Opus 13 - Baroque Trumpet |
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a long time, the trumpet was associated with military life.
The trumpet ensembles established by the royal courts and major cities
were symbols of strength and wealth. In the seventeenth century, the instrument
was added to musical ensembles and eventually acquired a broad repertoire
of arrangements by composers such as Corelli, Torelli,
At that time, Nuremberg, Germany, was a leading centre in the manufacture of brass instruments. Metalworking was already a well-established art in the city and, along with the city's prosperity and cultural effervescence, spawned the manufacture of trumpets, trombones and other brass instruments that achieved considerable renown. Baroque trumpets did not have valves; the technical improvements that made the trumpet a chromatic instrument did not appear until the nineteenth century. Robert Barclay made this beautiful instrument entirely by hand, based on a drawing of a trumpet by Hanns Hainlein, who belonged to a major family of Nuremberg brass-instrument makers. Dated 1632, the instrument is in the Stadtmuseum in Munich. This trumpet in D is made of silver-plated brass; the garland and mounts are gold-plated. The bell is decorated with a garland that bears the inscription MACHT ROBT BARCLAI IN OTTW ("Made by Robert Barclay in Ottawa"), emulating the style of Hanns Hainlein, who signed the original trumpet MACHT HANNS HAINLEIN MDCXXXII. Robert Barclay Gloucester, Ontario 1991 Robert Barclay, an arts graduate of the University of Toronto, has been making trumpets for fifteen years. For many years, he taught summer courses in Toronto on brass-instrument making. He is particularly interested in the baroque natural trumpet and is conducting exhaustive research on the celebrated seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Nuremberg trumpets. Several North American and European trumpeters specializing in baroque music own one of his instruments. Barclay has written a number of books on early trumpet-making techniques, including The Art of the Trumpet-Maker, published by Oxford University Press. Through his research and the instruments he makes, Robert Barclay actively promotes the revival of the baroque trumpet. |