The earliest source for the S-shaped trumpet—its provenance, material context, and relevance

Herbert, T. (2024) The earliest source for the S-shaped trumpet—its provenance, material context, and relevance. Historic Brass Society Journal, 36 pp. 1-22. ISSN 1045-4616 (print) 1943-5215 (online) (In Press)

Abstract

In 1984 Peter Downey published a famously controversial article in the journal Early Music. It contested conventional understanding of the development of the trumpet in the late medieval period. The consensus view, which largely remains, is that the instrument passed through four stages: first the straight trumpet (long and short versions), followed by the S-shaped instrument and (probably in quick succession) the trumpet with a folded wrap. Then followed a variance of one or both latter versions: a single, moveable, telescopic slide was fitted at the mouthpiece yard, to form what modern writers have called “the renaissance (or medieval) slide trumpet.” This instrument provided the prototype for the trombone, which existed with most of its necessary features by about 1470. The “slide trumpet” also revealed for the first time the fundamental and revolutionary principle that a mechanical device allowing the sounding length of a brass instrument to be adjusted by its player during performance, facilitated access to a much wider range of notes and expressive possibilities than is available on an instrument of fixed length. The fixed-length trumpet continued to exist, but the version with a slide portended a new idiom and a much wider scope of deployment in both sacred and secular music.

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