One of my ambitions in life is to be able to play everything Bach wrote for the trumpet and associated instruments. This might sound like a fairly modest ambition - it’s not like I’m attempting to climb Mount Everest, win on centre court at Wimbledon or become a best-selling novelist - but you may be surprised by just how much is involved in this seemingly humble endeavour.

The collected parts included in the Bach for Brass books (Volumes 1-6) contain all of the 'lip-vibrated aerophone’ parts that Bach composed. These books include Bach's cornetto parts as well as the horn parts and all the various types of trumpet parts. I would like to be able to open one of the volumes at random, select a cantata and then be able to play it on the correct instrument.

Bach's music is generally well-known and the trumpet parts are notorious for being fairly difficult. Add to this the fact that I would like to be able to play the trumpet parts both with and without using finger-holes... Well, already, you can imagine that the necessary hours in the practice room are accumulating. I love practicing in this way. However, it is also reassuring to find out whether this learning process is paying off by performing these pieces in public. It is great to have a reason to practice one of these more obscure cantatas to a deadline.

So I was delighted when the opportunity arose to perform a work I didn't know ('Ein ungefärbt Gemüte' BWV 24) along with one I did know ('Jauchzet Gott in Allen Landen' BWV 51) in a 'Bach Vespers' service at St. Mary-at-Hill, a beautiful old church near the Tower of London. Their Director of Music, Martin Knizia had invited me back to perform after a memorable and incredibly enjoyable performance on the 28th of September 2014. The performance in September last year only involved the trumpet in 'Jauchzet Gott in Allen Landen' BWV 51, now Martin was asking me to play in 'Ein ungefärbt Gemüte' BWV 24 as well.



'Ein ungefärbt Gemüte' BWV 24 was first performed on the 20 June 1723 in Leipzig. The independent trumpet part is labelled ‘Clarino’ in the original part, which was written in Kuhnau’s hand. According to Alfred Dürr, this cantata was first performed alongside 'Barmherziges Herze der ewigen Liebe' BWV 185 - which also has a part for a slide trumpet, and likewise ‘Clarino’ is the title in the part in that cantata.

Before agreeing to take part in the concert, I consulted 'Bach for Brass Volume 1' and discovered that this part was written for the single slide trumpet and it also required a horn for the final chorale. I took a look at the slide trumpet part and decided, on account of the sheer virtuosity of the part, that I would need a bit more notice to learn it on the slide trumpet in order to be able to do it justice. The slide trumpet has all the difficulties of the ventless natural trumpet but with the added complication of having the slide, which requires its own technique in addition to an already solid natural trumpet technique. Achieving the two in coordination to play a piece as virtuosic as this would have taken more time than I had - with only a week or so between my invitation and the performance. The added complication was the fact that my slide trumpet was being refurbished at the time and was presumably in pieces in the maker's workshop. I explained this to the Director of Music and I offered the possibility of playing this movement (‘Alles, alles’) on the cornetto instead of the slide trumpet. This seemed like a good solution as the town musicians of Leipzig (stadtpfeifer) were multi-instrumentalists and would have had to show pragmatism at times as well. So, although I was slightly disappointed that I did not have the facility to do it on the slide trumpet this time, I was consoled by the idea that it seemed like a plausible 18th Century-style compromise.

Hypothetically considering this as a cornetto part involved working out the Chorton and Kammerton transposition that would now be necessary, since there is no such thing as a 415Hz cornetto (the wide spread of the finger holes would be unbearable on an instrument of that size). Works that required a cornetto in the 18th Century often had the cornetto pitched a tone higher than the general pitch standard. For the sake of argument, that would mean cornetto in 466Hz and the orchestra playing at 415Hz with the cornetto parts being transposed to fit in. In completing this task for BWV 24, I soon proved to myself that this piece was certainly not a cornetto part (but no one was suggesting that it was). When transposed for the 466Hz cornetto, it would have been in the key of F minor. Not ideal. However, with 490Hz, 466Hz and 440Hz cornetti at my disposal, I decided that I would play it on my straight cornetto in 490Hz in order for it to be in the most user-friendly key. This worked well.

After the rehearsal and before the performance, Martin Knizia told me that if he wasn’t looking at me, he could believe that I was playing the trumpet as the sound can be remarkably similar. I would say, there is a way of playing the cornetto that is similar to the way of playing in the ‘clarino’ register - if you have a good idea in your mind of the type of sound you are trying to achieve. I was imagining a combination of the the ‘chirruping’ (as opposed to the bombastic) quality of the natural trumpet, combined with the ‘shine’ that you can achieve in the higher register of the cornetto. I am inclined to think that ‘clarino' is just the way of playing a lip-vibrated instrument, whichever instrument it may be. I think of it more as a performance direction than any specific indication of instrument type. I would argue that it is possible to play any of these instruments in a ‘clarino’ style. ‘Clarino' means ‘clear’ which I interpret to mean (musically speaking): precise, compact, with a bright sound and without being too loud (i.e clear in the sense of translucent - leaving room to be able to hear the other instruments).

'Ein ungefärbt Gemüte' BWV 24 involved using a horn in the final chorale: 'O Gott, du former Gott’. The chorale appears in the original manuscript directly beneath the ‘clarino’ part, and it is notated in sounding pitch with no additional instrument designation. Alfred Dürr’s tome on ’The Cantatas of J.S.Bach’ states that the part is “designated ‘Clarino’ but best suited to a horn in F” and he references an article by Thomas G. McCracken and another by Kirsten Beißwenger and Uwe Wolf. Similarly, the Bach for Brass volume suggests that it is written for '[Corno] in C+' (the C means that it is notated in sounding pitch and the + means that it has non-harmonic tones) and this might initially lead one to believe that a slide would be required as well.