I recently saw a European symphony playing opera music and, in the orchestra, were musicians playing these odd trumpets. Not small concert(ina) trumpets, but regular sized trumpets that:
in which the musicians grasped (wrapped their left hands around) the actual tubing near the top of the horn; and
had pedal-shaped valve “buttons” (sorry about my lame musical terms) that the musicians depressed, rather than the traditional round button thingies.
It was not a valve trombone. It may have been a period piece.
If it was a rotary valve trumpet, they are different from piston valve trumpets (the kind most people are more familiar with) in the following ways:
Used for classical music as opposed to jazz and popular music.
Mellower, sweeter sound.
The bends in the tubing are everywhere more gradual, with larger radii.
They are usually tuned in the key of C, whereas piston trumpets are usually tuned in B flat (though both kinds are available in many keys and some have alternate crooks to change the tuning key - see Yamaha’s web site).
The valves - this may be obvious now - rotate, and the keys pull strings or wires or bands around pulleys to rotate the valves. Piston trumpet valves travel linearly and have the keys (the buttons) at one end.
It DID look like the rotary valve trumpet, which begs the question: why use it. For the “mellower, sweeter sound” or is there some historic significance?
There is a trend in classical music called “ancient instruments.” The orchestras that choose this path try, as much as possible, to sound like the ensembles that originally played in the time of the composers. They play antique instruments, if they still exist, and reproductions if not. For example, the fiddles are strung with gut instead of nylon. Where a modern band would play French horns, these guys are likely to play valveless “natural” horns.
Just for clarification, this is Mrs. Jman, but I do have a music degree and looked up the question of historical signifgance in one of my texts.
The historical signifigance is really one of geography. Trumpets in eastern Europe (including Germany and Austria) developed separate of those western Europe (including France and England.) It is from these western countries that American trumpet players get their tradition of piston valve trumpets that we are all familiar with.
The reason for using rotary valve trumpets today is really two-fold.
First, musicians are inherently lazy and unwilling to change…everyone thinks they have the “right” kinds of equipment. The players you saw were probably in an eastern european orchestra or eastern european players in a western orchestra.
Second, many “western” players will use a rotary valve trumpet when playing the works of Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner, Strauss and other “Eastern” composers of the 19th and 20th centuries, the theory being that the music was envisioned by the composers using these instruments and their blending and balancing capabilities.