Bach wrote for trumpets up to the
twentieth harmonic--but for this the trumpet had to be divided into a
principal, which ended at the tenth harmonic--and the clarino in two
divisions, the first of which went from the eighth harmonic up to as
high as the player could reach, and the second clarino, from the sixth
to the twelfth. The use of the clarinet by composers about the middle
of the last century seems to have abolished these very high trumpets.
So completely had they gone, by the time of Mozart, that he had to
change Handel's trumpet parts, to accommodate them to performers of
his own time, and transfer the high notes to the oboes and clarinets.
Having alluded to the cornet a piston, it may be introduced here,
particularly as from being between a trumpet and a bugle, and of four
foot tone, it is often made to do duty for the more noble trumpet. But
the distinctive feature of this, as of nearly all brass instruments
since the invention of valves, tends to a compromise instrument, which
owes its origin to the bugle. The cornet a piston is now not very
different from the valve bugle in B flat on the one hand and from the
small valve trumpet in the same key on the other.
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