Clarion (instrument)

After the fall of Rome, when much of Europe was separated from the remaining Eastern Roman Empire, both straight and curved tubular-sheet-metal trumpets disappeared, and curved horns from natural materials like cowhorn and wood were Europe's trumpet. The first made were the añafil in Spain and buisine in France and elsewhere. Then Europeans took a step that hadn't been part of trumpet making since the Roman (buccina and cornu); they figured out how to bend tubes without ruining them and by the 1400s were experimenting with new instruments. Whole lines of brass instruments were created, including initial examples like the clarion, the natural trumpet, slide trumpet, and sackbut. These bent-tube variations shrunk the long tubes into a manageable size and controlled the way the instruments sounded. Shorter instruments with narrower tubing became the clarions and field trumpets (the clarions being the narrower of the two). Longer, lower pitched trumpets became the trombone. Comparing the field trumpet and the clarion, Galpin said both were used in fanfare music, the broader tubed and longer field trumpet taking lower notes, the clarion the higher notes. European experiments with bent-tube instruments in turn influenced Islamic musical instruments, resulting in the S-curved nafir or karnay and the Turkish boru. ==Etymology==

, the trumpet pictured is shorter. The añafil (Spanish renaming of Arabic Nafir, also called buisine was between 4 and 7 feet long. Calling it "clairon," Nicot said the nafir at 4.25-5 ft long served as treble for the Moore's other trumpets, which sounded tenor and bass tones. "Clarion" derives from three Latin words: the noun (trumpet), the adjective (bright or clear), and the verb '''' (to make clear). Throughout Europe, an eclectic set of variations on clarion came into use. The meaning of these variations was not standard. It is not clear whether they are meant to refer to an actual instrument or simply the high register of the trumpet. Clairon become the most commonly used version. • English variants were "claro", "clario", "clarone", "clarasius", "clarioune", "claryon" and "clarion". Early clarion use found in written work in English from 1325 AD. • In Spain, the terminology became "clarín" and "clarón". • Italians used "chiarina", "chiarino", and "claretto", and by 1600, they began to use "clarino" or "chlarino", which became a standard, albeit widely misunderstood, term. • In Germany, the usage was "clareta", and by the middle of the 16th century, "clarin". ==Usage of the word==

and Roman tuba, cornu and buccina, pre-13th century European trumpets were horns, shaped like oxen horns until encounters with Islamic armies' nafirs inspired creation of instruments such as the Spanish añafil and French buisine. The various iterations of "clarion" occur alongside the idiomatic usage of "trumpet" in the literature and historical records of several countries. The presence of these terms in concert with each other throughout such passages gave rise to a consensus that there must be a clarion trumpet which is distinct in construction from a standard trumpet. In France, historical records include phrases like "à son de trompes et de clarons", for instance. In his French dictionary, Jean Nicot wrote that the clarion is used among the Moors and the Portuguese (who adopted the Moors' custom). Nicot defines the clarion as a treble instrument, which is paired with trumpets playing the tenor and bass. Nicot also specifies that the clarion was used by the Cavalry and Marines. In ''The Knight's Tale'', Chaucer writes, "", which adds to the notion that clarions must somehow be distinct from trumpets. This idea was bolstered by artworks of the time, which show a variety of trumpets in different shapes and sizes. There are even records from trade guilds like the Goldsmith's Company of London which specify that a clarion is 70% lighter than a trumpet. However, there is no precise understanding of what any of these variations meant. The fundamental confusion is over whether or not they refer to an actual instrument or to a style of playing in the high register of the trumpet. Even the Spanish historian Sebastián de Covarrubias confused the meaning in his Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, writing that the clarin was a "trumpetilla", a tiny trumpet capable of playing in the high register or that the term could simply refer to the high register of the trumpet. Baroque The confusion over the usage of these terms seemed to mainly dissipate in the Baroque era, when "clarino" (plural: "clarini"), and its variants, came to be specifically understood as the practice of playing the natural trumpet in its high register. ==Range of notes==

:See: Natural trumpet for history of expanded tonal range. Natural trumpets were originally war trumpets used to signal with a short repeating pattern. They were largely the same among European countries, consisting of two tones, a fifth apart. In a 5-trumpet ensemble of trumpets as long as 8 feet, it would be paired with a standard trumpet. The long trumpet was tuned an octave lower, and called sonata, quinta or principale). The other trumpets were the basso trumpet, vulgano trumpet, and alto e basso trumpet. Trumpets in the 16th century had a narrow range of notes that could be played. The larger straight trumpets, like the buisine likely played one or two notes. The bent-tube trumpets likely had an increased range of about 4 playable notes in the "Late Middle Ages", the "naturals 1-4." Innovations such as the slide trumpet and different mouthpieces helped increase the notes available. Better built trumpets also gained notes as they could increasingly be overblown. There was less need of the specialized clarion as trumpets improved in the Baroque period. The principal register of the trumpet extended to the seventh pitch of the harmonic series. The trumpet's clarino register then ran from the eighth to the twentieth pitch in the series. Among today's trumpets, the piccolo trumpet occupies the same position in relation to standard trumpets that the clarion did, tuned one octave above the standard trumpet. ==Ottoman boru==

, Ottoman miniature circa 1568. The musicians play two zurna, two spiral trumpets (boru), a cylinder drum davul and a pair of kettle drums (nakkare). In 1529, the "Turkish field clamor" reached Vienna for the first time. By the late 1500s, Ottoman armies were playing these new folded trumpets (or natural trumpets) in place of their former nefir trumpets. The nefir was closely related to the añafil. In today's Turkish, nefir means "trumpet/horn" and "war signal". In the 17th century, when the Ottoman writer Evliya Çelebi (1611 – after 1683) wrote his travelogue Seyahatnâme, the nafīr was a straight trumpet that was played in Constantinople by only 10 musicians and had fallen behind the European boru (also tūrumpata būrūsī), for which Çelebi states 77 musicians. Nefir, or nüfür in religious folk music, was a simple buffalo horn without a mouthpiece, blown by Bektashi in ceremonies and by itinerant dervishes for begging until the early 20th century. ==Gallery==

File:Musica getutscht und außgezogen 022.jpg|Virdung illustrated (1511 AD) bent trumpets including clareta, thin tubed to produce high notes. Thurner horn; may be thürmer (tower), as in tower watchmen. File:Musica getutscht und außgezogen 021.jpg|Virdung illustrated (1511 AD) bent trumpets including felttrumet (field trumpet) and busaun (sackbut). File:Agricola trumpets.jpg|1529 AD Trumpets from Martin Agricola's book Musica instrumentalis deudsch File:Clarions, Galpin, Francis W., Old English instruments of music.jpg|Clarions displayed in Old English instruments of music by Francis William Galpin. Left c. 1400, right early 1400s, England. File:Frères Limbourg - Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry - mois de mai - Google Art Project cropped.jpg|Clarion trumpet, buisine trumpet, 2 shawms. Painted in France between 1412 and 1416. (upper left corner). Clarion matches felttrumet in Virdung's 1511 illustration. File:Buisine player and clarion player at religious ceremony, Manuscript of Saint-Esprit IRHT 062067 2.jpg|Buisine player and clarion player at religious ceremony, Manuscript of Saint-Esprit, 1450–1460, France. Clarion matches Thurner horn in Virdung's 1511 illustration. File:Early timpani and trumpet.jpg|Painting from Munich, . S-curved trumpet paired with timpani kettle drums File:Emperor Sigismund with the golden rose, ff. 86-87.jpg|1460 AD. A mix of different-sized business (far right) playing ahead of Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund. One trumpet resembles the thurner horn. File:Black Trumpeter at Henry VIII's Tournament.jpg|1511. Herald trumpeters of Henry VIII blowing looped business or clarions. Middle trumpeter is thought to be John Blanke, an African in service to Catherine of Aragon. File:Frontispiece for Poems by Desmarets MET DP827806.jpg|1641 AD. Woman Holding a clareta or clarion. File:Death on horseback holding a trumpet, from 'The five deaths' (Les cinq Morts) MET DP817535.jpg|Circa 1648. Death playing a clareta or clarion. File:Concertino di gentiluomini, by Girolamo Romanino circa 1540s.jpg|Trumpets that appear to be like Virdung's busaun. Possibly slide trumpets. Far right is a curved cornett. File:Israfel blows the trumpet of Sur.jpg|As European bent-tube instruments spread, Islamic countries began applying the technique to their own trumpets, even in fantastic imagery. 16th century AD. File:Israfil, the Angel of Resurrection, Blows the Seven-Fold Trumpet, Ottoman miniature.jpg|The Turkish boru, made from bending a trumpet into a loop, also made became an instrument of angels. Late 16th – early 17th century AD. File:Surname-ı Vehbi (fol. 172a).jpg|Turkish miniature from the Surname-ı Vehbi (1720 AD) showing boru trumpets, far left File:Boru trumpet, 1907.jpg|Boru trumpet, Turkey, 1907, part of the Mehter military band File:SlideTrumpet.jpg|Slide trumpet replica. When trumpets only had a narrow range of playable notes, the slide trumpet allowed that range to increase. The tube that slides is where the mouthpiece enters; pulling it in and out changes the length of the trumpet, changing its key. File:Clarion fingerchart, Museum Musicum Theoretico-Practicum page 40.jpg|By 1732, the clarion had become the natural trumpet in music instruction books. Museum musicum theoreticalo practicum File:Natural Trumpet in D MET DP220756.jpg|Natural trumpet, 1790 AD File:Buisine, clarion, field trumpet, Galpin, 1910.jpg|Buisine, clarion (a natural trumpet), and field trumpet, from Francis W. Galpin book Old English instruments of music. The latter two instruments are a latter stage of the clarion. File:Chiarine lg giorni di palio (7).jpg|Italian chiarine. This instrument has no valves. File:Russian Fanfare Trumpets.jpg|Russian fanfare trumpets, played by Russian soldiers. These trumpets have no valves. File:Carnavals de montagne Aosta.JPG|A trumpeter in medieval costume plays a trumpet with a piston. This type of single-valved clarion was specially designed for the performance of the "Triumphal March" of Giuseppe Verdi 's Aida. File:Defense.gov photo essay 080525-N-0696M-146.jpg|Fanfare trumpet used by the U.S. Army Herald Trumpets, 2008. These trumpets have valves. ==References==