Trumpet History Essay

Words: 547
Pages: 3

Ahmed Malik - 6th Grade

History of the Trumpet

The very first metal trumpet known to man can be backtracked to around the 1500 BC. Silver and bronze trumpets were found in King Tut's grave in Egypt, and other versions of the trumpet were found in China, South America, Scandinavia, and Asia. Since most inventions of the trumpet were created in earlier forms, there is a good reason to assume that people have been blowing into objects for a long time. For example, some civilizations blew into animal horns to create sound, like a bull’s horn or a rhino’s horn. Other things that older civilizations blew into to make sound, was some sort of a shell. They would cut the top of the shell off and blow into that part, and the sound would come out the
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The early trumpets had a simple design, with just a flared bell at the end. These one-length trumpets had varying sizes, allowing the trumpeter to play the specific notes. The trumpeter would have to carry several trumpets to play during their performance. This led to the invention of the valve trumpet. In 1777, Michael Woggle and Johann Andreas Stein bent the trumpet to make it easier for the player’s hand to reach the bell. The consensus was that this created more problems than it solved. The keyed trumpet followed, but that never caught on, and was replaced rapidly by valve trumpets.

In 1788, Charles Clagget made the first attempt at adding valves to the trumpet, in England, as a means for easily changing the length of the tube. Another attempt was made in 1818 by Heinrich Stoelzel and Friedrich Bluhmel in Germany. They invented the box tubular valve, which later lead to the valve we now use today. Joseph Reidlin introduced the rotary valve in 1832. Finally, it was Frenchman Francois Perinet in 1839, who improved the tubular valve and invented the piston valved trumpet - this is the most commonly used trumpet