Changing role of the trumpet
Trumpeters were the nobility of the music profession in the seventeenth century. In German and Austrian lands, the prestige of trumpeters was such that they formed fellowships under the mandate of the Holy Roman Emperor. The importance of the instrument stemmed from its military and ceremonial role. Along with kettledrummers, trumpeters would lead armies into battle, playing signals to rally troops and to scare the enemy. In peacetime, trumpet-calls were used to herald kings, to create awe at ceremonies, and to accompany tournaments. Trumpeters tended to improvise their fanfares and signals, but sometimes notated versions also survive, as with the Cavalry Fanfare of the Bohemian musician Jan Dismas Zelenka (1679–1745).
Besides their military duties, trumpeters would also play in massed choirs as a symbol of secular or ecclesiastical power. Such a style of writing was particularly favoured by the small yet ambitious courts of central Europe, such as the Kromeriz court of prince-bishop Karl Liechenstein-Kastelkorn. In the 1660s one member of the Kromeriz orchestra was Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber (1644–1704), the tercentenary of whose death we celebrate this year. Biber showed his compositional talents in many genres but he was particularly known for his large-scale ceremonial music. Tonight’s concert includes two such pieces. The Sonata à 7 for six trumpets, timpani and continuo starts with stylised fanfares but then develops into a fully-fledged movement. More extended is the Sonata Sancti Polycarpi, which was probably written for the Kromeriz church of St Mauritius to celebrate the feast-day of the second-century Christian martyr Polycarp. It has no fewer than eight trumpets, divided into two antiphonal choirs that echo each other. Besides this variety of texture, Biber creates interest with numerous sections in different speeds and rhythms.
Biber also used the trumpet in more intimate contexts such as consort sonatas, without the pomp of timpani accompaniment. Here he stood in the tradition of Austrian musicians such as the Viennese court composer Heinrich Schmelzer. Excellent examples of such chamber music are found in Biber’s 1676 set, Sonatæ tam aris, quam aulis servientes (‘Sonatas as much for the altar as the table’). He published these when he had left Kromeriz and entered the service of Archbishop Maximilian Gandolph of Salzburg; as the title suggests, the pieces could be used at the archbishop’s mealtimes or as interludes in church services. Each sonata is for a different combination of instruments, including trumpets, violins, violas and continuo. Most are shaped as a string of different sections, with some movements invoking a dance beat, while others are fugal or may even sound improvised. In tonight’s concert, the sonatas are introduced by trumpet duets — which show a quieter side to the instrument — and are taken from the same 1676 publication.
Of course, the trumpet was not confined to Austro-Habsburg lands. In Italy, one centre of trumpet-playing was the university town of Bologna, where brass-playing added lustre to academic ceremonies and to services in the basilica of San Petronio. One piece from the Bologna archives is the Sinfonia Teatrale by Giovanni Matteo Alberti (1685–1751). Probably written for a staged public ceremony, the sinfonia has a lively dialogue between the four trumpets. Another Italian trumpet piece is the Concerto for Two Trumpets by Antonio Vivaldi (1678–1741). We do not know the occasion for which this was written, but-like Biber’s sonatas-it shows how the trumpet was increasingly being used indoors, in consort with the string orchestra.
Biber explored many other musical traditions besides that of ceremonial brass-playing. In his string pieces, for instance, he typified an Austrian tendency to paint a scene in music. One of his violin sonatas is based on bird-calls and the sounds of farmyard animals. Tonight we hear his Battalia, a light-hearted depiction of a battle scene. Rather than use trumpets for realism, he gets the string players to imitate the repeated notes of the military signals. There is also a drunken soldiers’ song — a collage of different melodies, all out of tune — and the piece ends with a lament, as wounded musketeers sink to the ground in agony.
The Austrian tradition of programme music seems to have been an inspiration to Vivaldi in his string concertos. Many of the concertos in his Op.8 set, Il cimento dell’armonia e dell’inventione (1725), have a pictorial subtitle. They include the Concerto in E flat major for violin ‘La tempesta di mare’, where the outer movements evoke the surging, pelting forces of the storm, while the slow movement shifts and swells like the waves. The Op.8 set also includes Vivaldi’s most famous concertos, The Four Seasons, where the tone-painting is elucidated by captions in the score and by sonnets at the head of each piece. Tonight we hear ‘Summer’, perhaps the apogee of Baroque programme music. Not only does Vivaldi imitate summer sounds such as the calls of the cuckoo and goldfinch; the concerto’s three movements constitute one build-up to a violent thunder-storm. First there is the sticky, languid heat while the peasants fret that their crops may be ruined; then, in the slow movement, the thunder starts rumbling; before the heavens open in the finale. The inexorable tension of the first two movements is released in the fury of the storm. Although Vivaldi uses very different musical techniques from the trumpet pieces elsewhere in this concert, the end result is somewhat similar: we are awed by the virtuosity of the players, and the sheer power of the music.