A Dictionary for the Modern Trumpet Player by Elisa Koehler

Abstract

Reviewed by: A Dictionary for the Modern Trumpet Player by Elisa Koehler Jim Farrington A Dictionary for the Modern Trumpet Player. By Elisa Koehler. (Dictionaries for the Modern Musician.) Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015. [xi, 219 p. ISBN 9780810886575 (hard-cover), $75; ISBN 9780810886582 (e-book), $74.99.] Illustrations, appendices, bibliography. In 2014, Rowman & Littlefield began a new series of dictionaries aimed at the contemporary performer (although Susan Maclagan’s A Dictionary for the Modern Flutist [Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2009] seems to have been the model for the subsequent series). To date, volumes have appeared targeting singers, clarinetists, conductors, and now this volume for trumpeters. The dictionaries are aimed at performers both amateur and professional, teachers and students, and others needing information on specialized aspects of the instrument that would not be covered in a more general work like the Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments. The author is a well-respected scholar of the trumpet and its history with numerous books and articles to her credit, including Fanfares and Finesse: A Performer’s Guide to Trumpet History and Literature (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2014), and several important articles in the International Trumpet Guild Journal, on whose editorial staff she serves. This dictionary is an excellent blend of first-rate scholarship and readability. The history of the trumpet extends back centuries, and trumpet-like instruments are found in almost every culture and made from almost any material. Many of these instruments (e.g., the shofar, the abe.n) are given some notice, often with a very useful line drawing. Indeed, the text is liberally sprinkled with more than sixty line drawings (rather than photographs, which perhaps would have increased the cost) and music examples that helpfully illustrate terms or instruments discussed in the text, all rendered especially for this book. In particular, appendix 2 (pp. 193–99) shows and describes various valve configurations that have been used in trumpet design. Appendix 3 is an equally useful classification system of different mutes in a trumpeter’s arsenal (the individual mutes are covered in the main body of the text). Also convenient in the text are translations of non-English terms of instrument names and parts (e.g., drehventil, or rotary valve), or terms (e.g., muta, which on a nineteenth-century orchestral part indicates that the player is to change the crooks, thereby changing the key of the trumpet). Equally valuable are Koehler’s extended definitions of terms related to the technical aspects of playing the trumpet. For example, in discussing “multiple tonguing,” she not only describes the basic act of rapid articulation, but also particular passages from the repertoire that require different kinds of rapid articulations, as well as very specific physical manifestations of how to do this kind of specialized tonguing in various ranges. Koehler includes terms not only from the classical tradition but from studio and jazz work as well—smear, lead trumpet, etc.—as well as certain slang and colloquial terms (e.g., spit valve, but not “octave key” which is sometimes used to denote the pinky ring on the lead pipe). Most historical and contemporary major manufacturers of instruments, mouthpieces, mutes, and related equipment, are represented with at least a paragraph. However, some notable names are not represented, including Taylor, Scodwell, Flip Oakes, York, Harrelson, and numerous European makers, so it is difficult to ascertain the criteria that were used for inclusion. Similarly curtailed is a two-page list of orchestral and [End Page 315] opera excerpts (composer and title only) frequently found on audition lists. While the list is a “greatest hits” effort, more valuable, perhaps, would have been a compiled list of known orchestral audition repertoire asked for in the past five-to-ten years of open auditions. Hundreds of short biographies are incorporated into the text. Some are given to important composers of trumpet literature, including Heinrich Biber, Leopold Mozart, and Vjacheslav Shchelokov, or to composers whose larger works have notable trumpet features (e.g., Prokofiev). The majority of the biographies, of course, are of important trumpet players and pedagogues throughout history, beginning with Gabriel and continuing through Girolamo Fantini and the Altenburgs in the seventeenth century; Ulrich Ruhe (Bach’s trumpeter in...