Fig. 163.—Straight Trumpet with Stand. (Eleventh Century. Cotton MS., British Museum.)
Fig. 164.—Curved Trumpet. (Eleventh Century. Cotton MS., British Museum.)
In the fourteenth century according to a passage in a manuscript in the Library of Berne, quoted by M. Jubinal, there were in bodies of troops corneurs, trompeurs, and buisineurs, who played under certain special circumstances. The trompes sounded for the movements of the knights, or men-at-arms; the cornes for the movements of the banners or the foot-soldiers, and the buisines, or clarions, when the entire camp (ost) was to march. The heralds-at-arms, whose duty it was to make the announcements or proclamations in the public ways, were in the habit of using either long trumpets, called à potence, on account of the forked stick whereon they were supported, or trumpets à tortilles (serpentine), the name of which sufficiently indicates their shape. Added to this, the sound of the trumpet or horn accompanied or signalised the principal acts of the citizens both in public and private life. During the meals of great men, the water, the wine, and the bread, were heralded by sound of trumpet. In towns this instrument announced the opening and closing of the gates, the opening and closing of the markets, and the time of curfew, till the time when the horn and the copper trumpet were superseded in this function by the bells in church-towers.
Fig. 165.—Shepherd’s Horn. Eighth Century. (MS., British Museum.)
Fig. 166.—Horn, or Olifant, Fourteenth Century. (From Willemin’s “French Monuments.”)
Polybius and Ammianus Marcellinus tell us that the ancient Gauls and Germans had a great passion for large, hoarse-sounding trumpets. At the time of Charlemagne, and still more in the days of the Crusades, the intercourse that took place between the men of the West and the African and Asiatic races introduced among the former the use of musical instruments of a harsh and piercing tone. Then it was that the Saracen-horns, made of copper, replaced the wooden or horn trumpets. At the same period sackbuts, or sambutes ([Fig. 167]), made their appearance in Italy: in those of the ninth century, we find the principle of the modern trombone. About the same epoch the Germans introduced great improvements into the trumpet
Fig. 167.—Sambute, or Sackbut, of the Ninth Century. (Boulogne MS.)