbound and not fully catalogued, was advertised for sale by Otto Haas in I949 (Catalogue No. 28, item 78). It was there described as a collection of seventeenth-century English instrumental music in manuscript, with sonatas for trumpet

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or trumpets by Barratt, Eccles, Finger, Paisible and Daniel Purcell. Also contained in the collection is a sonata for three violins, violas and continuo by Giovanni Battista Bononcini; a sonata for strings and continuo and another sonata for oboe, strings and continuo by Du Parn; a sonata for three violins and continuo, a sonata for violin, oboe and continuo, and a sonata for strings and continuo by Finger; and lastly, a chaconne for two oboes or violins, viola and continuo also by Finger. The collection was for a time the property of the late Raymond Russell. It was advertised again by Sotheby's in 1957 and was purchased by the British Museum, where it is catalogued as Add. 49,599.

There are seventeen pieces in the collection. Each work consists of one part per instrument-a single 8j" x I I 1 sheet of paper with hand-ruled five-line staves and music on both sides (with the excep- tion of the part serving as a wrapper and title page). All the parts were edge-gilded and are still kept in what appears to be the original portfolio-a tooled, brown calf-skin case with three sets of ties. Except for the chaconne by Finger the beginning of each part is indented with a press-mark around the word 'Sonata', which was obviously printed from an engraved plate measuring I" X 2'". Depending upon the individual part, the name of the instrument is written above the word 'Sonata' in the same hand as the wording of the title-page and the notation. The composer's name almost always appears at the end of each part. The watermark found on most of the individual leaves is called a 'Strasburg bend and lily' by Churchill.2 On several leaves part of the numerals 'IV' can be seen. This, coupled with the Strasburg bend and lily, is shown in Heawood' under 'Bend', pl. 24, no. 157, and is listed as a paper made in Amsterdam with a publication date of I695.

The term 'sonata' may be relatively applied. Much of this music could easily have been taken from the incidental overtures and act tunes used in contemporary English operas, odes and masques- which in themselves often follow the basic lines of the Bolognese trumpet sonata. Henry Purcell's trumpet sonata in D major may be a work of this kind. It has been suggested that it may be the overture to the lost I694 ode, 'Light of the World'.4 The libretto by Matthew Prior suggests that it contained a trumpet sonata. Many other examples of Purcell's instrumental pieces from his larger dramatic works, when isolated and performed as separate compositions, fall easily into the category of a sonata.' But this is not to say that the

1 Probably Charles Dieupart, a French composer who settled in England c. 1700. 2 W. A. Churchill, 'Watermarks in Paper in the XVIIth and XVIIIth Centuries'

(Amsterdam, I935). 3 Edward Heawood, 'Watermarks Mainly of the 17th and i8th Centuries' (Hilver-

sum, 1950). 4 A 'Hymn to the Sun Set by Dr. Purcell and sung before Their Majesties on New-

Years Day, I693/4'. See Michael Tilmouth, 'The Technique and Forms of Purcell's Sonatas', in Music & Letters, xl (I959), p. o09, n. 2.

6 One example is the third-act overture in 'The Indian Queen'.

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pieces by Daniel Purcell, Godfrey Finger and John Eccles are abstractions from any of their many larger dramatic compositions. Investigation into this possibility, judging from an examination of many of their extant operas and other sources from which these works might have been taken, has proved negative. In all likelihood all these pieces were composed for particular entertainments. Since most of the composers represented were at one time or another employed at court, it is quite possible that the trumpet pieces previously described and the ones mentioned below were intended for royal occasions. This is suggested by the carefully tooled leather portfolio, the high quality of the copyist's manuscript and the edge- gilding of the parts themselves. Someone of means evidently had the parts elegantly prepared and done up as a single collection.

No English composer in the seventeenth century enjoyed the same opportunities as the Bologna musicians for composing music for specific occasions, nor did any one have at his disposal such large orchestral forces. The overwhelming number of performers available to the Bologna composers in 1716, as cited by Vatielli,6 quoting from the archives of San Petronio, did not exist in England. While Torelli, Perti or Domenico Gabrieli had as many as 123 'ripienists',7 the largest total number of performers that can be found in an established court orchestra of a seventeenth-century English monarch is the band of 24 violins, plus 25 other instrumentalists, during the reign of Charles II. 8 Of the 80 performers mentioned in connection with the spectacular masque at Whitehall in I674, only 52 were instrumentalists. The Chapel Royal, which was the only institution in England regularly employing instruments in the church service, used the 24 violins with occasional additions of wind instruments supplementary to the normal ensemble. Outside the sphere of court activities the theatre orchestras were not large and the number of performers in tavern or music-house concerts was always small.

Even the scope of the English sonatas is narrower than most of the Bologna pieces. Few would have ever required more than 20 performers. The largest scoring in any of the works with trumpets is Godfrey Finger's C major sonata (No. 5 in the original enumeration of the manuscript), which is scored for two trumpets, three oboes, strings, bassoon and continuo. The texture of most of the English works, including the opera movements by Purcell and others, does not call for large forces. Many follow the lines of the earlier Italian canzona-like sonata, with independent contrapuntal parts over a basso continuo. We rarely find the block orchestral effects so often encountered in the sonatas and sinfonie of the late seventeenth-century Bolognese musicians. When writing for a pair of trumpets the English composers generally treat each part separately rather than as Torelli

6 F. Vatielli, 'Arte e vita musicale a Bologna' (Bologna, 1927), pp. 208-9. 7 Franz Giegling, 'Giuseppe Torelli, ein Beitrag zur Entwicklungsgeschichte des

italienischen Konzerts' (Cassel, 1949), p. 29. 8 H. C. de Lafontaine, 'The King's Musick' (I907), p. 345.

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and Perti so often do, as a single instrument playing in thirds. The homogeneous effect of strings and wind sharing the same material in the orchestral tuttis, as in the case of the Bologna works, is an infrequent device in English works. Antiphony for the sake of orchestral variety and effects of loud and soft are more often found in English pieces during a slow, introductory section-especially if there are two trumpets balanced by strings.

The range and technical difficulty of English trumpet parts is on the whole conservative as compared with parts of Italian and German origin. Throughout the entire Baroque era English trumpet parts rarely venture above a" and avoid difficult non-harmonic notes; they generally avoid awkward intervals and make greater use of the lower harmonics. The strong and resonant 4th-8th partials are more easily played and account for the triadic character of most trumpet music. The introductory slow movement of Daniel Purcell's sonata No. I8, with its characteristically trumpet-like intervals, is typical of the opening statements of much English trumpet music in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (compare the opening figures of this sonata with the first movement of the overture to Henry Purcell's St. Cecilia ode of I692, 'Hail, bright Cecilia'). Henry Purcell, whose trumpet parts compare more favourably with the North Italian compositions than those written by any other English composer, was one of the few English composers to extend the capabilities of the trumpet from the normal principale register to the upper harmonics of the clarino tessitura. The reason for the general lack of enterprise may have been a dissatisfaction on the part of English composers with the basically out-of-tune upper partials, or, more likely, it was the limitations of performers and a lack of virtuosos. Even Handel usually avoids d"', c#"' and b" when writing for a trumpet in D. There are only two d""s in the entire first-trumpet part in 'Messiah', for example. Compare this with any of the Bologna concertos or sinfonie con tromba, or with the many first-trumpet parts in the works of Bach. When any unusual non-harmonic notes do occur in the middle register of English trumpet parts, it usually turns out that the part is also doubling with an oboe or violin, in which case the trumpet-player at the time would have used some harmonically agreeable alternative.

The only possibility that would have made such non-existent notes playable would have been the use of the 'flatt' trumpet as described by the seventeenth-century English writer James Talbot. 9 This was the instrument prescribed by Purcell in the Queen Mary Funeral Music, O where there is a clear case of many middle-register non-harmonic notes being intended for a special trumpet capable of shifting its harmonic series by quickly altering the length of bore, very much in the same way as a trombone. It is very unlikely that

9 The Talbot manuscript, a collection of notes on musical instruments, c. 1695, in Christ Church Library, Oxford (MS. 1 I87), is reprinted in sections in the Journal of the Galpin Society, i (1948) onwards.

10 Purcell Society edition, xxxi, ed. by Thurston Dart, p. 92.

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any other trumpet but the normal one of between seven to eight feet in length was used in the performance of most English music. If there was any reluctance on the part of English composers to extend the trumpet into the clarino register and include occasional non- harmonic notes, it was due to the players themselves.

Of the many trumpet-players at the courts of Charles II, James II and William and Mary listed in the Lord Chamberlain's records, only two are ever mentioned in other sources as particularly out- standing and of comparable virtuosity with Continental players. These are William Bull and Mathias Shaw (frequently spelled Shore, Show or Shoar). The former was also a trumpet-maker of great repute: several of his instruments, usually in silver, have survived to the present day. One beautiful specimen in particular is the trumpet in the silver collection at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. This instrument, which is in C, has been fully described in the Journal of the Galpin Society.1l It was Shaw who played many of the demanding parts in Purcell's odes and operas; it was also Shaw and Bull who, in all likelihood, performed the pieces described above, as well as the Clarke, Paisible and Corelli pieces in British Museum, Add. 39,565-7, 30839. In these four manuscript part-books are contained many instrumental pieces-suites, sonatas and short dances- probably in Paisible's own hand, and many composed by him. This collection not only contains the 'Suite de Clarke', which is for trumpet, two oboes, strings and continuo (the fourth movement, 'Rondeau', is the so-called 'Trumpet Voluntary' at one time attributed to Purcell), but a complete version of the Corelli sonata in D major for trumpet, two violins and continuo, entitled 'Corelli con duo discando, tromba et basso'. It is one of the three known concordances of the Corelli sonata in Great Britain.12

One of the most interesting discoveries in Add. 49,599 is Giovanni Bononcini's sonata 'For 3 Violins a Tenor [viola] Viol [violone] Basse'-the second of two pieces with a number 5 in the set. Having already transcribed the trumpet pieces from Bononcini's Op. 3, the 'Sinfonie a 5. 6 7. e 8. Istromenti, con alcune a una e due Trombe', published by Monti (Bologna, I685), I recognized the sonata for three violins to be one and the same as the 'Sinfonia Settima a 6' of this collection. The only known copy of the printed edition, composed when Bononcini was fifteen, is listed by Sartorila as I685f: it lacks the first-violin part. Fortunately there is an almost complete manuscript score in the Paris Bibliotheque Nationale.14 The score, com-

11 Eric Halfpenny, 'Two Oxford Trumpets', Journal of the Galpin Society, xvi (1963), pp. 49-62.

12 See Michael Tilmouth, 'Corelli's Trumpet Sonata', Monthly Musical Record, go (I960), pp. 217-21, arid Norman Cherry, 'A Corelli Sonata for Trumpet, Violins and Basso Continuo', Brass Quarterly, iv, 3 (I96I), pp. 103-II3 and iv, 4 (I96I), pp. I56-8.

la Claudio Sartori, 'Bibliografia della musica strumentale italiana stampata in Italia fino al 1700' (Florence, I952).

14 Catalogued as 'Symphonies, op. III-Bologna I685, (P. ms. copi6e par Brossard) I vol. in-I2 obl.', in J. lcorcheville's 'Catalogue du Fonds de Musique Ancienne de la Bibliotheque Nationale', i (Paris, 1912), p. I I6. The catalogue number is Vm7 1496.

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plete except for the 'Sinfonia Quinta a 6' (the last three and one- half movements are missing), supplies the necessary first-violin part. It was copied by Sebastien de Brossard about I690.

One theory as to how this sinfonia-sonata comes to be included in a collection of English pieces may also throw some light on another point: the obvious but unsubstantiated relationship between works of Bolognese origin and Purcell's instrumental music, which, as A. J. Hutchings says, "have more in common than is easily explained by contemporaneity".15 Purcell and his younger brother Daniel, as well as many other English composers at the courts ofJames II and William and Mary, in all probability had a chance to see pieces of Italian origin-especially from Modena and Bologna. Mary of Modena, daughter of Laura d'Este, the guardian of Giovanni Bononcini after his father's death in I678, was the wife ofJames II. The famed Estes of Modena were great patrons of art and music, making Modena at that time one of the important centres of music- making; and because of their nearness to one another, Bologna and Modena often shared their musical resources of performers and

composers. It is highly unlikely that Mary brought none of the Este music and books with her to London when she married James (then Duke of York) in I673.

The trumpet itself did much to determine the thematic material of many seventeenth- and eighteenth-century compositions. The natural trumpet was limited to a single overtone series and only in rare instances and in the hands of a relatively few virtuoso performers could it reliably produce any notes beyond the natural harmonics. Certain idiomatic figures, arising from the instrument's own capabilities and limitations, were soon applied to other instruments and became the characteristic style, often thematically repetitive, of the Italian sinfonia and concerto. Much in the same way a large number of Baroque figures grew out of the limited positions available in string-playing. Long melodic stretches, except on rare occasions when written for such virtuosos as Bach knew in Cothen and Leipzig, were, by virtue of the player's endurance, a near physical impossi- bility. The English composers, like the Bolognese, wrote idiomatically for the trumpet, and showed their understanding of the performer's capacity by including frequent rests. This also accounts for the often fragmentary statements of thematic material encountered in this kind of music.

Because the natural trumpet is restricted to the notes of the harmonic series, much of the trumpet music at this time was relatively simple in its key structure. Modulations, except to the dominant or subdominant, normally excluded trumpets, as well as any sections with excursions through various keys. The sonatas of Daniel Purcell, Eccles, Paisible, Finger and Barratt in Add. 49,599 are quite simple and straightforward in their key scheme in the trumpet

15 A. J. Hutchings, 'The Baroque Concerto' (London, 1961), p. 70, n. I.

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movements. Only in the slow movements do we find any attempt at modulatory and chromatic changes. Interest in the trumpet sections, which rarely move further away from the tonic than the dominant, is maintained through the use of antiphony, rhythmic vitality and counterpoint. There are frequent cadential hemiolas that add much character and charm to these pieces. In those sonatas scored for a pair of trumpets, the second-trumpet part has a much more independent character than in many of the Bologna and German compositions. The sonatas by Daniel Purcell and Paisible compare favourably with the Darmstadt trumpet pieces by Telemann in this respect.16

Apart from the five- and six-movement sonatas by Godfrey Finger, almost all the English trumpet pieces described above are of the same form as most of the Bologna trumpet sonatas, i.e. in the fast-slow-fast scheme of the Italian overture. The Eccles four-

movement sonata in D major (No. 16) is unique in that it includes a fugal Allegro second movement in 3/4 following a fugal Allegro first movement in 4. The usual scheme is as follows: Fast (1, slow C or 3/4 (3/2), fast 3/8 or 6/8; or, Introduction (slow) C, fast (1I, slow C or 3/4 (3/2), fast 3/8 or 6/8. English composers generally avoid overworking the Italian echo formula of statement (trumpet), answer (strings), so often encountered in the trumpet works of Torelli, Perti, Aldrovandini and most of the other Bologna-Modena composers. The interdependence of trumpet and strings is more apparent in the English sonatas of the period, following more closely the lines of the Corelli sonata and the sonatas of Bononcini, and comparable to the later compositions of Telemann. Even Henry Purcell's sonata, which uses the Italian statement-answer device, particularly in the first movement, avoids the tedium of using it too often by overlapping the instruments at cadential points. Thus, each sonority is given a more interdependent quality, rather than the frequent impression of two isolated entities constantly stating and restating thematic material in antiphony. Actually, only the Finger sonata for trumpet, oboe and basso continuo (No. 2) uses reiterated antiphony to any extent. But here is a case of a 'contest' between two solo intruments rather than a solo for a single instrument with string accompaniment.

There are further interesting points about these and other English trumpet sonatas that might be mentioned. The ancillary role of a pair of timpani, a normal adjunct in German works with trumpets and to a lesser extent in the Italian sinfonie, is often wanting in English trumpet music. None of the previously mentioned sonatas include timpani. Henry Purcell uses timpani only on occasion and in music of a very different kind than the sonata-like compositions. In pieces like the Finger sonata in C (No. 5) and the sonata in D (No. 3), as well as the Paisible sonata in D (No. 6) and the Purcell

16 For an example of Telemann's writing for more than one trumpet see his Concerto grosso in D major in 'Das Erbe deutscher Musik', I I.

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sonata in D (No. I8), timpani might have been expected to accom- pany the wind. But there are no parts and no indications, either in the titles or in any of the lists of instrumentalists previously mentioned. In English seventeenth-century brass music timpani seem to have been relegated to accompaniment only on festive occasions and with trumpets in music of a ceremonial or fanfare character. With regard to the tonality of these sonatas (including the Finger sonata in C for violin and oboe [No. 8], which, as far as the oboe part is concerned, could have been played on a natural trumpet), there is almost an even division: five are in C major and six in D major. An explanation of this might have been found in a consideration of the kind of continuo instrumentl7 intended and the standard of pitch at the time. But since the English adopted the Italian method of writing trumpet parts at concert pitch and since all the parts of a particular piece agree on key, transpositions due to lower tuned continuo instruments cannot be the answer. The standard trumpet was in D (sometimes in Eb) but could be crooked in C. The choice of one key or another seems arbitrary, unless an explanation is to be found by considering the keys of other music that might have been played with these pieces. Most of Henry Purcell's trumpet music is in D major, as are most Continental pieces in the latter part of the seventeenth century. The C major pieces, as well as a few individual examples in C from Italy and elsewhere, are exceptional only with respect to key. Thematically, they do not differ from the D major works, nor is there any difference in the relationship of tonality between the movements.

Lastly, a comment about the string parts. The violins follow the normal range and technical considerations of the period and are comparable to the violin parts in this type of music from Italy. The 'tenor' referred to in most of the titles is the English term for viola, i.e. a tenor violin. This does not mean a tenor viola, which was required in many seventeenth-century Italian compositions and was a larger instrument than the alto viola. The basso and basso continuo parts are unusual with respect to most contemporary English instrumental works in that they are often independent of one another. Like the cello and continuo parts of the Bononcini sonatas, and to a lesser extent the sonatas of Cazzati (Op. 35) and Grossi (Op. 3), the two bass parts of these English sonatas quite often have their own separate entries and are divided in the fugal sections.

It is possible that in time concordances to the pieces described above will make themselves known to researchers interested in this type and period of music. We may hope, too, that more English sources of Baroque trumpet music will be discovered in the many unexplored areas and respositories in Britain and elsewhere.

17 Many printed and manuscript sources specify organo as the continuo instrument. Add. 49,599 merely states 'basso continuo'. Since both the organ and the harpsichord were used with equal frequency in the performance of English instrumental music, it is impossible to say which of the two would have been preferred.

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Seventeenth-Century English Trumpet Music