http://www.sscm-jscm.org/v8/no1/kurtzman_i.html
ISSN: 1089-747X
Copyright © 2002 by the Board of Trustees and the University of Illinois
Published by arrangement with
University of Illinois Press
 
 
 
 
SEARCH JSCM
   
 
 
Go to Article Table of Contents.
Go to next section.
 
 

Volume 8, no. 1

Jeffrey Kurtzman and Linda Maria Koldau*

Trombe, Trombe d'argento, Trombe squarciate, Tromboni, and Pifferi in Venetian Processions and Ceremonies of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries.

I. Introduction

1. Prologue

2. Trumpets and Trombones in European Music before the Eighteenth Century

3. Pifferi in European Music before the Eighteenth Century

4. The Civic Trumpets and Pifferi of Siena

5. Civic Trumpet Ensembles and Pifferi in other Italian Cities

Naples
Rome
Florence
Bologna
Ferrara
Mantua
Milan
Bergamo
Other Cities

References to Part I

I. Introduction

1. Prologue

1.1 Musical instruments of centuries past have frequently been the source of contentious debate in musicology. The instruments themselves have mostly disappeared with the passage of time, surviving instruments have often been altered in more recent years, contemporaneous descriptions of instruments are usually superficial, music theorists were often ill-informed or not very interested in the details of instruments, iconographical depictions of instruments may be inaccurate or fanciful, even in plates in treatises, and musical sources themselves usually provide virtually no information regarding the instruments that are so cursorily and ambiguously identified as the players of particular parts. Archival documents, especially lists of payments to instrumentalists, can be frustratingly vague and even misleading when scribes and notaries who had no particular knowledge of music or interest in the details of organology entered incorrect names for instruments in their account books or arbitrarily chose the name of an instrument simply to indicate that instrumentalists were paid.1 Nevertheless, patient and imaginative work on varied source materials from all over Europe has yielded intelligent and reasonable hypotheses about instruments and their use in the period covered in this article as well as in other periods of western music history. Often the evidence is indirect and arguments must be made inductively. The present study, bringing together diverse sources, attempts to resolve some problematic issues of terminology and practice regarding wind and brass instruments in Cinquecento Venice.

1.2 This article began as an effort to solve one of the vexing puzzles surrounding the nomenclature, morphology, and use of instruments described in a number of Venetian sources of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as trombe squarciate. Such instruments are not only mentioned in descriptions of Venetian processions by Marin Sanudo, Francesco Sansovino and other writers of the period, but were associated specifically with the performance of Claudio Monteverdi's "Mass of Thanksgiving" of 1631 by a contemporary chronicler, Marc'Antonio Ginammi, who was obviously in attendance at the event.2 This is the only surviving reference to trombe squarciate in conjunction with a particular composition, and therefore raises the question of how the music assumed to be Monteverdi's mass ought to be performed.3 But before that question can be addressed, we must first understand what is meant by the term trombe squarciate. Until this point, no one has known for sure, and until recently modern writers have most often assumed that the phrase trombe squarciate was simply another term for trombones. As will be seen below, however, that identification is unsatisfactory and erroneous, despite the few pieces of evidence that have been marshaled in its support.

1.3 Resolving the identity of trombe squarciate has not been a simple matter, for despite numerous appearances of the phrase in almost exclusively Venetian sources, nowhere did any writer using the term describe such instruments or otherwise provide us with information about the term's meaning. Because the phrase almost invariably appears in connection with Venetian processions and ceremonies, the organological puzzle cannot be resolved without examining the role of trumpets, trombones, drums, other wind instruments (often subsumed under the generic rubric pifferi) and even strings in these Venetian celebrations. Some of these instruments played well-defined roles in various situations and on various occasions. Musical instruments, however, formed only one aspect of these festivities, albeit an indispensable one, and understanding the role of instruments in such events also requires understanding the nature and scope of an entire celebration, sometimes continuing for several days in succession. In typical Venetian fashion, these ceremonies were often both sacred and secular, for the doge, as head of the civic government as well as the ducal chapel of St. Mark's, was a central participant in many religious processions and ceremonies, and even the most secularly oriented civic celebrations had their indispensable sacred components.4

1.4 The use of these instruments in Venice cannot be fully understood except against the backdrop of the roles of trumpets, drums and pifferi in other Italian towns, for Venice not only employed these instruments in ways similar to long-standing traditions throughout Italy, and even northern Europe, but the Serenissima also prescribed unique functions for certain of these instruments as symbols of the doge, civic authority, and uniquely Venetian traditions. This study therefore begins, after a brief synopsis of trumpets and pifferi in European cities before the eighteenth century, with a survey of the history and roles of trumpets, drums and pifferi in other Italian municipalities. These are often fascinating stories in themselves, sharing many similarities from one city to the next, but frequently with unique local twists and oddities. In creating what has often been called "the myth of Venice," the Venetians emphasized the differences in their history, government and customs from other Italian cities, but this section on instrumental practices in other Italian locales enables us to grasp realistically what was common and what was sui generis to Venetian practices and how these practices changed over time in other towns and particularly in Venice. Thus what began as a narrowly focused question has evolved into a much broader study of the whole panoply of Venetian processions and ceremonies, to the role these ceremonies played in Venetian civic and religious life, and to the functions of musical instruments in certain prominent aspects of that life. 

1.5 The discussion below relies not only on contemporary chroniclers' accounts of such events, acts of Venetian and Church officials, pay records, and other archival documents, but also on their depiction by contemporary painters, xylographers, and engravers. Further supporting evidence derives from costume books illustrating and describing Venetian dress and the roles played in processions by particular classes of individuals identified by their costumes. Other useful sources have been contemporaneous and later dictionaries of the Italian, i.e. Tuscan, language and of north Italian dialects as vehicles for understanding the meaning and varied usages of both tromba and squarciata. Taken together, these sources offer indispensable insight into what the Venetians themselves saw in these sumptuous and colorful festivals of sound and sight that formed an essential part of the experience of Venetians in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Our discussion is supported by hypertext links to large segments of chroniclers' original texts that reveal the scope and lavishness of Venetian processions and ceremonies. Similarly, numerous paintings, woodcuts, engravings, and photographs of extant instruments can be viewed through hypertext links. These images show us contemporary artists' perceptions as well as the details of surviving instruments. 

2. Trumpets and Trombones in European Music before the Eighteenth Century

2.1 The history of trumpets in European music before the eighteenth century is fraught with uncertainty and controversy, despite the large corpus of relevant documents, of iconographical resources, and of a small but not insignificant quantity of surviving instruments.5 The details of instruments and their usage remain vague in many respects, though the role of trumpets as military signaling instruments, as heralds and announcers of public proclamations, and as representatives of civic and royal authority are well-established and traceable back to the thirteenth century. For greater ease of handling in these capacities, S-shaped instruments were developed by c. 1375 and folded trumpets by c. 1400. In the fifteenth century the size of trumpet ensembles tended to expand beyond one or two pairs of instruments to as many as ten or a dozen or more, apart from the assemblage of much larger numbers for special events.6  [Return to paragraph 27.2.]

2.2 It is generally agreed that by the late fourteenth century a single slide was added first to S-shaped trumpets and later to folded trumpets, allowing them to play a much wider range of diatonic and chromatic pitches than an instrument relying entirely on overtones and lipping.7The pitch flexibility of these instruments made them suitable for performance in polyphonic ensemble music together with shawms, and as a consequence both single-slide and later U-shaped double-slide instruments were associated with wind bands rather than with the corps of military and heraldic trumpeters from at least 1420 onward (see section 3).

2.3 The earliest known use of the word trombone dates from 1439 in Ferrara, Italy, applying the augmentative suffix to tromba.8 A 1446 document from Siena identifies trombone as an Italian version of the Latin augmentative tubicinone.9 It is not clear when the term came to mean a U-shaped double-slide instrument, since there is no definitive information as to when the double-slide instrument was invented or came into common use.10 The earliest depiction of a double-slide trombone is a fresco by Filippino Lippi dating from 1488–93 entitled "The Assumption of the Virgin" in the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome.11 Another early depiction is in Gentile Bellini's Processione della Croce in Piazza San Marco of 1496, discussed in section 16. Even after double-slide trombones had become distinct from single-slide trumpets, the term tromba was still often used indistinguishably by scribes and diarists for either trumpets or trombones, frequently making precise identification of the specific instrument difficult or impossible (see the discussion of terminology in section 37). At times, however, the context, especially the association of trombe with drums, makes it clear that the reference is to some kind of trumpet, since we know of no instance in which drums are associated specifically with double-slide trombones. Drums are mentioned on occasion with pifferi, that is, an ensemble of winds that normally included both shawms and trombones and possibly other instruments as well. 

2.4 There was normally a distinction between military, or "field" trumpeters on the one hand, whose repertory consisted mostly of standardized field signals and simple improvised ensemble pieces, and "musical" trumpeters on the other, who could read music and performed more sophisticated polyphonic repertoire in conjunction with other instruments. Nevertheless, there is evidence in Italy of some trumpeters performing both functions by the fifteenth century, and some trumpeters could also play a variety of other instruments (see sections 4 and 5). 

2.5 In addition to their numerous outdoor civic functions, trumpeters played a significant role in courtly household music in both northern Europe and Italy from at least the fourteenth century.12 As a single example from among many, an early sixteenth-century scene from the Gallery of Art in Dessau shows four players with folded trumpets performing Tafelmusik for a dining King Herod (Figure 1). Moreover, trumpets had been employed in church services and religious processions at least as early as the thirteenth century.13 One of the most striking pictorial examples of a trumpet playing in church is on the title page of Hermann Finck's Practica Musica of 1556 (Figure 2).14 From the position of the player's hands, the instrument looks very much like a slide trumpet. The other two instruments in the ensemble are crumhorns, and all three are accompanying a four-part choir with boy sopranos. 

3. Pifferi in European Music before the Eighteenth Century

3.1 The establishment of wind bands in European courts and cities is a vast topic that has been studied by a number of scholars.15 Here we can offer only the briefest summary; further details will emerge from the discussion of Italian pifferi ensembles below.

3.2 In the second half of the fourteenth century many courts and cities in Europe established small ensembles of so-called "loud" instruments (haut in French, laut in German, alta in Italian) that were quite separate from the trumpeters. By 1430 such ensembles were widespread throughout Europe. Like the trumpeters, these ensembles (called Pfeifer in German, haut ménestrels in French, and pifferi in Italian) also accompanied troops into battle, but they had additional more peaceful duties that generally included playing at a variety of civic ceremonies, participating in processions, playing during meals, either at court or for the civic government in the civic palace, and accompanying dancing.16Such ensembles also often played in connection with certain locally important religious ceremonies, sometimes in particular churches or oratories.

3.3 At first such ensembles comprised a pair of shawms, but by c. 1380 a third instrument, a tenor shawm, called a bombard, was often included. From about this same period, there is increasing evidence of a single-slide trumpet, capable of playing a full diatonic scale and most chromatic pitches, sometimes substituting for the bombard.17 Slide instruments were quite commonly combined with shawms by 1420.18 Despite this trend, ensembles of two shawms continued to survive in many locations. By the middle of the fifteenth century wind bands, with slide trumpets as a standard component, were widespread, not only in the courts of princes and as employees of civic governments, but also in the houses of many of the higher nobility and important ecclesiastical authorities. These ensembles were often international in character, had contacts in many locales north and south of the Alps, and had by this time become quite sophisticated in their ability to read and perform polyphonic music.19 [Return to note 233.]

3.4 Later in the century these ensembles were frequently enlarged to four instruments (three shawms and a slide trumpet) as the vocal polyphony they often performed expanded its typical texture from three to four voices.20 At about the same time the single-slide trumpet began to be replaced by the U-shaped double-slide trombone,21 which had become prevalent by the early sixteenth century.22 During the sixteenth century the ensembles tended to expand to five and six players, usually consisting of two trombones and four shawms (possibly two of them bombards), but varying in their size and makeup according to the specific occasion.23 Cornettos (Zinken in German) also made their appearance in wind ensembles in the second half of the fifteenth century, and by the early sixteenth century, as softer instruments, they began to replace shawms, particularly at indoor performances such as banquets, and for performances with singers.24 By the early seventeenth century cornettos were the preferred treble instruments of such ensembles, though shawms were still in use, especially for outdoor activities where their louder, more penetrating sound was an advantage. In the sixteenth century other instruments were also sometimes added to the pifferi, and by the middle of the century the term could designate an ensemble of virtually any combination of instruments, including strings and drums, though such groups were still centered on winds.25 [Return to note 233.]

3.5 Until relatively recently, information from Italy has been much sketchier than from northern Europe. However, numerous studies of the last several years have begun to reveal a rich tradition of instrumental participation in Italian civic and religious life as well as an active trumpet-making industry from at least the fourteenth century onward. It has become apparent that the patterns of patronage and the constitution and use of wind and trumpet ensembles in Italy were quite similar to those of northern Europe. Nevertheless, as context for the specialized examination of trumpets and pifferi in Venetian processions and ceremonies, it will prove useful to survey briefly the role of trumpets and wind ensembles in several other cities in Italy into the early seventeenth century. 

4. The Civic Trumpets and Pifferi of Siena 

4.1 The most extensive information about civic instrumental ensembles in Italy is found in Frank D'Accone's study of music in medieval and Renaissance Siena.26 The trumpet corps in Siena was established in 1230 and ranged over time from as few as two pairs to as many as eleven pairs of instruments (pairing of trumpets was common practice throughout Europe). Trumpeters had numerous and diverse duties, some of which remained consistent throughout the period in question, while others varied or were occasional. The town trumpeters rode with the militia; played during battles; made rounds with law enforcement officials; journeyed with government delegations; attended the podestà in ceremonial functions; accompanied the priors of the Concistoro in public appearances; announced town criers; served as heralds; played in sacred and secular processions, including bridal processions;27 played at public events such as jousts, public ceremonies, and the appearance in public of important visitors or other personages; and served as private trumpeters to other officials besides the podestà. Their duties were not limited to secular affairs, however. In addition to participating in religious processions, they also played at public religious events, played before the cathedral and in the Campo during the fifteen days prior to Assumption Day, played at a daily mass at an outdoor chapel in the Campo, and played at mass in the cathedral. Less public were their obligations to perform for state receptions, play at priors' meals, play in the podestà's palace, and perform in the mornings and evenings in the palace area. The trumpeters sometimes performed on other instruments, sometimes journeyed to other cities to assist in their religious celebrations, sometimes carried out diplomatic errands, and even were expected to recite poetry, write poetry, sing, and perform other duties when acting as heralds.28 The trumpeters were primarily Tuscans in the fifteenth century and remained Italian in origin throughout the sixteenth century. Trumpeting was enough of an Italian specialty that many trumpeters in German lands were Italians.29

4.2 The distinction between "field" trumpeters and "musical" trumpeters seems not to have been so marked in Siena as in northern Europe and a few other Italian cities, since some among the trumpeters could improvise polyphony and possibly read written notation by the early fifteenth century.30 Some trumpeters could also play trombone.31 The training of trumpeters was subsidized by the state, and ability was the key factor in their hiring.32 This training was carried out in a "palace trumpet school" where the trumpeters themselves served as teachers, often to their own offspring or relatives.33 Some of the trumpeters were highly prized virtuosi, not only in Siena, but also elsewhere in Italy.34 Many of the instruments used by the Sienese trumpet corps were manufactured in Siena, and there are numerous references in the documents to silver trumpets.35 Both long straight trumpets and folded trumpets appear in iconographical sources.36 Four straight trumpets of about 3 3/4 feet length from the seventeenth century are preserved in the Civico Museo of the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena (Figure 3).37

4.3 The Sienese trumpet ensemble, like those in other Italian and northern European cities, was separate from the wind band, the pifferi. Pifferi, constituting shawms, bombards, and other wind instruments, appeared in Italy sometime after the turn of the fourteenth century. The term pifferi (often spelled piffari or pifari) referred to both the wind instruments and their players, most of whom had come from Germany. In Siena, a civic pifferi ensemble was first established in 1408, and its players were paid more than the trumpeters.38 In the mid-fifteenth century the pifferi usually comprised two shawms, a bombard (tenor-shawm) and what was likely a single-slide instrument that was already taking on the name trombone.39 Sometimes the trombonist was named separately from the pifferi, sometimes he was included under the rubric pifferi.40 By the sixteenth century the Sienese wind band, in contrast to others in Italy, had not only become fully Italian, but even entirely domestic in origin and training.41

4.4 After the middle of the sixteenth century, once Siena had been incorporated into the Florentine state, the activity of the pifferi increased, accompanied by a decline in the relative importance of the trumpet corps.42 This distinction between the two ensembles was not an impermeable barrier, however, since there is evidence of trumpeters as part of the wind band in the early fifteenth century,43 and some trumpeters also played trombone and eventually transferred into the pifferi ensemble.44 Sixteenth-century documents testify to as many as eight pifferi at times, including recorders, transverse flutes, cornettos, curtals, a crumhorn, and trombones.45 Like the trumpet corps, the pifferi played at table for the priors, during processions of the priors, at the Elevation during mass in the palace chapel, in the outdoor chapel in the Campo, and at solemn or celebratory public events.46 Their indoor repertory was both sacred and secular in character and included performance with voices, or the pifferi themselves sometimes performed as singers.47 The ensemble was also hired out to participate in services in churches and monasteries where they both sang and played.48

5. Civic Trumpet Ensembles and Pifferi in other Italian Cities

5.1 In other Italian towns trumpeters performed similar functions, though less detailed information is available.49 There is no reason to believe that the roles and duties of trumpeters elsewhere in Italy departed in any substantive way from those in Siena, though the specific occasions on which they played and the locations of their activity obviously would have differed somewhat from one locale to another. 
 
5.2 Naples. Information from Naples reveals that court trumpeters ranged in number from three in 1437 to thirteen in 1491.50 They participated in processions, announced royal proclamations, played signals at public executions and served as messengers. These salaried trumpeters were augmented by others for such events as coronation processions, investiture processions, royal processions, and welcoming ceremonies for royal visitors. A coronation procession on May 8, 1494 reportedly employed as many as forty-six pairs of trumpets and a dozen drums as well ten pifferi, lutes, and harps. Welcoming ceremonies for Queen Joanna of Aragon on September 11, 1477 included sixty-two trumpets and a large number of drums as well as pifferi.51 The wind band in Naples played at weddings, banquets, trionfi, public and civic ceremonies, on the battlefield, in church, and at daybreak and nightfall.52

5.3 Rome. The city of Rome also had a small band of pifferi from as early as the fourteenth century. In addition, there was a small group of municipal trumpeters who, together with tamburini and timpani, led all processions.53 In contrast to other cities, the pifferi did not take part in official processions, though they did have some official duties outside the capitoline residence. In 1525 the pifferi consisted of three wind instruments (probably shawms) and a trombone.54 By the turn of the seventeenth century the ensemble comprised four trombones and two cornettos, enlarged to five trombones and four cornettos by 1660 and to six trombones and three cornettos by 1676.55 The pifferi performed during meals of the Conservatory and of the Priore and took part in services in churches several times per month when the feasts of particular saints were being celebrated. The pifferi were also loaned out for religious processions and played in the piazza del Campidoglio during the passage of the pope's procession during a particular ceremonial point which is precisely described.56 In the seventeenth century, trumpets were situated at the front of some processions (cavalcades) and at the middle of others, sometimes accompanied by drums, sometimes with drums sounding from elsewhere in the cortege.57 The sound of the most elaborate processions, which included Swiss fifes, the ringing of bells and the firing of artillery, was described by the Venetian ambassador as "a grave, sonorous, and resounding harmony of warlike instruments, that is, of trumpets and drums, with fifes added."58 Trumpets and drums also participated in masquerades and fireworks displays.59 Trumpets were not confined to the outdoors: they even played from the cupola inside St. Peter's and probably in other churches as well.60

5.4 Florence. The earliest evidence of a trumpet ensemble in Florence dates from February 8, 1292. According to the document, there were six trombadori, a drum, and an instrument called a cenamella.61 A statute of January 27, 1297 authorized the appointment of six trumpeters, who played silver instruments, a cennamellario and a cembaliere as well as six banditori, or criers. In contrast to many other cities, the criers and trumpeters in Florence were separate individuals. The statute names specific places in the city where announcements are to be made and also requires the trumpeters to play in the piazza in the morning of all solemn feasts in order to put the populace in a solemn and festive mood.62

5.5 By the end of the fourteenth century, two other ensembles had been formed: a group of civic pifferi comprising three shawms was established in 1386, and an ensemble of trombetti was expanded to five in 1396.63 In 1415, a statute authorized the appointment of seven trombetti.64 The trombadori continued to function as a separate ensemble and at this time consisted of six to eight players.65 The three ensembles performed different functions and appeared together only in important processions, when they were still situated in different parts of the procession and played separately.66

5.6 From 1443 onward, the pifferi ensemble included a slide instrument (tuba retorta).67 The pifferi expanded to five and alternated between five and six in the early sixteenth century.68 The players in this ensemble could perform on multiple instruments and not only played improvised repertoire, but very probably a wide range of complex notated polyphony as well.69 The pifferi were required to play before and after the noon and evening meals of the Signoria, to accompany the Signoria on official business in other parts of the city, to play at the Oratorio d'Or San Michele on Marian feasts, to participate in various celebrations, including processions, to perform for the weddings and banquets of prominent citizens, and to play during carnival.70 In the early fifteenth century two singers and players of the viola and lute were added to the civic payroll, but later dropped in hard economic times.71

5.7 After the establishment of the principate in 1532, references to civic musicians are no longer found in Florentine pay records.72 Records of court musicians published by Warren Kirkendale include a number of trombonists and cornettists, but very limited mention of ensembles. One ensemble, established by Bernardo di Francesco, was active between 1586 and 1593, and in 1646, a report on the duke's musicians by Carlo Strozzi mentions a wind band called the concerto de' fanciosini that played at table and for visitors, as well as publicly three times a week during the summer from the balcony of the Palazzo Vecchio.73 Since trombetti were not classified as musicians, Kirkendale does not include them, though he does indicate that the only trumpeter of any renown was Girolamo Fantini, author of the famous trumpet treatise of 1638.74 Nor is there a substantial Florentine iconography of processions and civic ritual. It is striking, in comparing evidence from other major cities in Italy with the information about public processions and other celebrations in Florence, the instrumentation of the Florentine intermedii of the sixteenth century, and surviving inventories of musical instruments of the Medici court in the seventeenth century, that in Florence under the Medici dukes trumpets seem to have played a more limited role than elsewhere despite the fame and prominence of Fantini.75

5.8 Bologna. In Bologna, the city founded an instrumental ensemble, the Concerto Palatino, in 1250.76 Some of the early documents describe trombetti accompanying processions but don't mention pifferi, suggesting that in its early stages the Concerto consisted of trumpets only. Pifferi were added in 1399, and they included a lutenist or harpist as well as winds. Sometimes the pifferi are mentioned separately from the trombetti and sometimes both groups are mentioned jointly. In 1469 a trombonist joined the Concerto. Salary records of 1500–1506 name a total of twelve members, comprising three shawmists, two trombonists, a harpist, five trumpeters and a player of nakers.77 A sixth trumpeter was added by 1508.78 That at least some of the trumpeters were capable of reading music is suggested by a statute of 1508 decreeing that the piffari and trombetti were to play dance music during lunch and dinner.79 By this time the term trombetti had likely become equivocal in meaning; although it originally referred to straight trumpets (probably including mid-size), by the early sixteenth century it could have referred to S-shaped trumpets, folded trumpets and slide trumpets. The most likely interpretation is the last, since slide trumpets had been playing dance and banquet music in conjunction with other pifferi elsewhere ever since the early fifteenth century.80 By 1537, the shawms of the pifferi could be replaced by four cornettos with the lower parts taken by four trombones, a configuration that would have been especially appropriate for indoor performances and those that might have involved singers.81 [Return to: note 233, 481.]

5.9 The regular duties of the Concerto Palatino resembled the duties of the Sienese trumpeters and pifferi. The ensemble was to play from the balcony of the Palazzo Pubblico in the morning and evening of every day. On Sundays, other feast days and in honor of important visitors, the Concerto played at court banquets in lieu of their morning performance. Whenever the magistrate exited the palace on official business, he went in procession accompanied by the Concerto Palatino,82and the Concerto likewise accompanied processions welcoming and displaying to the public important visitors to Bologna. Trumpeters and pifferi, probably members of the Concerto, played at the awarding of degrees and the installation of rectors at the University of Bologna.83 Other civic officials could employ the ensemble to enhance official events or festivities, and two of the trumpeters acted as town-criers, announcing public proclamations throughout the streets of the city. By the early sixteenth century the prominence of the Concerto Palatino resulted in Bologna becoming a center for the training of wind players, and by the middle of the seventeenth century, for training string players.

5.10 The Concerto also participated in major religious ceremonies, such as patronal feasts, at the principal churches of Bologna, especially San Petronio. Members of the Concerto Palatino were often simultaneously members of the musical ensemble at San Petronio by as early as the 1530s.84 From 1613, Camillo Cortellini, a singer and trombonist and long-standing member of the Concerto, became its leader while serving at the same time as a member of the cappella at San Petronio.85 In the second half of the seventeenth century and in the early eighteenth century concerted sacred music with obbligato trumpet parts became a feature of liturgical celebrations at San Petronio, especially on the feast of the basilica's patron saint.86

5.11 Ferrara. In Ferrara, the Este court ensemble served civic functions as well. The number of trumpeters grew from two or three in the early fifteenth century to a dozen in 1484.87 A small pifferi ensemble, separate from the trumpet corps, is also in evidence from the early fifteenth century, and by late in the first half of the century there was another group of soft instruments at court (eventually including lutenists, viol players, and keyboard players).88 Trombones (only regularly called by this name after 1452) were grouped together with the pifferi, but the trumpeters and pifferi joined together when massive sonorities were desired.89 Many of the trumpeters were probably musically illiterate, but a list of musicians' salaries in 1488–91 shows them paid at least twice and sometimes three times as much as singers. The trumpeters were principally Italians, while other instrumentalists and singers were mostly foreigners. The reputation of at least one of these trumpeters was quite widespread.90 As elsewhere, the trumpeters served as heralds and often functioned as diplomatic emissaries, political agents, and even as spies.91

5.12 Mantua. Similar trumpet and wind-band ensembles existed in Mantua from the fifteenth century into the seventeenth century.92 Trumpets joined with the pifferi in welcoming royalty to Mantua: the account of the arrival in 1463 of Margherita of Bavaria, wife of Federico I Gonzaga, cites 107 trombi, pifari, tromboni and 26 tamburi, as well as bagpipes and other instruments.93 Trumpets played on the battlefield, not only for signaling, but also at table.94 The wind-band was comprised of three shawms and one trombone (probably a single-slide instrument at first) through the second half of the fifteenth century, but a second trombone was added in 1502 and a third trombone in 1516. These musicians could also play other wind instruments and probably string instruments as well.95 The ensemble played at Carnival, for other celebrations, for dances, for banquets, and participated in festive masses in church as well as in a mass on the battlefield in 1495. Cornettos are mentioned in conjunction with the trombones as early as 1505.96

5.13 The instrumental ensemble under duke Guglielmo Gonzaga (1550–1587)was relatively modest, but when Vincenzo I became duke in 1587, more attention was paid to instrumental resources for the court, first on an ad hoc basis, then with the appointment of salaried employees. Thus, between mid-October of 1588 and the end of the year, Vincenzo hosted for a time Luigi Zenobi, one of the most famous cornettists of the period, and in 1590, trumpets, drums, and pifferi were paid for occasional service.97 Around 1603 a permanent, salaried wind ensemble of five players was formed, which served until Vincenzo's death.98 The instruments of three players are unspecified, but a fourth was a cornettist and the fifth a trombonist, also known as clarion delle trombe, once again indicating the ability of some trumpeters to read music and play other instruments regularly utilized for polyphony. Apart from typical courtly functions, the wind band assisted in plays, intermedii, tournaments, jousts and other court entertainments, including Monteverdi's L'Orfeo.99 A broad range of wind instruments are mentioned in a letter in the summer of 1609 as being sent to the duke, who was visiting at Lake Garda, for use in dancing and other entertainments.100 In 1610 the Mantuan ambassador in Venice sent to Vincenzo a batch of new wind instruments commissioned from a Venetian maker.101 The instruments included piffari (probably shawms), a dolzaina (bassoon), a set of flauti grandi (large recorders), a set of small recorders, and two cornettos.

5.14 In 1609, Vincenzo's son Prince Francesco, occupied with setting up his court as governor of the Mantuan province of Monferrato, sought the assistance of Ercole Gonzaga in hiring a group of pifferi from Cremona.102 Claudio Monteverdi was also engaged in assisting the Prince, and refers in a letter to a group of sonatori di cornetto et trombone.103 Another letter of nearly two years later from Monteverdi to Francesco reveals that the composer was still trying to aid the prince in establishing a wind band of five players, including a cornettist and a fifth instrumentalist recommended by Monteverdi who could play recorder, cornetto, trombone, flute, bassoon, viola da gamba, and viola da braccio. In this letter Monteverdi says the prince liked to have his wind band play "in the chambers and in church, along the streets and on the fortresses, now madrigals, now chansons, now airs, and now dances."104

5.15 Milan. In Milan, both the duke and the city maintained their own ensembles of trumpets and pifferi.105 The civic trumpet ensemble of a half-dozen Italian players dates back at least as far as the early fourteenth century. A court ensemble of pifferi (separate from the civic pifferi) antedated the accession of the Sforzas, and when Francesco Sforza became duke in 1450, he established a trumpet corps of his own of a dozen players who were more international in origin than the civic ensemble; in 1463 the duke's trumpets numbered nineteen and the pifferi numbered seven, four of whom were German.106 In the reign of Galeazzo Maria Sforza, who became duke in 1466, the court trumpeters increased to twenty—all Italians—while the pifferi numbered only four—all Germans.107 Half of Galeazzo's twenty trumpets were required to follow him on horseback on his rounds.108 The instruments played by these trumpeters were quite possibly manufactured by an Italian maestro da trombete, Antonio Bonfigli.109 Salary rolls of 1480 list seventeen tubete ducales and seven piferi et citariste, one of whom is designated trombonis (the others have no instrumental designation).110 The duke's trumpeters and pifferi often played together at ceremonies and banquets; the duke's instrumentalists were hired at times for service in the duomo; and the civic and ducal ensembles sometimes played together.111

5.16 In addition to their functions in sounding fanfares, acting as heralds, announcing public ceremonies, making official proclamations, and announcing jousts, at least some of the trumpeters were musically literate, since they took part in learned music transcribed and adapted for wind instruments.112 Trumpeters also served as ducal functionaries for all kinds of non-musical duties. In 1471 the trumpeter Sacco competed with the duke at tennis, winning 17 ducats, and in 1473 another trumpeter, Diego trombetta, traveled to Spain to try to negotiate the release of hostages.113 The ducal trumpeters were praised in 1494 as "the best trumpets in the world" by Charles VIII of France, and were noted for their refined and courtly manner.114 Special political or dynastic festivities called for the enhancement of the ensembles, at times to more than fifty instrumentalists, the majority of whom were trumpeters. For a political gathering of 1468, there were eleven pifferi, six trombones and thirty-three trumpets.115 Eight players of trumpets and possibly other instruments were summoned for Corpus Christi in June 1474, and trumpets performed at Christmas in 1475. For the wedding of Isabella d'Aragon and Giangaleazzo Sforza in 1489 trumpets and pifferi played in the procession to the duomo as well as during the mass and wedding itself, with the full contingent of trumpets accompanying the choir at the Elevation. Similarly, trumpets and pifferi played together for a royal marriage mass in 1493 and at a tournament in 1507.116

5.17 Bergamo. Even a relatively small city such as Bergamo, which was continually subjected to the rule of more powerful neighbors, considered it important to maintain a corps of civic trumpeters and also supported a civic pifferi ensemble for a period of time during the first half of the sixteenth century.117 Trumpeters functioning as heralds, proclaiming public ordinances and judicial proceedings alta voce tuba sonata are first recorded in 1331, but may have already filled that role for at least a century. These heralds held a high civic position and wore special livery. There were six in 1374, but the number was reduced to four in 1391. By 1422 their duties included "denunciation of criminals from the steps of the Civic Palace, and proclamation of new laws or consiliar decrees."118 In 1428 their numbers were reduced to two and the announcement of land sales was added to their responsibilities. In addition, nine locations for making proclamations were specified in the city and its suburbs. In 1491, the number of trumpeters was increased to three and their duties were expanded to include not only playing in processions, but also a "pleasant seranata" in honor of the Virgin Mary at vespers every Saturday and Marian vigil at the church of Santa Maria Maggiore in the main piazza.119 The trumpeters' seranata must have demanded musical skill beyond simple fanfares, and in the sixteenth century some of the most prominent trumpeters, who were capable of playing several different instruments, including trombones and strings, also played polyphony in the pifferi ensemble.120In 1490, a new ensemble of four pifferi had been founded to play in civic processions, after the procession, and at the Elevation for festal masses. Like the trumpeters, the pifferi also played a seranata at Santa Maria Maggiore every Saturday and Marian vigil. A trombone seems to have been added to the ensemble as early as 1500, and a cornetto may have been included in 1527, but the pifferi had a sporadic existence in the first half of the sixteenth century, dependent on economic conditions.121 The trumpeters, however, were not disbanded, regardless of economic difficulties, though the quality of the ensemble declined in the second half of the century because of inflation, and even more so in the seventeenth century when published proclamations made the trumpeters services as heralds less essential. One of the trumpeters in the late Cinquecento supplemented his income by owning a bordello very near the city hall.122 The civic pifferi ensemble was not revived after the middle of the sixteenth century.

5.18 Other Cities. References to similar uses of trumpets, drums and pifferi (including trombones) survive from Arezzo, Brescia, Cremona, Genoa, Lodi, Lucca, Padua, Parma, Perugia, Pisa, Pesaro, San Gimignano, Udine, and Verona.123 The less detailed information available regarding these towns suggests that trumpets, drums, and pifferi played many of the same roles described above for cities where the documentation is more extensive. Many cities also employed string ensembles and there is scattered evidence that members of the violin family at times played alongside trumpets, trombones, and pifferi in some processions and ceremonies.124

5.19 Not surprisingly, many of the functions of trumpets, drums, and pifferi witnessed in other cities were also practiced in Venice. Since much of Venetian military activity took place on the high seas, especially prior to the fifteenth century, the counterpart in Venice of the field trumpeters of land-locked cities were signal trumpeters aboard ship.125 The custom of outfitting ships of all sizes with a signal trumpeter extended not only to military enterprises, but also to commercial ships and to civic ceremonial events involving boats, just as trumpeters adorned all kinds of ceremonial festivities in other cities. Unfortunately, the evidence of appointment lists, payment records, and other civic documents from Venice that would give us detailed information about such activities is spotty. On the other hand, descriptions of ceremonies by chroniclers and iconographical depictions of state civic and religious events are much richer in Venice than elsewhere.  [Return to: paragraph 24.2., note 288.]

Go to Article Table of Contents.
Go to next section.


References to Part I

*Jeffrey Kurtzman (jgkurtzm@artsci.wustl.edu) is Professor of Music at Washington University in St. Louis and the author of The Monteverdi Vespers of 1610: Music, Context, Performance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999) as well as editor of a critical/performing edition of Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999) and of the ten-volume series Seventeenth-Century Italian Sacred Music: Vespers and Compline (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1995–2003). Linda Maria Koldau (lmkoldau@gmx.net) received her Ph.D. from the University of Bonn in 2000. Her dissertation, "Die venezianische Kirchenmusik von Claudio Monteverdi," was published by Bärenreiter Verlag in Kassel in 2001. She is the author of several articles on seventeenth-century Italian sacred music, has edited two church-music collections by Giovanni Rovetta and Giovanni Antonio Rigatti for A-R Editions, and is currently teaching at Trossingen Conservatory in Germany.

We wish to thank Robert Barclay, David Bryant, Linda Carroll, Stewart Carter, Jonathan Glixon, Trevor Herbert, Arnold Myers, Steven Plank, Keith Polk, Richard Seraphinoff, Howard Smither and Kerala Snyder for invaluable suggestions and corrections to earlier drafts of this article. We especially wish to thank Linda Carroll and Jonathan Glixon for pointing us to many references to trumpets by Marin Sanudo and to numerous references from other Venetian documents, as well as assistance with translation of some particularly problematic passages. We are also grateful to Betha Whitlow for providing assistance with the preparation of digital images. This article has profited immensely from the editorial expertise and acumen of Kerala Snyder and Margaret Mikulska.

1 We are grateful to David Bryant, who has supervised the study of thousands of Italian archival documents related to music, for this observation. Rodolfo Baroncini emphasizes a similar point with regard to the multiplicity and ambiguity of terms, even within a single document, referring to members of the violin family. See Baroncini, "Contributo alla storia del violino nel sedicesimo secolo: i 'sonadori di violini' della Scuola Grande di San Rocco a Venezia," Recercare: rivista per lo studio e la pratica della musica antica 6 (1994): 78–91. 

2 Marc'Antonio Ginammi, La Liberatione di Venetia . . . In Venetia, MDCXXXI. In Barbaria dalle Tavole, Appresso Gio. Battista Contato. [Biblioteca Correr G 24/BIS Post {no. 15}], 5. See the facsimile of the title page, where Ginammi is simply identified as Marc'Antonio Padavino, in James H. Moore, "Venezia favorita da Maria: Music for the Madonna Nicopeia and Santa Maria della Salute," Journal of the American Musicological Society 37 (1984); 315. Excerpts quoted in Moore, ibid., 313, 316 note 60. The entire text is reproduced in Document 1.

3 See Moore, "Venezia favorita da Maria" and Jeffrey G. Kurtzman, "Monteverdi's 'Mass of Thanksgiving' revisited," Early Music 22 (1994): 63–84.

4 See Edward Muir, Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981).

5 The principal monographs with significant discussion of early trumpets are Vivian Safowitz, “Trumpet Music and Trumpet Style in the Early Renaissance” (M.M. thesis, University of Illinois, 1965); Detlef Altenburg, Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der Trompete im Zeitalter der Clarinblaskunst (1500–1800), 3 vols. (Regensburg: Gustav Bosse Verlag, 1973); Johann Ernst Altenburg, Essay on an Introduction to the Heroic and Musical Trumpeters' and Kettledrummers' Art for the Sake of a Wider Acceptance of the Same.  Described Historically, Theoretically, and Practically and Illustrated with Examples, Engl. trans. Edward H. Tarr from the 1795 Halle edition published by Johann Christian Hendel (Nashville: The Brass Press, 1974); Anthony Baines, Brass Instruments: Their History and Development (London: Faber & Faber, 1976); Philip Bate, The Trumpet and Trombone: An Outline of their history, development and construction (London: Ernest Benn, 2nd edn., 1978); Peter Downey, "The Trumpet and its Role in the Music of the Renaissance and Early Baroque," 3 vols. (Ph.D. dissertation, The Queen’s University of Belfast, 1983); Don L. Smithers, The Musical History of the Baroque Trumpet before 1721 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2nd ed., 1988); Edward Tarr, The Trumpet, Engl. trans. Steven E. Plank and Edward Tarr (Portland: Amadeus Press, 1988); Robert Barclay, The Art of the Trumpet-Maker (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992); Keith Polk, German Instrumental Music of the Late Middle Ages: Players, Patrons and Performance Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); Frank A. D'Accone, The Civic Muse: Music and Musicians in Siena during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1997); Stewart Carter, ed., Perspectives in Brass Scholarship: Proceedings of the International Historic Brass Symposium, Amherst, 1995 (Stuyvesant, NY: Pendragon Press, 1997).  Peter Downey's dissertation and his subsequent articles, cited in note 7, though filled with detail and documentary references, are characterized by a polemical tone and should be read with caution.  The earliest modern account of the history of trombones is Francis W. Galpin, “The Sackbut, its Evolution and History,” Proceedings of the Musical Association 33 (1906–7): 1–25.  Further significant studies of trumpets and trombones are Fritz Jahn, "Die Nürnberger Trompeten- und Posaunenmacher im 16. Jahrhundert," Archiv für Musikwissenschaft 7 (1925): 23–52; Heinrich Besseler, “Die Entstehung der Posaune,” Acta Musicologica 22 (1950): 8–35; Willi Wörthmüller, "Die Nürnberger Trompeten- und Posaunenmacher des 17. u. 18. Jahrh.  Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Nürnberger Musikinstrumentenbaus," Mitteilungen des Vereins für Geschichte der Stadt Nürnberg 45 (1954): 208–325; Janez Höfler, “Der ‘Trompette de Menestrels’ und sein Instrument: Zur Revision eines bekannten Themas,” Tijdschrift van de Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis, 29 (1979): 92–132; Lorenz Welker, “‘Alta capella’. Zur Ensemblepraxis der Blasinstrumente im 15. Jahrhundert,” Basler Jahrbuch für historische Musikpraxis 7 (1983): 119–65; Herbert W. Myers, “Slide trumpet madness: fact or fiction?,” Early Music 17 (1989): 383–89; Keith Polk, “The trombone, the slide trumpet and the ensemble tradition of the early Renaissance,” Early Music 17 (1989): 389–97; idem, “Brass instruments in art music in the Middle Ages,” The Cambridge Companion to Brass Instruments, eds. Trevor Herbert and John Wallace (Cambridge; Cambridge University Press, 1997), 41–50; Ross W. Duffin, “The trompette des menestrels in the 15th-century alta capella,” Early Music 17 (1989): 397–402; Lorenz Welker, “Bläserensembles der Renaissance,” Basler Jahrbuch für historische Musikpraxis 14 (1990): 249–70; The Cambridge Companion to Brass Instruments, eds. Trevor Herbert and John Wallace (Cambridge; Cambridge University Press, 1997).  We have not yet had an opportunity to consult the recently published study by Patrick Tröster, Das Alta-Ensemble und seine Instrumente von der Spätgotik bis zur Hochrenaissance (1300–1550).  Eine musikikonographische Studie (Tübingen: MVK Medien Verlag Köhler, 2001).  See the detailed review of this volume by Keith Polk in Historic Brass Society Journal 13 (2001): 231–38.  An invaluable resource for trumpet and trombone iconography is Tom L. Naylor, The Trumpet & Trombone In Graphic Arts 1500–1800 (Nashville: The Brass Press, 1979).

6 Maximilian I supported a trumpet ensemble of twelve. See Keith Polk, "Voices and instruments: soloists and ensembles in the 15th century," Early Music 18 (1990): 187; and idem, "Patronage and Innovation in Instrumental Music in the 15th Century," Historic Brass Society Journal 3 (1991): 153. In the early 18th century, the Hapsburg court trumpet corps in Vienna comprised twelve trumpeters and two timpanists. See Andreas Lindner, Die kaiserlichen Hoftrompeter und Hofpauker im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert (Tutzing: Hans Schneider Verlag, 1999), 802. For Italian trumpet ensembles, sometimes augmented by large numbers for special events, see sections 4 and 5.

7 See Curt Sachs, "Chromatic Trumpets in the Renaissance," The Musical Quarterly 36 (1950): 62–66; Besseler, "Die Entstehung der Posaune;" Safowitz, "Trumpet Music and Trumpet Style;" Höfler, "Der 'Trompette de Menestrels';" Welker, "'Alta Capella';" Duffin, "The trompette des menestrels;" Myers, "Slide trumpet madness;" Polk, "The trombone, the slide trumpet;" idem, German Instrumental Music, 56–68; and idem, "The Trombone in Archival Documents—1350–1500," Journal of the International Trombone Association 15 (1987): 29, where the author suggests that the trumpet mentioned in connection with shawm bands was a slide instrument from as early as c. 1370. Höfler, pp. 111 and 115, gives charts of pitches available on slide trumpets tuned to various levels. In "The Trombone in Archival Documents," 27, Polk suggests that the word cornecti, found in a Florentine document of 1386, could refer to a single-slide trumpet. Welker, in "Bläserensembles der Renaissance," 254–55, interprets the instrument as a cornetto. The only person to persist in questioning the existence of single-slide trumpets, against all the accumulated evidence, is Peter Downey, in his dissertation and in a series of polemical articles. See Downey, "The Renaissance slide trumpet, Fact or fiction?" Early Music 12 (1984): 26–33; "Adam Drese's 1648 Funeral Music and the Invention of the Slide Trumpet," Irish Musical Studies 1 (1990): 200–17; and "'In tubis ductilibus et voce tubae': Trumpets, Slides and Performance Practices in Late Medieval and Renaissance Europe," Irish Musical Studies 2 (1993): 302–32. Responses to Downey's arguments were published by Duffin, "The trompette des menestrels;" Myers, "Slide trumpet madness;" and Polk, "The trombone, the slide trumpet."

8 The notice, first published in F. L Valdrighi, "Cappelle, concerti e musiche di Casa d'Este," Atti e memorie delle R. P. Deputationi di Storia patria per le provincie modenesi e parmensi, Ser. III, 3 (1884): 417, reads "pro tuba ductili cum qua sonat tubicen suus, trumbonus vulgo dictus, et cum factus fuerit dicto trumbono dari faciatis." See Höfler, "Der 'Trompette de Menestrels'," 97.

9 The phrase is "tubicinone vulgariter detto trombone." For the context of this phrase, see note 67.

10 Welker, in "Bläserensembles der Renaissance," 260, suggests that Tinctoris's reference in his treatise De usu et inventione musice of c. 1481–83 to a trombone is to a double-slide instrument, since Tinctoris recommends the trombone for the lower register.
 
11 See Timothy J. McGee, "Misleading iconography: the case of the 'Adimari Wedding Cassone'," Imago Musicae 9–12 (1992–95):150–52. Lippi's fresco is pictured in Trevor Herbert, "Trombone: History to 1750," The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Second Edition, 25 (London: MacMillan Publishers, Ltd., 2001): 767. This fresco has been restored several times since the 18th century, making it impossible to know if the present configuration of the instrument accurately reflects its original form. Representations of U-shaped double-slide instruments became common from the beginning of the 16th century onward. See Welker, "Bläserensembles der Renaissance," 257.

12 Polk, "Brass instruments in art music;" and idem, German Instrumental Music, 60–70.

13 See sections 4, 5 and 12–14. On the use of instruments and especially trumpets in church during coronations and at the Offertory in Germany, France and Italy, see Sabine Zak, "Fürstliche und städtische Repräsentation in der Kirche (zur Verwendung von Instrumenten im Gottesdienst)," Musica Disciplina 38 (1984): 231–59. For Eastern Europe, see Richard Rybaric, "'Con trombe e timpani'. Zur Frage der Stilarten der Barockmusik in Mitteleuropa," Atti del XIV congresso della Società internazionale di musicologia: Trasmissione e recezione delle forme di cultura musicale: Bologna, 27 agosto-1° settembre 1987, Ferrara-Parma, 30 agosto 1987, ed. Angelo Pompilio, Lorenzo Bianconi, Donatella Restani, F. Alberto Gallo (Turin: EDT, c. 1990), III: 191–97. See also Welker, "'Alta capella'," 119–65; and idem, "Bläserensembles der Renaissance," 264–65. Elena Quaranta has unearthed numerous documents dating as far back as the late 14th century attesting to the use of trumpets and sometimes drums not only in processions of the many scuole piccole of Venice, but also during vespers and the mass on the annual feasts of their titular saints. See Elena Quaranta, Oltre San Marco: Organizzazione e prassi della musica nelle chiese di Venezia nel Rinascimento (Florence: Leo S. Olschki Editore, 1998), 105–10, 143–81. Trumpets and drums are reported to have played at the wedding of Costanzo Sforza and Camilla of Aragon in Pesaro in 1475. See Jahn, "Die Nürnberger Trompeten- und Posaunenmacher," 43–44, where the author quotes a 1659 report of Tomaso Garzoni. Gino Stefani, in Musica e religione nell'Italia barocca (Palermo: S.F. Flaccovio, 1975), cites numerous documents, especially from northern Italy, that testify to the use of trumpets and even drums in church or sounding directly outside the church in the 16th and 17th centuries, but accompanying the music of the service inside. The most common place in the mass for trumpets to be sounded, with or without drums, was at the Elevation.

14 Practica musica Hermanni Finckii, exempla variorum signorum, proportionum et canonum, iudicium de tonis, ac quaedam de arte svaviter et artificiose cantandi continens (Wittemberg: Georg Rhau, 1556). Facsimile ed. Bologna: Forni Editore, 1969. The title page is reproduced in Naylor, The Trumpet & Trombone, plate 71. Trumpets are also depicted playing in the cathedral of Reims for the coronation of Louis XIV in 1654. See Naylor, plates 42–44. 

15 The most important general studies are Polk, German Instrumental Music of the Late Middle Ages; Welker, "Alta Capella;" and idem, "Bläserensembles der Renaissance," 249–70. See also Dietrich Kämper, Studien zur instrumentalen Ensemblemusik des 16. Jahrhunderts in Italien, Analecta Musicologica, Bd. 10 (Köln, Wien: Böhlau, 1970); and Victor Ravizza, Das instrumentale Ensemble von 1400–1550 in Italien: Wandel eines Klangbildes, "Publikationen der Schweizerischen Musikforschenden Gesellschaft," serie II, vol. 21(Bern: Verlag Paul Haupt, 1970). Many other studies, cited in note 1 above and in further notes below, have considerable information on pifferi in particular locales. This bibliography will be cited as our discussion of pifferi proceeds.

16 On the role of instruments in late medieval processions throughout Western Europe, see Edmund A. Bowles, "Musical Instruments in Civic Processions during the Middle Ages," Acta Musicologica 33 (1961): 147–61.

17 See Polk, German Instrumental Music, 60–68. Archival records indicate that many such bands consisted of different numbers and combinations of instruments at different times. The earliest record of what might have been a slide instrument combined with two shawms dates from 1363 in Dortmund, but it is only after 1400 that the presence of a slide instrument can be firmly established. An illustration of the notes available on a single-slide trumpet pitched in D is given in ibid., 57. Based on iconography, Polk believes that slide mechanisms were added to S-shaped trumpets, which had first come into use c. 1375, and to folded trumpets, which had first come into use c. 1400 (though not immediately replacing all S-shaped trumpets), but only rarely to straight trumpets. 

18 Polk, "The trombone, the slide trumpet," 392.

19 Polk, "Patronage and Innovation," 153–59.

20 See Welker, "'Alta Capella'," 141–42. For a series of depictions of such ensembles, see Keith Polk, "Ensemble Performance in Dufay's Time," Papers read at the Dufay Quincentenary Conference, Brooklyn College, December 6–7, 1974, ed. Allan W. Atlas (Brooklyn: Dept. of Music, School of Performing Arts, 1974), plates VIII–XIII.

21 Welker, "'Alta Capella'," 141–42, and Polk, "The Trombone in Archival Documents." In this article Polk, in keeping with 15th-century usage, applies the term "trombone" to single-slide instruments as well as to the U-shaped double-slide variety. In his book German Instrumental Music, he adopts the more modern practice of applying it only to a double-slide instrument. No one knows just when the U-shaped double-slide trombone was invented or first came into use, though Polk suggests it may have been the work of the Neuschel family in Nuremberg.

22 Polk, German Instrumental Music, 69–70.

23 See Polk, "Patronage and Innovation," 151; and idem, "Ensemble Performance in Dufay's Time," 64. By 1500 it had also become more common to mix "loud" and "soft" instruments, such as lutes and strings, and to join singers to the ensemble.

24 See Polk, "Voices and instruments: soloists and ensembles in the 15th century,"186.

25 The mixing of instruments from the high and low ensembles as well as with singers had already begun to blur the distinction between loud and soft ensembles in the second half of the 15th century. This blurring was facilitated by many instrumentalists being able to play several different instruments from both the high and low ensembles as early as the middle of the century. See Polk, "Voices and instruments," 186.

26 D'Accone, The Civic Muse, especially 413–554.

27 Numerous accounts and descriptions of such processions are quoted in Stefani, Musiche e religione nell'Italia barocca. See also Gino Stefani, Musica barocca: poetica e ideologia (Milan: Bompiani, 1985), 32–34, 61–65.

28 D'Accone, The Civic Muse, 414–500.

29 D'Accone, The Civic Muse, 440–442, 493.

30 D'Accone, The Civic Muse, 452, 458, 517. There may well have been trumpeters elsewhere in Italy and Europe fully competent to read music and play polyphony. As early as the mid-fifteenth century, the Venetian instrumentalist Zorzi trombetta da Modon owned and annotated a notebook of diverse contents that included several polyphonic chansons. Among these are five different contratenors to the tenor of Dunstable's chanson Puisque m'amour, about which Zorzi makes technical critical comments regarding the part writing, demonstrating not only Zorzi's knowledge of at least a rudimentary notation but also his understanding of simple counterpoint. The manuscript, sprinkled with dates between 1444 and 1449, is British Library Cotton Titus A.XXVI. See Daniel Leech-Wilkinson, "Il libro di appunti di un suonatore di tromba del quindicesimo secolo," Rivista italiana di Musicologia 16 (1981): 16–39. Zorzi and the manuscript are also discussed in Welker, "'Alta capella'," 159–60. Zorzi's polyphonic capabilities are likewise demonstrated by his later appointment as a trombonist in the pifferi del doge. See Rodolfo Baroncini, "'Se canta dalli cantori overo se sona dalli sonadori': voci e strumenti tra Quattro e Cinquecento," Rivista italiana di musicologia 32 (1997): 345, 351, 360. In 1454 the Duke of Burgundy heard a trumpeter in Stuttgart who could play not only fanfares, but also chansons. See Jeanne Marix, Histoire de la Musique et des Musiciens de la Cour de Bourgogne sous le règne de Philippe le Bon (1420–1467) (Strassburg: Heitz & Co., 1939), 72–73. In 1457 Friedrich I, Elector of Heidelberg, recommended to the town of Nördlingen a trumpeter who could play in polyphony. See Welker, "Bläserensembles der Renaissance," 260, 264. A petition to the city council of Verona in 1484 by a small ensemble of musicians claims that they can play piffari, trombeti, fiauti, arpe, lauti, organo and also sing. See Enrico Paganuzzi, Carlo Bologna, Luciano Rognini, Giorgio Maria Cambié, and Marcello Conati, La Musica a Verona (Verona: Alfio Fiorini, 1976), 80–82. A deliberation of the Council in Brescia in 1506 refers to the musician Lucas Venetus as "et tubae cantus et musicae peritissimus." What is unclear in this passage is the exact meaning of "tubae," which could refer to a trumpet, a trombone or both. See Baroncini, ibid., 344. A letter from Vincenzo Parabosco Piacentino of 1546 offering his ensemble for employment by the Duke of Parma claims that his six players can perform on trumpets, trombones, pifari, cornettos, bagpipes, recorders, German piferi, and viole da brazzo. See N. Pelicelli, "Musicisti in Parma nei secoli XV–XVI," Note d'Archivio 9 (1932): 42–43. Gian Pietro Rizetti of Brescia was described in a letter of 1546 by Vincenzo Parabosco, organist of the duomo in Brescia, as most able on trombette, tromboni, pifari, corneti, cornemuse, flauti, piferi ala alemana, and viole da brazo. See Paolo Guerrini, "Per la storia della musica a Brescia: Frammenti e documenti inediti," Note d'Archivio 11 (1934): 20. Bolognese trumpeters employed in the royal court of Scotland in the 16th century apparently played other instruments, including strings, that required them to be able to read music and play polyphonically. See Alexander McGratten, "Italian wind instrumentalists at the Scottish royal court during the 16th century," Early Music 29 (2001): 542–47. In Stockholm, in 1587, three of the court trumpeters were assigned the title musicus, distinguishing them from the field trumpeters. See Ardis Grosjean, "The Sad but Musical End of Trumpeter Carsten Mistleff, or Hard Times in Stockholm in the 1590s," Historic Brass Society Journal 12 (2000): 256.
Return to note 69.
Return to note 220.

31 D'Accone, The Civic Muse, 452–54.

32 D'Accone, The Civic Muse, 481.

33 D'Accone, The Civic Muse, 490–91.

34 D'Accone, The Civic Muse, 537–38.

35 D'Accone, The Civic Muse, 449–50, 553–54. There are records of a well-known maker of fine trumpets and trombones in Siena dating as far back as the early 15th century. See Renato Meucci, "On the Early History of the Trumpet in Italy," Basler Jahrbuch für historische Musikpraxis 15 (1991): 9–34.

36 D'Accone, The Civic Muse, 449–452.

37 Meucci, "On the Early History of the Trumpet," 25–34.

38 D'Accone, The Civic Muse, 443–44, 516, 523, 534, 541.

39 D'Accone, The Civic Muse, 513, note 5; 525. An account of the earliest uses of the term trombone is found in Polk, "The Trombone in Archival Documents," 26–27. A brief discussion of the development of the trombone is found in Robert Barclay, "Design, technology and manufacture before 1800," The Cambridge Companion to Brass Instruments (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 25–26. See also note 67 below.

40 D'Accone, The Civic Muse, 522–26. See also the documents quoted on 532 and 542.

41 D'Accone, The Civic Muse, 565.

42 D'Accone, The Civic Muse, 495. 

43 D'Accone, The Civic Muse, 518.

44 D'Accone, The Civic Muse, 452–53, 536.

45 D'Accone, The Civic Muse, 514, 566–69, 570–71, 577, 590.

46 D'Accone, The Civic Muse, 583–84.

47 D'Accone, The Civic Muse, 585.

48 D'Accone, The Civic Muse, 588–89.

49 For examples, see Stefani, Musica e religione nell'Italia barocca and idem, Musica barocca: poetica e ideologia, 32–34, 61–65.
 
50 Information on trumpets in Naples is drawn from Alan W. Atlas, Music at the Aragonese Court of Naples (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).

51 Atlas, Music at the Aragonese Court, 99. As Atlas notes, chroniclers may have inflated the numbers. The term for pifferi in the documents is bifari.
 
52 Atlas, Music at the Aragonese Court, 110; Welker, "'Alta Capella'," 143.

53 Information on instrumental ensembles in Rome is drawn from Alberto Cametti, "I musici di Campidoglio ossia 'il concerto di tromboni e cornetti del senato e inclito popolo romano' (1524–1818)," Archivio della R. Società romana di storia patria 43 (1925): 95–135.

54 Cametti, "I musici," 98. The ensemble was referred to as the piffari from about 1570, then Musici dei Conservatori until the late 1600s.
 
55 Cametti, "I musici," 106, 119.

56 Cametti, "I musici," 115–16.

57 Frederick Hammond, Music & Spectacle in Baroque Rome: Barberini Patronage under Urban VIII (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 119–20.
Return to Note 233.

58 "Giunti nel spatioso Cortille di Monte Cavallo, s'udì una grave, Sonora, e rimbombante armonia di bellici strumenti, cioè di Trombe, e di Tamburi, con gli uniti fifari." Quoted and translated from Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Classe VII, Cod. MXLII [1042 = 9607] in Hammond, Music & Spectacle, 121.

59 Hammond, Music & Spectacle, 126, 159, 230–31.

60 Hammond, Music & Spectacle, 119.

61 The earliest mention of this document is in Giuseppe Zippel, I suonatori della Signoria di Firenze (Trent: Lit. Tip. Giov. Zippel Edit., 1892), 6. See the discussion of this document in Timothy J. McGee, "Giovanni Cellini, Piffero of Florence," Historic Brass Society Journal 12 (2000): 210, 220, note 4. Based on a much later definition in the Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca, McGee suggests that the cenamella may have been a bagpipe or shawm. Zippel cites numerous references to the cenamella in Tuscan towns.

62 The statute is quoted and discussed in Luigia Cellesi, "Documenti per la storia musicale di Firenze," Rivista musicale italiana 34 (1927): 585–87.

63 See Zippel, I suonatori, 14–16. See also McGee, "Giovanni Cellini," 210; idem, "In the Service of the Commune: The Changing Role of Florentine Civic Musicians, 1450–1532," Sixteenth Century Journal 30 (1999): 727–30; and Keith Polk, "Civic Patronage and Instrumental Ensembles in Renaissance Florence," Augsburger Jahrbuch für Musikwissenschaft 3 (1986): 53, where the number of trombetti is given as five or six. According to McGee, "In the Service of the Commune," 729–30, the trombetti were small silver trumpets, in contrast to the large silver trumpets of the trombadori.

64 Zippel, I suonatori, 17. See also McGee, "Misleading iconography," 148.

65 See Polk, "Civic Patronage," 53.

66 For a description of such a procession celebrating the appointment of a captain-general of the Florentine army in 1485, see McGee, "In the Service of the Commune," 738.

67 In this period, terms such as tuba retorta and