Review

Reviewed Work(s): The Music & History of the Baroque Trumpet before 1721 by Don L.
Smithers
Review by: Anthony Baines
Source: The Galpin Society Journal, Vol. 28 (Apr., 1975), pp. 137-138
Published by: Galpin Society
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/841584
Accessed: 18-05-2020 21:39 UTC

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wise with translations; Heyer's views on the practices of Italian antiquaires are
quite amusing.
Few books on old musical instruments will be more thumbed during the
next few years than this one. With the publication of the six catalogues the fat
is truly in the fire. The extent to which they confirm suspicions is not however
a matter on which to jump to quick conclusions. Mr Ripin's work will start
discussions which may in some cases go on for perhaps a long time, and it
would therefore be out of place to pick out things to remark on at this stage,
even though one may be bursting to do so. Franciolini's nomenclature is also
interesting: simbasso as ophicleide may disturb some Verdi specialists (see
Notes & Queries in this JOURNAL). In time the dust will settle and it will
become possible to assess the degree to which this dealer's wares have falsified
instrument history. It may prove greater or it may prove less than initial
glances through the lists suggests. ANTHONY BAINES

DON L. SMITHERS, The Music & History of the Baroque Trumpet before 1721.
London, Dent, 1973- 323 pp. ?8.
It can be said at once that a doctoral musical thesis has rarely been expanded
into a book in so engaging a manner. Dr Smithers grips his readers with his
writing as he grips an audience with his trumpet. He has an enormous amount
to tell of all aspects of I7th-century trumpet music, much that he has uncovered
himself. One only wonders why he is so stingy with music examples. Of these
there are 17, only ten of which illustrate music for the natural trumpet, four
from Purcell. Stradella's sonata, which he has examined in the manuscript,
'exhibits a precocious inventiveness when compared with Cazzati's op. 35 .';
but we are not allowed a single bar from either composer despite the important
place in trumpet history occupied particularly by the latter. A long history
of the German municipal trumpeter, packed with documentation, rises to a
climax with a vivid description of a survival of tower-playing tradition up to
the present in Cracow, but without a note, even a word, to give an aural idea
of the sound. Yet he announces at the beginning that 'some authors frequently
ignore the salient fact that a musical instrument was usually made to make
music'. If one is reminded of no less eloquent works like, perhaps, Sir Maurice
Bowra's Primitive Song, which contains no examples at all, then at least the
author in this case chose to trace the significance of songs through their texts,
of which he quotes hundreds. Dr. Smithers might reply that he has chosen to
trace the significance of the baroque trumpet through its circumstances, which
he does very thoroughly. Or perhaps he wished not to put off readers who
cannot read music, or perhaps felt that incipits or other short extracts are not
good enough. But again, the omission (as I see it) of examples may reflect a
slightly casual attention to certain trimmings of the book. The title says
'before 1721' but the large and valuable Appendix of musical sources, for
which the author acknowledges the help of Robert Minter, runs up to M.
Haydn and the Mozarts. A footnote evidently added at a late stage in a hurry
places Bendinelli's Volume di tutta d'arte della Tromba in the wrong library,

137

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which will be perfectly maddening for students even if Smithers himself has
little enthusiasm for the early trumpeters' manuscripts, which deal with
'clarino' music only sketchily.
Having made, and perhaps over-laboured, this criticism, one will agree that
Smithers discusses the music with depth and understanding and as far as one
can tell with good judgement. He puts the contributions of the various major
countries (except Spain) in perspective and finds interesting connections. He
has made important particular discoveries: to mention one, Schelle's Salve
which mentions on the title-page of the manuscript a 'kleine Italienischen
Trompette . . .' (the decipherment of the passage demonstrates the author's
formidable palaeographic expertise). Be it noted that the book begins in
earnest on p. 86. Before this, chapters on the instrument-Renaissance Pre-
cursors, Baroque Trumpet-makers and Instruments-mention most things yet
seem to lack the searching and critical character of the main part of the book.
Right near the start the reader's confidence is not assured on finding that the
author believes twice nine to be seventeen (p. 24). Some lack of urgent interest
is betrayed by such observations as that the Veit slide trumpet is 'known to
have survived until the Second World War' (it still survives in Berlin). Back
in 1948 Thurston Dart and I reproduced Talbot's 'Scale of notes for the Flatt
Trumpet' without comment; if one is going to re-produce it now, it shows
little keen interest to do so without comment on its weird inconsistencies over
measurements. Three of the scarce music examples are consumed in scales of
semibreves illustrating the technical possibilities of 15th-century slide trumpets.
The argument here becomes a bit of a whirligig. The notes of the lower parts
of Dufay's Et in terra, which correspond with four natural notes of a trumpet,
are displayed sandwiched among the notes of other parts which are largely
diatonic. The mind must have wandered here. He has however noticed that
Virdung's Clareta might have been 'an instrument of variable pitch', as indeed
it might, and the sections on the baroque trumpet and its makers are admirable,
especially for the copious biographical material.
ANTHONY BAINES

JOHN HENRY VAN DER MEER, Wegweiser durch die Sammiung historisc
instrumente, Germanisches Nationalmuseum Niirnberg. Nuremb
83 pp., I8 plates. DM 3.80.
This Guide through the Collection is, as it indicates, a guide for t
or musician through the exhibited portion of the Collection, co
instruments of European art music from the I6th to the 19th cen
instruments are listed, loosely grouped by epochs of music history
lists are connected by little essays explaining the construction and his
instruments and their relationship to the music of their period, all i
Meer's delightful lucid style.
It may seem unfair to criticize one small aspect of a booklet which
much ground in so little space, but for the sake of preventing furthe
tion of an unsound opinion, I would like to take exception to the
on the oboe da caccia. As the identification of those instruments w

138

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