Introduction

The trumpet is sometimes seen as just a loud instrument, but there is much more to it than that. It is true that it can be extremely loud and that before the days of telecommunications it was one of the best ways to transmit messages across a battlefield, but in the hands of a skilled orchestral player the trumpet is much more flexible than you might imagine. For example, when playing a soft melody with a mute it can sound as gentle and sweet as an oboe (an effect Schostakovich plays with in his First Symphony by switching music between the two). The trumpet can also play extremely rapid sequences of notes or even hold a romantic, lyrical melody. But having said all that, for the times when a composer really needs to grab everyone's attention and blast out a tune that will pin their ears back, on those occasions the trumpet really is quite irreplaceable.

The trumpet is the soprano voice of the brass family. Other forms of trumpet include the flugelhorn and cornet, which are more accurately described as saxhorns. Although cornets are relatively rare in orchestral writing, flugelhorns have seen a surge in popularity in recent years. They are an alto voice, and are pitched in Bb with a written range from F#3 to C6.