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Title	1st and 2nd Imperiale (+ Toccata from Orfeo) (1607; 1638)
Article no.	3196404
Category	Ensembles
Subcategory	Trumpets
Instrumentation	5Trp / 5Brass
Country of publication	Switzerland (ch)
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Composer	Fantini
Arranger	Monteverdi
Difficulty level	3+
Duration	8:00
Additional info/contents	During the Renaissance and Baroque periods, the main duty of trumpeters was to add splendor to the courts they served. It was not unusual for a great court to employ as many as 20 trumpeters, as for example in Paris, London , Copenhagen, and Lisbon. The trumpeters performed courier functions in wartime, and at all times heralded their sovereigns' comings and goings with lavish procession al marches and fanfares. The trumpeters were grouped in choirs. The usual number of trumpets in such a choir around 1600 was five , to which timpani were usually added. Each of the five parts was assigned to a specific register and was given a name pertaining to that register. They were, from top to bottom: clarino (c' to aN); quinta , sonata, or later principale (c', g', e', c'); alto e basso (e', c',g); vulgano (g) ; and basso (c). It can easily be seen that because of the limitations which the harmonic series imposed upon these valveless instruments, the lower parts were bound up inextricably with the chord of C major (or 0 , etc., depending on the instruments' pitch). Indeed , the two lowest parts, vulgano and basso, blared out a ponderous drone. Because trumpeters in such ensembles improvised nearly all of their music, few musical documents have survived- in contrast to the sinfonias, sonatas, and concertos of the 'concert trumpeters', who began to break away from the trumpet ensemble after 1665 to associate more and more with string ensembles. The works for trumpet ensemble by Monteverdi and Fantini which are contained in the present edition are not only several of the fortunate few to have survived; they are also among the finest pieces of their kind. They occupy a position on the borderline between purely functional music and art music. Their undeniable power over the listener comes in part from the sheer majesty of the sound of (natural) brass instruments, and in part from the ecstatic effect produced by the variations in the upper parts over the incessant drone reiterated in the lower ones. Claudio Monteverdi's Toccata , a thrice-sounded fan fare announcing the raising of the curtain on his opera L 'Orfeo (1607), is certainly the most famous composition for a Baroque trumpet ensemble. It was first published in 1609, then once again in 1615. It was by then a longstanding custom for trumpeters to announce three times the beginning of a d ramatic production. The fact that Monteverdi wrote out all of the five parts shows, once again, how unwilling he was to leave any detail of a musical performance up to chance. Now, after the discovery of Cesare Bendinelli 's trumpet method of 1614 (available in its entire ty, with complete translation in English, German and French with critical commentary and biography by Editions Bim), with its rules for improvisation within a trumpet ensemble, Monteverdi's toccata can no longer be viewed as a pure example of the trumpeters' improvisation. On the contrary, the artful overlapping of the parts conveys an entirely different transparency. The composer's own high opinion of his toccata is shown by the fact that he used it again in a revised form as the introduction to his Vespers of 1610, the trumpet parts now perforned on cornetts and trombones. In a note in the original printed score of the opera, Monteverdi suggested that the other instruments of the orchestra play along with the trumpets, which were to have mutes inserted in their bells, presumably so they would not drown out the other instruments. Since the wooden mutes then in use in Italy caused the pitch to be raised by a whole step, the actual tonality of the toccata was D rather than C. Girolamo Fantini, who was born around 1600, was chief court trumpeter of the Grand Duke of Tuscany. In 1638 he published a famous trumpet method (Facsimile, complete translation, critical commentary and biography available by Editions Bim in English, French and German) which contained, among other pieces, the first sonatas for trumpet and basso continuo, as well as the present compositions. The latter works, entitled L'Imperiale and Seconda Imperiale, are actually two sections of a very long processional intrada entitled Entrata Imperiale, in which sections in one part apparently alternated with others- such as the present two- in five parts. (Fantini 's instructions are not absolutely clear.) Only the upper part of these two sections has survived. The editor has reconstructed the lower four, using Monteverdi's Toccata as a guide, as well as the timpani part, which is editorial for both Monteverdi and Fantini. Gewicht: 0.127
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