Another obstacle to the progress of stringed instruments was placed in their way by the early contrapuntists who expended their genius entirely upon vocal music. Thus it was that no one appeared to realise that a resonant bass-viol, answering to the pitch of the bass voice, could be constructed by enlarging the rebecs and embryo viols then in use. Not until the middle of the fifteenth century did anything of the sort appear, and when it did, it came at the imperative call of the part-songs then coming into vogue. The singers of these compositions demanded to be kept in tune just as much as the warblers of sweet melodies had required, and it was the desire to do this to the best advantage that led eventually to the construction of complete sets of stringed instruments played with a bow and answering in pitch to the treble, alto, tenor, and bass voices.
And now, if you have finished your coffee, shall we return to our case of Asiatic instruments? There is to be found amongst them a mongrel species of bass instrument, which certainly acted in no mean way as a factor in the development of low-pitched instruments played with a bow. We allude to the trummelscheit, known in England under the ambiguous title of marine trumpet. It carries one short gut string tuned to CC, and when correctly played—i.e. harmonically—gives out a scale corresponding in pitch to that of the high soprano voice.
This trummelscheit before us is rather undersized. Its form and construction are of an advanced type, for besides the short gut string it has the additional sympathetic wire strings piercing the body like a delicate bundle of nerves. Broadly speaking, this instrument was probably made in France in the days when aristocracy prospered, and danced stately minuets at the court of “Le Grand Monarch”: when that cultured son of tapisier, Molière, wrote his immortal comedies for the amusement of the haute monde, and Jean Baptiste Lully’s impudence and genius placed him upon the highest pinnacle of fame. The intriguing Jean Baptiste—whom Boileau denounced as a coquin tenebreaux, a cœur bas, and a bouffon odieux—was possessed of talents which quite equalled his gifts as a composer of operas. He could write such divine inspirations as “Bois Epais”: could revolutionise the “ballet de la cour” by the introduction of the pirouette and sprightly allegro: could play the fiddle to perfection, and conduct his band of “Petits Violons” in a manner to make them quickly famous. He could pen mischievous verse; take advantage of court squabbles and turn them to good account, and used his histrionic gifts to the most satisfactory ends. Many a time did Lully’s impersonations of the exquisitely comic situations in which Molière delighted to place his characters, obtain for him the King’s pardon when his Majesty had been fairly exasperated by the unscrupulous actions of his “Surintendant de la Musique.” The polygamy scene in M. de Pourceaugnac was one of Maître Lully’s most effective parts for this purpose, and it is easy to imagine how the ludicrous perplexities of M. Jourdain in Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme[12] must have been interpreted by a man who had himself risen from obscurity to wealth and fame. It is in the latter witty comedy that we hear of the trumpet marine and its position at that time. Bewildered M. Jourdain’s music-master is advising him to give concerts twice a week at his house.
Le Maître de Musique
Au reste, monsieur, ce n’est pas assez; il faut qu’une personne comme vous, qui êtes magnifique et qui avez de l’inclination pour les belles choses, ait un concert de musique chez soi tous les Mercredis ou tous les Jeudis.
M. Jourdain
Est-ce que les gens de qualité en out?
Le Maître de Musique
Sans doute. Il vous faudra trois voix: un dessus, une haute-contre et une basse, qui seront accompagnés d’une basse de viole, d’un téorbe et d’un clavecin pour les basses continues, avec deux dessus de violon pour jouer les retournelles.
M. Jourdain
Il faudra mettre aussi une trompette marine. La trompette marine est un instrument qui me plaît, et qui est très harmonieux.
Le Maître de Musique
Laissez-nous gouverner les choses.
In spite of Molière’s just, or unjust ridicule, the marine trumpet figured in the royal band of Louis XV. Several names of artists who played this instrument at the French court are recorded in the État de la France for 1702, and among them we find Danican Philidor, a favourite musician of Louis, “le bien aimé” (?) and as rampant a chess player as was his contemporary Diderot. Whether from motives of economy or because the marine trumpet was looked upon as “no great shakes” (as our Yankee cousins say), all players of that instrument at the French court were also performers on a species of hautbois—now obsolete—called the Cremorne. How these virtuosi managed to juggle notes out of both instruments at the same time, history does not relate, but in the face of such a feat as that achieved by Don Jumpedo, who nightly jumped down his own throat at the Little Theatre in the Haymarket some hundred years ago, all things seem possible.
England was not behind France in her use of the marine trumpet. Gay King Charles would have all things at court in accordance with the French fashion, and the marine trumpet doubtless found its way to the British coast in the company of truffles, perruques, pirouettes, and long-ear’d puppy dogs. Whether it was bundled in with the Cremorne, as was its fate in France, or ignored, as in Italy, is not recorded, but its advent was apparently announced in the following stirring advertisement published in The London Gazette for 4th February 1674:—“A rare concert of Trumpets Marine, never before heard of in England. If any persons desire to come and hear it they may repair to the Fleece Tavern near St James’ about two of the clock in the afternoon every day in the week except Sundays. Every concert shall continue one hour and so begin again. The best places are one shilling and the other sixpence.” The marine trumpet was not only a means of drawing the public, but it apparently had a market value of its own, for we find in Thomas Shadwell’s play, The Miser, of that period, that a certain loan includes a “Bolona lute, a roman Arch lute, 2 gittars, a Cremona Violin, a Lyra Viol, 1 Viol da Gambo, and a Trumpet-Marine, very fit for you if you be a lover of musick.”
Fig. 9.—MARINE TRUMPET
But it was in Germany—the scene of the trumpet marine’s birth—that it found its real vocation. In that land of sausages and romance, beer and love sonnets, it was known under the double title of “Trummelscheit”—from its resemblance to a sword sheath—and “Nonnen-Trompett,” for the reason that the nuns themselves employed it in their convents. The delicate lips of the fair religeuses were unable to cope with the mouth-distorting horn; yet they required an instrument of that type to add vigour to their heaven-sent praises. Their difficulty was in reality not unlike that of the German bassoon player, Schubert, when Baumgarten commanded him at rehearsal to sustain a certain note. “It is very easy for you, Mister Baumgarten, to say, hold out that note,” replied he quietly, “but who is to find the vind?” The wind instruments must have their human bellows, but these being weak, the marine trumpet became a substitute for the horn, and every German cloister was furnished with, and employed, a nonnen-trompett or nonnen geige. Until almost the end of the eighteenth century, this quaint custom continued, after which the nuns apparently grew bolder and fearlessly attacked double-basses and violoncellos and whole orchestras of instruments. Kastner, writing at the beginning of the nineteenth century, says: “All who go to Lichtenthal near Baden can hear the nuns of the convent of this name sing divine service with an orchestral accompaniment in which many of them took part,” which proves that even at that date the custom of supplying their own music had not been excluded from convent life.
How the marine trumpet or trumpet marine came to be so called is a riddle that possibly finds its solution in the form of the instrument itself. The shape in its earliest form resembled the long speaking-trumpet familiar to sailors. Thus we can account for the nautical touch which is given to this instrument by the first half of its title, while the trumpet part must be engendered by the timbre produced by the ingenious arrangement of the bridge. One does not often find the correct bridges on the existing marine trumpets. To be accurate, the bridge should be made of wood in the form of a shoe. The heel part should be attached to the table of the instrument and the gut string passed over it, while the toe part should rest unattached upon a little square of inlaid ivory or glass. The toe acts like the bâton of the chef-d’orchestre; each throb of the pulsating string is faithfully translated by a tap upon the ivory or glass when the player sets the string in vibration with his bow. It is this ingenious arrangement that contrives to give a sonorous burring—associated with the sound of brass instruments—to the harmonies of the marine trumpet. Mr E. J. Payne, who wrote the able article upon this instrument in Sir George Grove’s “Dictionary of Music and Musicians” (first edition), there says: “The facility with which the marine trumpet yields its natural harmonies is due to its single string and its lop-sided bridge. Paganini’s extraordinary effects in harmonics on a single string were in fact produced by temporarily converting his violin into a small marine trumpet. As is well known, that clever player placed his single fourth string on the treble side of the bridge, screwing it up to a very high pitch, and leaving the bass foot of the bridge comparatively loose. He thus produced a powerful reedy tone and obtained unlimited command over the harmonics.”