(b England, c1669; d Strasbourg, after 1742). French performer, composer, teacher and dancing-master. He was taught the trumpet marine by an English teacher and by his father, a French émigré bookdealer in England. His father must have been the M Prin that Samuel Pepys mentioned having heard at Charing Cross on 24 October 1667.
Jean-Baptiste is known to have been married in Lyons in January 1689. After 1698 he was a dancer in Paris as well as a performer on the trumpet marine. In 1704 he returned to Lyons, where he married again. Until his retirement to Strasbourg in 1737 he found employment as a teacher and player of the trumpet marine in Lyons, noting in his memoirs that he had caused more than 150 of the instruments to be constructed during these years. Church records show the baptism of a child of his third marriage in July 1735. One of his sons achieved some fame as a dancer and actor in Paris early in the century, and another became the director of the Comédie in Bordeaux in 1755.
In 1742 Prin donated his trumpet marine and his manuscripts to the academy at Lyons. The instrument was sold in 1792, but the manuscripts were deposited in the municipal library, where they still remain. In all they contain 216 different works for the trumpet marine. Of these, seven are attributed specifically to Prin, 56 to Lully, and one each to Hotteterre and Philidor. Those remaining, whether original or arrangements, are presumably by Prin. Altogether the manuscripts represent about 85% of the known literature for the instrument. His Traité sur la trompette marine treats its history, construction and performance.
Prin’s music, much in the vein of the simpler instrumental pieces of the period, is written idiomatically for the trumpet marine. His melodies basically move stepwise; the few skips are harmonically orientated and are restricted to crotchet or longer rhythms because of the difficulty of performance. Similarly the slurs, carefully notated in the manuscripts, are restricted to two-note patterns. The only ornament discussed and employed by Prin is the trill, which is always indicated by a small cross.
About 80% of his music is cast in a binary dance form; about half of these works are non-modulating. Prin was particularly fond of the rounded binary form and the rondeau. In the latter form the trumpet marine does not play during the episodes, which are in other keys. In the former, however, modulations are made either to the dominant or subdominant, both of which are possible on the instrument.
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Livre de la musique du roy, 1702, F-LYm Res.133651 (165 pieces including 17 duets and Prin’s 4 concerts) |
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Airs de trompette et viollons, 1718, LYm Res.133934 (75 pieces; vn 2 part missing) |
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Concert de trompette, haubois et viollons, 1724, LYm Res.133671 (4 vols. containing the accompaniment for the concerts) |
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Traité sur la trompette marine, 1742, LYm Res.133670 (includes 86 pieces, of which 16 are duets) |
L. Vallas: ‘J.-B. Prin et sa méthode de trompette marine’, Revue musicale de Lyon, ix (1911–12), 378–87
F.W. Galpin: ‘Mr Prin and his Trompette Marine’, ML, xiv (1933), 18–29
J. Cizeron: ‘La vie musicale lyonnaise au XVIIIe siècle’, Académie musicologique du Forez, vi (1986), suppl.
C. Adkins and A. Dickinson: A Trumpet by any Other Name: a History of the Trumpet Marine (Buren, 1991)
CECIL ADKINS