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Kris Ingles Talks About
the Baroque Trumpet 
The trumpet has changed more than any other instrument that exists
in the modern orchestra today. From the fifteenth century until
the 1820’s, when piston valve technology was applied for
use on the trumpet, its construction remained the same: a simple,
twice folded metal tube with a bell on one end. The invention
of valves drastically changed its appearance and, in turn, the
sound of the instrument.
“The natural
trumpet is an instrument with great
dramatic and artistic
capabilities.”
Today the historical trumpet is often referred to as a “natural
trumpet,” because only pitches that are available in the
natural harmonic series are possible. The natural trumpet is only
able to produce a diatonic scale within its upper register, with
few chromatic notes available. It has no pistons or valves, not
even the sorts of finger holes that flutes and recorders have.
To change pitches, the player can use only his embouchure (the
system of muscles surrounding the mouth), along with changes in
air speed and pressure. This makes the valveless trumpet physically
challenging, which is why composers only wrote for it to play
in short bursts. For instance, in a three-hour oratorio, the trumpets
might play all of twenty minutes of music.
I was drawn to the natural trumpet both by its sound, which I
found so pleasing, and by its repertoire, which thrilled me. Even
though the instrument is hard to control, its physical characteristics,
which are so much more open than its shorter and tightly-wrapped
modern descendant, allows you to get a sound that is more conducive
to expressing ideas in the text when playing in an oratorio, and
it’s more responsive to the kinds of articulations that
gives it a more vocal quality.
I really wanted to be in band back in fifth grade, but my brother
took clarinet and gave it up. That made my parents afraid that
I was going to give up my instrument the way he had, so they were
reluctant to get me an instrument. Luckily, I had a cousin who
played a trumpet, so I got his instrument and played it through
junior high. My parents were finally convinced that I was actually
serious about music. In fact, I was pretty obsessed by then!
I went on to undergrad and masters as modern trumpet performance
major. I even started my DMA (Doctor of Musical Arts) at Stony
Brook in ‘98 as a modern orchestral trumpet player. I never
even heard a baroque trumpet live before then. When I finally
heard it live for the first time, I was convinced I had to do
this too. It seemed so much deeper than anything I’d encountered
in my training. At Stony Brook my husband and I discovered old-style
brass instruments in a closet. That was the beginning of the end
for me.
The historical trumpet I play does have finger holes. Though they
look like the same kinds of holes as you find on baroque woodwind
instruments like recorders, oboes and flutes, they don’t
work the same way at all. On a trumpet they are called “vents,”
and they function like an filter. If you don’t use a vent,
all the notes are possible. But, say your target note is a C that’s
next to a D. Using the vent will eliminate the adjacent D as an
option. The horrible thing is that, even with the vent holes,
you can still miss notes!
Even with the so-called physical and acoustical ‘limitations,’
the natural trumpet is an instrument with great dramatic and artistic
capabilities. Baroque composers considered the demands of the
trumpet strategically, to some extent because of its difficulty,
and were careful to use it in only very specific occasions. The
trumpet was often used as a symbolic vehicle, representing court
and heavenly prestige, warlike battles both literal and figurative,
triumph and rejoicing, judgment and doom, alarm, fame and glory,
and was often depicted as one of the chosen instruments of angels.
Whenever I learn pieces for the trumpet, I often consider the
dramatic and symbolic associations to help me express the meaning
of the trumpet’s role.
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