Trumpet Concerto (Haydn)

Joseph Haydn's Concerto per il Clarino, Hob.: VII e, 1 ("Trumpet Concerto in E flat major") was written in 1796, when he was 64 years old, for his long time friend Anton Weidinger.

Original instrument

Anton Weidinger reputably had developed a keyed trumpet which could play chromatically throughout its entire range. Before this, the trumpet was commonly valveless and could only play a limited range of harmonic notes by altering lip pressure. These harmonic notes were clustered in the higher registers, so previous trumpet concertos could only play melodies at very high pitches (e.g., Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 2). Haydn's concerto includes melodies in the lower register, exploiting the capabilities of the new instrument.

There were attempts all over Europe around the mid-classical era to expand the range of the trumpet using valves, and Weidinger's idea of drilling holes and covering them with flute-like keys proved reasonably unpopular, due to their poorer quality of sound. Thus the natural trumpet still had continual use in the classical orchestra whilst the keyed trumpet had barely any repetoire. The valved trumpets used today started to appear in the 1830s.

Form

The work is composed in three movements (typical of a concerto), and they are marked as follows:

* I. Allegro
* II. Andante
* III. Finale-Allegro (Rondo)

In addition to the solo trumpet, the concerto is scored for an orchestra consisting of 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 (presumably natural) trumpets (which generally play in support of the horns or timpani rather than the solo trumpet), timpani and strings.

ee also

*Michael Haydn also wrote a trumpet concerto, with the same two-movement form as Leopold Mozart's Trumpet Concerto.
*Johann Nepomuk Hummel also wrote a trumpet concerto for Anton Weidinger.

External links

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