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A guest trumpet player performed at my son's high school concert. He used an Eb trumpet for a piece that was composed I think in the 1700's. It had a beautiful sound. Now I want one! Is the Eb just for symphonic music?

HarryMarks · Posted: Wed Sep 14, 2005 6:43 pm Post subject:

In the early days, trumpets did not have valves so every time a composer wrote music in a different key, a trumpet in that key was needed. Once valves were added it was no longer necessary to write for instruments in different keys.

Unfortunately, the convention of writing for trumpets in different keys had taken hold. It was quite common to write concertos and sonatas for trumpet in the key of Eb.

Now it is common for trumpet players to transpose and play these pieces on either C or Bb trumpets. This sometimes rerquire a trumpet player to play in a key that has difficult fingering pattern or a key that has intonation difficulties.

Until a few years ago, trumpets in D,E, Eb, F, G were notorioulsy out of tune. Also, these instruments are more difficult to play that the standard Bb trumpet. They are smaller and have a lot of back-pressure.

Nowadays, wonderful trumpets are being manufactured in these higher keys and more and more trumpet players are playing them. It is usual to become an excellent player on the Bb trumpet before adding the high horns to ones arsenal of instruments.

The usual progression of instrumelnts is to first learn the Bb they add a C trumpet followed by a Bb/A piccolo trumpet then they Eb or Eb/D trumpet.

Enjoy the journey. The trumpet is a joy and can be very frustrating.

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Harry Marks