16
1 The Musician’s Experience of Brass Instruments
Fig. 1.13 Parts for trumpets in C in orchestral scores by Beethoven and Bartók. (a) Ludwig
van Beethoven: Symphony No. 5 in C minor (1808), 4th Movement. (b) Béla Bartók Concerto
for Orchestra (1944), 1st Movement. Reproduced by permission of Boosey and Hawkes Music
Publishers Ltd
is a ‘trumpet with nominal fundamental C3’. An alternative approach is to specify
the approximate length of the instrument: the Beethoven trumpet could be called
a ‘trumpet in 2.4 m C’ and the Bartók trumpet a ‘trumpet in 1.2 m C’. The system
based on length has been widely adopted in the organological literature, but using
imperial instead of metric units, the Beethoven trumpet is ‘in 8-ft C’, while the
Bartók trumpet is ‘in 4-ft C’. The system using imperial units of nominal length
is adopted when appropriate in this book and used systematically in Chap. 7.
The relationship between different methods of identifying the nominal pitch of
instruments is shown in Table 7.1.
1.2.4 Compass
The lower and higher limits of musically useful natural notes depend on the
instrument, the choice of mouthpiece and the player’s skill and stamina. As we
will see in Chap. 7, some instruments (especially those used to supply a bass in an
ensemble) are designed to exploit the lower members of the series of natural notes,
whereas other instruments (especially ‘natural’ instruments without slides, keys or
valves used melodically) are designed to exploit the higher members of the series of
natural notes.
We saw in Fig. 1.12 that the series of natural notes does not form a complete
musical scale, although the octave from the 8th to the 16th notes includes eight notes
that come close to forming a diatonic scale. Some instruments have a repertoire
restricted to a subset of this series: bugle calls, for example, use the second to the
1 The Musician’s Experience of Brass Instruments
Fig. 1.13 Parts for trumpets in C in orchestral scores by Beethoven and Bartók. (a) Ludwig
van Beethoven: Symphony No. 5 in C minor (1808), 4th Movement. (b) Béla Bartók Concerto
for Orchestra (1944), 1st Movement. Reproduced by permission of Boosey and Hawkes Music
Publishers Ltd
is a ‘trumpet with nominal fundamental C3’. An alternative approach is to specify
the approximate length of the instrument: the Beethoven trumpet could be called
a ‘trumpet in 2.4 m C’ and the Bartók trumpet a ‘trumpet in 1.2 m C’. The system
based on length has been widely adopted in the organological literature, but using
imperial instead of metric units, the Beethoven trumpet is ‘in 8-ft C’, while the
Bartók trumpet is ‘in 4-ft C’. The system using imperial units of nominal length
is adopted when appropriate in this book and used systematically in Chap. 7.
The relationship between different methods of identifying the nominal pitch of
instruments is shown in Table 7.1.
1.2.4 Compass
The lower and higher limits of musically useful natural notes depend on the
instrument, the choice of mouthpiece and the player’s skill and stamina. As we
will see in Chap. 7, some instruments (especially those used to supply a bass in an
ensemble) are designed to exploit the lower members of the series of natural notes,
whereas other instruments (especially ‘natural’ instruments without slides, keys or
valves used melodically) are designed to exploit the higher members of the series of
natural notes.
We saw in Fig. 1.12 that the series of natural notes does not form a complete
musical scale, although the octave from the 8th to the 16th notes includes eight notes
that come close to forming a diatonic scale. Some instruments have a repertoire
restricted to a subset of this series: bugle calls, for example, use the second to the