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Besides the fundamental note of the pipe, which from its length would have lain somewhere in the range c to g, the ancient trumpeter would certainly have been accustomed to produce one or two (if not more) of the higher notes of the harmonic series.183 His trumpet-calls could thus be differentiated not only by rhythmic but also by melodic pattern. Bacchylides speaks of the trumpet 'shrieking out the song of war'. An early fifth-century painting of a trumpeting Amazon is surrounded by the meaningless syllables TOTE TOTOTE, which apparently represent her fanfare.184 Ennius famously rendered the trumpet's alarum as taratantara, which at least suggests a definite rhythmic figure and, to a specialist, a technique of tonguing.185 A trumpeter also knew how to 'sound the retreat', and according to later authorities there were distinct trumpet-calls for various commands that might be given.186 Plutarch tells of a Roman barber who had a jay that was an excellent mimic of all it heard. One day some trumpeters performed outside, whereupon the jay fell into complete silence. Some conjectured that it had been poisoned by a rival barber, others that it had been deafened by the trumpets and had lost its voice together with its hearing. But after a period of meditation the bird suddenly burst out in a perfect imitation of the trumpets, singing 'their tunes with all their punctuations, modulations, and note-patterns'.187 |
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From the fourth century on we find records of competitions for trumpeters at games. We do not know by what criteria they were judged. The chief one may have been simply volume, as apparently in the parallel contests for town criers.188 Seventeen prizes in the late fourth century were accumulated by Herodorus of Megara, a man of |
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183 Cf. p. 101; Baines, Brass, 27-31. |
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184 Bacchyl. 18. 3; 'a song not of the lyre', Arist. Rh. 1408a9; Antip Sid. HE 178. The painting is a black-figure epinetron by the Sappho Painter, Eleusis 907. A. Bélis, BCH 108 (1984), 99-109. makes a bold attempt to identify the notes; she relies on the use of similar syllables in the 'solmization' system attested at a much later period (below, p. 265). |
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185 Ennius, Ann. 451 Skutsch, with his note, p. 608; Baines, Brass 63; P. Bate in NG xix. 60, 'Tonguing. In playing mouth-blown wind instruments, the technique by which detached notes, or the first notes of phrases, are given a clean start. . . . In playing the flute or cup-mouthpiece instruments [this would probably include the Classical trumpet. MLW] the tongue is placed against the palate behind the upper teeth [and withdrawn sharply]. The movement is similar to that employed in forming the consonant ''T".' |
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186 Thuc. 5. 10. 3, Xen. An. 4. 4. 22, Poll. 4. 86, Aristid. Quint. p. 62. 11-19; later historians cited by Reinach in Dar.-Sag. v. 525. Cf. also Tymnes, HE 3603. |
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187De soll. an. 973b-e. |
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188 Cf. Poll. 4. 91. |
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