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From war cries to music
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The origins of the trumpet, perhaps, lay in man's necessity for amplifying his own voice. But over a period of time, it has grown into one of the most sophisticated brass instruments.
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When you think of the brass family, the first instrument that comes to mind is the trumpet. Its origin is as old or even older than the prehistoric bone flute. It may be as old as the simple drum itself.
People started blowing and buzzing into hollow things for signalling and communication, both in peacetime and during ones, grass stems, animal horns, and seashells came to be spoken or sung into.
The earliest drawings of trumpets are found in the tomb of King Tut and on the wall of a tribal land in Peru. The descriptions in King Tut's tomb depict a long instrument with a flared neck. These trumpets were limited to the notes of the harmonic series of a particular key. For this reason, the Egyptians used them simply as indicators, or as battle signals.
Greece, China, Rome, and many other ancient peoples had their own idea of what the trumpet was to look and sound like. Tibetians have a long, sloped tube of almost 15-feet long, while certain regions of the Andes have funnels of one inch that create noise. In India the relatively sophisticated sound of the conch, which often has a religious significance, ruled the announcements in the temple, court, as well as the battlefield. But it did not evolve to anything with musical merit.
However, the Nadaswaram more than made up for the lack of a brass counterpart for its power, richness, and sound. One may say that no Western woodwind instrument has the power and versatility of a Nadaswaram.
In Rome, Tibet, and Israel, the trumpet was considered sacred. Only the priests were allowed to play them for a long time. There was little change in the trumpet between ancient Egyptian times and about 1100 A.D. In the first millennium before and after Christ, the sounds of trumpets were used to represent angels, war, and even the end of the world. Between the 12th and the 15th century, several versions of the trumpet began to appear. These variations of the trumpet, in turn, evolved into many other wind instruments. One variation, called slide trumpet, had a slide very similar to that of the trombone, and evolved into the modern trombone. Soon, trumpets were used for playing music, and not just for fanfares and war cries. During 17th and 18th century Europe, the trumpet gained popularity, and variants began to resemblethe clarinet, a crude tuba, and the French horn. These instruments later branched off and became wind pieces in their own right. Valves were added in the 19th century, making the trumpet an instrument closer to the human voice in versatility. Instead of the clumsy sounds and keys heard before, the trumpet evolved into a sonorous, smooth instrument that could carry an orchestra.The rapid evolution of the trumpet in the 18th and 19th century to its present shape is another story altogether.
SATISH KAMATH
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