(Fr. trompette à clefs; Ger. Klappentrompete; It. tromba a chiavi).
A trumpet, generally with two double bends held in a horizontal plane. In the type developed by the Austrian trumpeter Anton Weidinger (1766–1852), the keys are brought together on one side of the instrument so as to be operated by one hand only; the other hand merely holds the instrument. Austrian specimens are usually fingered with the left hand, Italian ones with the right. The keys cover soundholes, and when opened raise the pitch: the key nearest the bell by a semitone, the next by a tone etc. Some trumpets have four, and some six keys, but five is the most common number (for illustration, see Trumpet, fig.7d).
The
first keyed trumpets were pitched in D and E
. Later (c1820) they were made in G, A or A, with crooks for lower
pitches; with the fixed position of the soundholes, this resulted in differing
intonation and fingering, according to the crook employed. In Italy, they were
also constructed in families of various sizes.
The
first keyed trumpet was made in Dresden in c1770 (according to
information in Schubart’s Ideen zu einer Ästhetik der Tonkunst), and in
1791–2 Nessmann built a keyed trumpet in Hamburg. This was praised by Gerber (Neues
historisch-biographisches Lexikon, 1812–14). In an advertisement for his
‘Grand Public Concert’ given in Vienna (28 March 1800) Weidinger stated that
work on his ‘organisirte Trompete’, which had taken seven years, was finally
accomplished. He also claimed the concert to be the first public performance on
the instrument, which was equipped with several keys. However, in 1798
Weidinger had played in Kozeluch’s Symphonie concertante for mandolin,
trumpet, double bass, keyboard and orchestra at a public concert; the
instrument used was called ‘organisirte Trompete’, so that the ‘first
performance’ of 1800 must have been on a perfected model. The concert also
included Haydn’s Trumpet Concerto in E, written for Weidinger as early as 1796; the Kozeluch
work is less demanding and less chromatic.
With Weidinger the keyed trumpet gained considerable success as a solo instrument. It was also used in military music from about 1820, especially in Austria and Italy, but towards 1840 it was superseded by the valve trumpet. Reconstructions of keyed trumpets have been made since 1971 by the firm of Instrumentenbau Egger (Basle) and distributed by Meinl & Lauber.
The tone of the keyed trumpet is softer and less penetrating than that of the previously employed natural trumpet, frequently being compared with a sonorous oboe or clarinet.
The keyed trumpet is not to be confused with the Keyed bugle, a member of the flugelhorn family, although it, too, was often called trompette à clefs.
A. Carse: Musical Wind Instruments (London, 1939/R)
P. Bate: The Trumpet and Trombone (London, 1966/R)
R. Dahlqvist: The Keyed Trumpet and its Greatest Virtuoso, Anton Weidinger (Nashville, TN, 1975)
H. Heyde: Musikinstrumenten-Museum der Universität Leipzig, iii: Trompeten, Posaunen, Tuben (Leipzig, 1980)
R. Dahlqvist: Bidrag till trumpetens och trumpetspelets historia: från 1500-talet till mitten av 1800-talet, med särskild hänsyn till perioden 1740–1830 (Göteborg, 1988) [with Eng. summary]
REINE DAHLQVIST