PLATE XXXV.
STATE TRUMPET AND
KETTLEDRUM.
THIS silver state trumpet, with nine others, adorned with bannerets of the Royal Arms in crimson and gold, and silver state kettledrums, similarly adorned, belong to the collection of H.M. the Queen, in St. James's Palace. They were both probably made in the reign of George III., one of the trumpets in the collection bearing the maker's name, William Shaw, Red Lion Street, Holborn. Henry VIII. had fourteen trumpets in his Royal Band, while Queen Elizabeth, in 1587, had ten.
The bending back of the trumpet upon itself, now a well-known feature in the appearance of the instrument, was an invention of a Frenchman towards the end of the fifteenth century. The trumpet is one of the oldest wind instruments used in concert with others. As far back as 1607 a piece for five trumpets, in the Orfeo of Monteverde, was played at the Court of Mantua. It became an instrument much cultivated, and Handel's and Bach's parts for it are of extreme difficulty. The notes of the trumpet are the natural harmonics produced by varying pressure of the lips in the mouthpiece. Recently slides and pistons have been employed to augment its compass, and render its employment easier.
The State Trumpets were sounded to announce the arrival of Her Majesty the Queen at Westminster Abbey on the occasion of the Thanksgiving Service for her Jubilee on the 21st of June, 1887, as they had been on the 20th of the same month, fifty years before, to proclaim her Accession. The Fanfare for four trumpets played at the Jubilee Service by the State Trumpeters is here given by the kind permission of the composer, Mr. Thomas Harper, a famous player himself upon the slide trumpet, an instrument now not much known on the Continent.
