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The Trumpet

Its Practise and Performance
A Guide for Students

The following is a chapter taken from Howard Snell's "The Trumpet" published by Rakeway.

The Background to my Work as Musician and Teacher

My professional career began after training at the Royal Academy of Music in London, where I studied the trumpet with George Eskdale. He was at that time Principal Trumpet of the London Symphony Orchestra. The major part of my playing career was at the LSO, between 1960 and 1976, where I rose to the position of Principal Trumpet. For a period of five year I was also Chairman of the Board of Directors. As a concerto soloist, I recorded both in the studio and appeared twice on BBC television whilst also being active in contemporary chamber music and commercial studios.

The second phase of my career started when I left the LSO in order to conduct. The life of an orchestral and studio musician had ceased to be stimulating. I founded the Wren Orchestra which linked up with London’s Capital Radio to give hundreds of concerts and recordings over several years. During this time I also conducted with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the Philharmonia, and the LSO and Philip Jones Brass Ensembles. Recently, as Musical Director of the English Haydn Festival for two years, I had the opportunity to focus on a composer whose music interests me particularly. I continue to be active as an occasional orchestral conductor with, among others, the London Mozart Players and the City of London Sinfonia.

After leaving the LSO I returned to an interest in brass bands, where I had played as a child. Since then I have conducted and developed a number of bands from moderate levels up into the highest rank in banding, including Desford Colliery, Britannia Building Society, CWS (Glasgow), and Eikanger Bjorsvik from Norway. Alongside my conducting I have arranged, composed and published a wide range of music for brass and brass band. Many of these works have now become part of the standard brass repertoire.

As a teacher I first taught privately in London, but lately I have been associated with the Royal Northern College of Music. My former students are to be found in almost all of Britain’s orchestras, and i n many abroad.

Brass Bands

Most of the leading trumpet performers in Britain developed their playing in brass bands. Making use of the opportunity to play the cornet in a good quality band bring many benefits to the aspiring trumpet player.

The Brass Band: Prejudice, Pride and Respect, Differences and Similarities

Brass banding occupies a strange twilight world. It is a popular music activity, created naturally, self-regenerating, and – in this world of state hand-outs and subsides for official culture – financially independent. While most of its repertoire is popular and light music, in contests and a few concerts it moves over into serious music.

The Value of Cornet Playing for Young Trumpet Players

The value of brass band experience on the cornet, especially for the young player, whether beginner or advanced, lies in the opportunity to develop a wide range of skills in a competitive and challenging environment. The fact that the majority of trumpet and trombone players in British orchestras started playing in brass bands speaks for itself. My immediate predecessors as Principal Trumpet at the London Symphony Orchestra – Alan Stringer and Will Lang – were products of brass banding, ass I was myself. My successor, Maurice Murphy, a truly great player, both in terms of power and subtlety, has now been joined on Principal by, Rod Franks, an equally fine player with his own style. They both developed in brass banding, before moving into orchestral playing.

The make-up of a brass band cornet section means that the individual players learn co-operation. They learn to follow, to lead, and to develop positive group attitudes. In playing terms there are different types of work to be done, from the less forward roles of the 2nd and 3rd parts, up to the leading position of the solo Bb cornet and the Eb soporano.

The Nature of Brass Bands

The brass band is an ensemble in itself, and not a part of a larger grouping. Brass instruments, in brass bands have a totally different function to brass in orchestras. Its musical material encompasses all kinds of situations, the cornet section carrying the bulk of the musical interest in the way that the first violins do in the orchestra. Therefore there are melodies and melodic lines to play, and extended passages over the widest diversity of tempi, dynamics and range.

The expressive scope of the repertoire is very extensive. The huge volume of music arranged from nineteenth and early twentieth century orchestral repertoire gives the brass band player the chance to play music denied to the orchestral brass. In addition, the rapidly-expanding catalogue of original works for brass band has added repertoire of the highest difficulty.

The Historical Perspective

The soloistic use of the trumpet, so much to the fore in the Baroque period, was mainly in abeyance during the nineteenth century. In Britain it can be seen to have gone underground into the brass bands, which by the middle of the nineteenth century were in the full flood of development. Trevor Herbert, in his examination of the Cyfarthfa Band (which was run by a South Wales industrialist in the middle of the nineteenth century) leaves no doubt as to its comprehensive performing skills. John Wallace has brought some of the Cyfarthfa Band’s repertoire alive by recording it on contemporary instruments. The very high quality of performance of those early professional band musicians becomes very obvious. As now, they existed side by side with the totally amateur recreational forms of banding.

The Orchestra Compared to the Brass Band

The orchestra’s brass section is one of its four main families of instruments. The brass section’s main purpose, in most of the mainstream repertoire, is to bolster the tuttis with climactic dynamics, to supply varying colours to accompaniment, and to call up musical patterns with traditional brass connotations such as fanfares and chorales. These musical materials have dominated the development of the style of trumpet playing usually called orchestral. The danger of this role is that, unless the player remains musically alert, it can encourage a monochrome and dreary style of performance.

In this mainstream repertoire the brass (horns apart) very rarely carry the leading themes and melodic lines. Strings and woodwind, being at the time of the music’s composition much more flexible and expressive than the available brass instruments, are allotted the overwhelming bulk of significant musical material. This marginal role allotted to the brass section in the most popular repertoire only begins to change in the very late nineteenth century. With the twentieth century, the demands of orchestral brass writing, scoring and performance accelerates rapidly.

Orchestral Reservations about Brass Band Style

The chief reservations of limited number of orchestral brass players centre firstly around the use of vibrato. ‘Straight’ versus ‘vibrato’ has been an issue in the past, of the Roundheads-and-Cavaliers sort, and just as silly. The orchestral player who has no command of vibrato, is out of touch and fortunately almost extinct. The trumpet player without at least two effective vibrato styles is hardly employable in a symphony orchestra today. There is now a much increased interplay between all forms of brass playing, including big-band and jazz.

Secondly, for expressive reasons brass band players do not always play in as direct a manner through their instruments as do orchestral players. This is a matter of choosing the right approach and not of inability.

When I am developing a student cornetist into a trumpeter, I do not change the player’s method, but broaden it to include trumpet styles. In this way the player begins to understand the musical purpose of different styles. Enjoyment stays at the core of his or her playing, and progress is therefore very fast. I always underline the point that if a player does not enjoy their own playing, no one else will.

The Specific Benefits of playing in a Brass Band

  • All of the parts, except the high Eb Soprano Cornet and the Bb Repiano Cornet, are doubled. This allows the young player to play without undue strain. In particular the pitfall of excess mouthpiece pressure and extremes of tiredness can be avoided. The corner is of a smaller capacity than a trumpet and requires a little less physical effort.
  • The varied styles of the music offer wide experience, much more so than the limited diet of purely conservatoire music on which trumpet players tend to develop. This ability to be stylistically flexible remains with the player throughout life.
  • The basic style of traditional brass band music is flowing and melodic, which encourages musical phrasing. Technically it develops continuity and smoothness.
  • Facility grows naturally as a result of the musical demands made upon the cornets to provide the equivalent of the violin line to the ensemble.
  • The group nature of the cornet parts develops musical and personal co-operation. Different parts and roles require varying treatment, within the overall ensemble. Regularity of rehearsals helps the learning process and the need for consistency of attitude. The disciplines imposed by membership are valuable to young people and are well-matched by the brio with which they let their hair down after concerts and particularly contests.
  • The player who undertakes the role of principle solo cornet has many opportunities to test his or her skills and nerve as a soloist. In brass banding the rivalry is intense and judgement merciless, but apart from those few players who earn goodly sums from their personally, i.e. financially, damaging in the professional sense. Therefore when a solo player is inadequate he or she is quickly replaced. Bands adopt a much more ruthless approach than orchestras, where there is understandably a much more protectionist policy. Ruthlessness is acceptable when livelihoods are not at stake, and enjoyment is the priority.
  • For the player with a good high range, the Eb soprano cornet seat offers an exciting challenge. It is a position for the personality who is afraid of nothing and proud of it. The demands of the position often exceed anything found in the symphonic repertoire in the same tessitura. The degree of difficulty of these soprano parts often rivals, and sometimes exceeds, the most difficult trumpet parts of Bach.
  • The frequency with which most brass bands give concerts and take part in contests is invaluable as experience in public performance. For the young player it is hard to think of any other branch of music making which gives such a quantity and quality of experience.
  • Since the 1970’s there has been an increasing flood of original works for brass band by composers who are outside the popular banding tradition. The language of conservative mainstream twentieth century serious music has now come into bands, displacing much of the traditional repertoire, particularly at contests. This repertoire has pushed the style and technique of contemporary cornet playing closer to that of the trumpet.
  • Contesting is an activity frequently reviled by musicians outside brass banding, including brass players. Leaving aside these superficial and snobbish opinions, the value of contesting to the young player is immense. Painstaking preparation, and exhaustive and detailed rehearsal of the kind which has long disappeared from the symphonic stage are quite routine. The process of concentration and determination leads to the once-only ultimate performance.
  • The reliable delivery of one’s best work at a particular moment is a skill of the highest value to the professional. Once developed this strength of attitude and mind is rarely lost.
  • The attitude engendered by brass banding is one of positive enjoyment. In bands the players are continually involved, as opposed to constantly counting bars rest in the orchestra. The range of playing is always wide and varied, while in the orchestra, hours can be spent waiting for others to rehearse low interest matters, such as the bowing of the string parts. When playing gets under way it may well be of routine background accompaniment. In the brass band the brass player is king.