During the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, trumpet tunes-pieces based on the notes of the natural harmonic series (the notes available to the valveless trumpet)-were highly popular. The origins of the genre can be traced to France, where Jean-Baptiste Lully included movement of this type in several of his operas. Trumpet tunes abound in sources of London theatre music , and while on occasions they would of been performed on trumpet, they were also routinely played by other instrumental groups.During the eighteenth century numerous trumpet voluntaries for organ, based on the notes available on the trumpet, were composed in England. 

 

The Prince of Denmark’s March  by Jeremiah Clarke, which was long attributed to Henry Purcell, was included in a collection of harpsichord pieces published in 1700. An earlier version for trumpets, oboes, bassoon and strings appeared in the ‘Suite de Clarke’. 

 

Henry Purcell’s Cibell, in the form of a gavotte, was based loosely on a chorus praising the goddess Cybele from Lully’s opera Atys (1676). The piece exists in several versions, one of which, dating from shortly after Purcell’s death, is scored for trumpet and strings. 

 

Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Rondeau serves as a rousing prelude to his Te Deum in D and is by far his best known work. Uncertainty surrounds the identification of the composer of the Trumpet Tune attributed here to Jeremiah Clarke. As with The Prince of Denmark’s March, this was previously attributed to Purcell. It is found in manuscript scores of the semi-opera The Island Princess (1699), on which Clarke collaborated with Daniel Purcell, Henry’s younger brother, and Richard Leveridge. 

 

The Trumpet Voluntary by John Stanley is the only piece in this collection that we can be fairly certain was not written with performance on the trumpet in mind. It derives from the composer’s second collection of ten voluntaries for organ or harpsichord, published in 1751.