THE EVOLUTION OF INSTRUMENT DESIGN AND ITS INFLUENCE ON TRUMPET REPERTOIRE

Abstract

The trumpet has undergone more design changes than any other instrument in history, and trumpet repertoire has changed along with the instrument's evolutionary design features. Tonal, chromatic, and dynamic range was expanded as technological advances were applied to the trumpet. As the design attributes of the trumpet changed through innovations and experimentation, new possibilities were opened up for composers and performers alike. Although some forms of the trumpet date back to antiquity (c. 1323 BC), this survey will start with the Renaissance, where a rise in humanism, city centers, art, and music and advances in metallurgy converge. I have chosen to perform works originally written for natural trumpet, cometto, keyed trumpet, comet, flugelhom, modem Bb trumpet, and modem C trumpet to illustrate the ways in which repertoire was influenced by different iterations of the trumpet along its evolutionary design path.