Keyed Bugle Method Books:Documents of Transition in 19th Century Brass Instrument Performance Practice and Asthetics

Abstract

The 19th century provided changing audiences, increased amateur involvement in bands, new instrument design and the availability of economical printing, all of which contributed to a wealth of instructional material. The publishing activity of this era represents a real knowledge explosion when compared with the sparse dissemination of earlier trumpet methods.' This article is a brief appraisal of the impact of the methods for the English slide trumpet, the keyed bugle and the cornopean and the kinds of changes that they brought to soprano brass performance in the 19th century. I wasable to locate47 keyed bugle method books ranging from 1810 to 1861for my 1987 publication, The Keyed Bugler's ~orn~anion.~ I am grateful to A1 Rice, who recently added a dozen more titles to my list as a result of a similar study of Italian and German sources. It is likely that thereare more. A full inventory of this typeof instruction material remains for future researchers. As a group, the books show a merger of two performance traditions. Some of the earlier books were written by trumpeters, who were doubling on the prototype instruments and show the influence of natural trumpet playing traditions and techniques that date from the Baroqueera. Other authors, who described new instruments like the keyed bugle and cornopean, show new radical leanings toward a fluid, legato style more in keeping with the harmonic and melodic adventures of the Romantic era and more idiomatic for the new instruments. This second generation devoted its attention to the keyed bugle with little mention of the natural instrument or its repertoire. The current evidence strongly suggests that it was this generation of writers (and their students) that made a break with the older trumpet traditions and paved the way for the cornopean and the comet literature that dominated the rest of the 19th century. 1.There are only a handful of documents before 1800 that address the pedagogical aspects of the trumpeter's art. Scott Sorensen's article Printed Trumpet Instruction to 1835 in the September, 1987, issue of the International Trumpet GuiM Journal provides us with a catalog of these early works. Insbuctions for the natural instruments were also published in the 19th century due to the instrument's continued ceremonial and military use as well as its employment in the older orchestral and operatic repertoire.