Of course, you know what a bugle is. I suppose most readers of this newspaper know what a bugle is. If you’ve ever served in the military, or been in the Boy Scouts or Boys’ Brigade, you might have even played one. The instrument is still mainly restricted to use in the military, where traditionally bugle calls were used to indicate the daily routines of camp. Historically it was used in the cavalry to relay instructions or to give marching orders and it’s often played at military funerals and at memorial services. At the intensely moving Remembrance Day service a bugle melody known as The Last Post is played to honour those who died serving their country. It lasts only a few minutes and uses only five different notes. But despite its apparent simplicity the melody is surprisingly poignant – and something of a challenge to play accurately.
The bugle has ancient origins: at least back to 1500 BC. The name itself comes from the Latin word buculus which means “bullock” suggesting that the ancestors of the bugle were simply animal horns. For military purposes, a bugle is an ideal instrument because it is both loud and portable. The downside – musically at least – is that because of its short, fixed length, it can play only five notes – the first five natural notes (or overtones) of the harmonic series. This is why all bugle calls have a certain sameness.
As with all brass instruments ancient and modern, the sound is produced by the player “buzzing” the lips against the mouthpiece. A change in the amount of pressure and muscular contraction in the lips (known as the “embouchure”) produces a different overtone of the harmonic series. Before valves were invented, the length of the tube was fixed and only a single range of overtones was possible. The only way around the problem was to insert an extra piece of tubing (called a “crook”) to change the overall length of the tube.
Narrower and longer instruments such as the trumpet could produce a wider range of overtones than the bugle and the highest were so close together that they could be used for playing melodies. At least, they could in theory. It took formidable skill and practice to control the lips accurately enough to reach these high overtones with any degree of certainty. The trumpet works of Bach, Telemann and other Baroque composers, indeed any trumpet music written before the 19th century was for valve-less or “natural” instruments.
Brass players today still use their lips to change the pitch, but the invention of mechanical valves during the early 19th century was revolutionary. Basically, the valves force the air from the player’s breath along extra pieces of tubing thus increasing the effective length of the instrument. A combination of three valves gives the player access to every possible note within a range of a couple of octaves or so. As a result, the older valve-less instruments rapidly became obsolete. Today valve-less trumpets are used at ceremonial occasions or in period performances of early music. They’re known as Natural trumpets, Renaissance trumpets or Baroque trumpets and invariably modern copies of historical instruments.
Telemann was one of the most prolific composers of all time and he produced over three thousand compositions, half of which have sadly been lost. He wrote nearly two thousand cantatas, six hundred orchestral suites, and countless other works. Telemann was one of the “greats” of the Baroque but today has become rather under-rated. He was considered by his contemporaries to be one of the leading German composers of the day and was compared favourably to his friend Johann Sebastian Bach, who made Telemann the godfather of his son, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach.
This engaging work is a chamber piece scored for violins, viola and continuo accompaniment which consists of harpsichord, cello, bass viol and lute, along with a solo (and of course valveless) trumpet. The original publication describes the work as the “string suite with optional trumpet” though at the time, words like sonata, suite and sinfonia were pretty well interchangeable. This performance uses a rather scaled-up ensemble in terms of numbers. The first movement is preceded by a rather military-sounding fanfare which sounds much like a bugle call. The second movement features a musical conversation among the strings and the work ends with a joyful, scampering finale. The natural trumpet in this recording is brilliantly played by Julian Zimmermann who manages the difficult uppermost notes confidently and with panache. Believe me, it is not as easy as it looks.
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