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Trumpeter, English Civil War
Trumpeter , The Earle of Essex his Regiment of Horse 1642.
Trumpets were to Horse, as Drums were to Foot : indispensable as signallers and also as a kind of audible glamour. Every Troop of about sixty men had two trumpeters, and if well organised and trained , all the trumpets in the Regiment could combine to create this sort of excellent racket , a great way to announce an arrival in town or camp ....
Since England had been at peace for two generations in 1642,when gentlemen started raising troops of horse there must have been a desperate shortage of trumpeters, save in the Royal Household, and one wonders where they found them in such a short time . I suspect offers of employment positively flew across the Channel to the Low Countries and the Protestant parts of Germany, and orders to the south of Germany where the instruments were mostly made. Given the thousands of Britons who had served in the Dutch Wars and Thirty Years War since 1618, one suspects that they knew where to ask .
The trumpeter himself needed to be literate , and a sober man of good judgement. As a hangover from medieval custom where he was associated with Heralds, he had non-combatant status , and was used as an inviolable messenger to the enemy to call for a Truce , or to summon a Fortress to Surrender. Although he might be blindfolded when passing though enemy defences, he was expected to keep his wits about him and gain whatever information he could. In battle he was normally expected to ride alongside his commander,to be ready to sound orders, but not to get involved in the fighting... officially. In plain fact he was quite as likely to be killed as anyone else, since shot are very undiscriminating .
It seems to have been normal to clothe him in his commander’s livery if funds permitted, in this case that of the first Lord General of the Parliament’s Army, Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex.
He had a very unusual set of heraldic colours, orange-tawny and black & white, a most attractive combo.
The coat is cut in an unwaisted style with hanging sleeves at the back, worn over ordinary clothes, which seems to have been usual for musicians at this period, including drummers . Here’s a trumpeter from a painting by Peter de Hooch , slightly later. The same richly laced coat appears in several versions of this painting.
The trumpets themselves were mostly made by family firms in Nuremburg, the greatest centre for fine metalwork in Europe . By the 1650s it seems that trumpets were also being made in London, possibly because of the demand created by the Wars. They are all once-wound “ long model “ instruments, quite lightly built and rather delicate for the rough and tumble of cavalry life .
They were carried on cords with large tassels, with the banner of the commander. Such long model instruments are still used for State events. Here’s a pic of my fullsize replica, made by David Edwards ( an ex-Lifeguards trumpeter ) , of an English-made instrument dated 1667 by one Simon Beale , who was successively Sergeant Trumpeter to Cromwell, Charles II and James II.
We know nothing of the actual music of the signals they played in England, the nearest being a collection of French calls noted down in the 1630s. Since trumpeters had been sounding cavalry signals for at least two centuries , they probably had their own international code of calls , understood all across Europe . Certainly such calls can be quite old : the fanfares for George II’s Coronation in 1727 are still played on State Occasions in Britain , and they may be a good deal older than that. We have some from around 1600 from Italy, and from the German Empire, and the art of combining four , six or eight instruments into a ” Fanfaro “ goes back to 1500.
The everyday work was however playing simple signals : Saddle up (“ boutezselle “, whence “ Boots & Saddles ), Mount up, March, Post Pickets, Trot , Lights Out etc etc. Throughout the history of cavalry these calls were used to punctuate the day. They were often very syllabic and syncopated, on one or two low notes, but memorable to the troopers because they sounded out the rhythm of words : a sort of mnemonic.
The trumpeter had a fairly high status , comparable to a senior NCO today. He often lodged near or with the officers, to be on hand when needed.
This model sort of fell together gradually. I had bought one of Nohuanda’s beautiful Equites Romanus horses, but decided to alter it a little, as I wanted the small head typical of this period. I have finished it as a grey, which from an early date were chosen for trumpeters to make them instantly visible. I apologise for the visible prop, but it’s the only way to stand the model safely without fixing it on a base.
The saddle is the usual type, leather over a wooden tree, in this case not a very deep “ great saddle “ but a lower type . Cavalrymen were not issued uniforms ( beyond the livery ) because their pay and status presumed they could buy their own. He has a Swedish-style sword ( a veteran of the German Wars ) but no pistols. His clothes are mostly undyed or “ russet” which was normal for everyday clothes until much later. Rather than a “falling band “ or linen collar, he wears a cravat, a simple military fashion which caught on in the 1630s from the” Hravats” , or Croats , fighting in the German Wars , and later spread to become a normal part of fashionable men’s dress for a century.
The trumpet is brass,made in the German style, cobbled together from various pieces.
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发表于 2016-5-7 15:58
