Trumpets and other High Brass 2

A History inspired by the Joe R. and Joella F. Utley Collection

Ways to Expand the Harmonic Series describes the emergence of instruments in which the single harmonic series is expanded in some way--with crooks, slides, tone holes, or keys. It traces the slide trumpet from its ambiguous beginnings, its blossoming and heyday in England to the development of slide cornets and trumpets in vaudeville and jazz in the twentieth century. It discusses the emergence of the cornetto from early fingerhole horns, its relation to the serpent, and its technological and regional variants up to the early nineteenth century. Important documents delineating the emergence of the invention and the stopped trumpet are presented for the first time in English translations, and acoustical implications for hand stopping are discussed. Various regional schools of the keyed trumpet and keyed bugle are described in great detail. Recently discovered documents that shine new light on the early history of the keyed bugle are fully transcribed.