Is the solo trumpet part in Bachs 2nd Brandenburg Concerto (1st movement) played on piccolo trumpet?
I need to clear-up a misconception. The modern (or, rather, Romantic) F trumpet as used by Mahler, for example, has little to do with the F trumpet Bach would have recognised. Bach instrument in F was also a fairly unusual instrument, as most trumpets (and, therefore, most trumpet music) was in the ‘martial’ key of D (or, less commonly, E-flat). Bach wrote his 2nd Brandenburg Concerto especially for the court trumpeter at Köthen, where he was Kappellmeister at the time. In the Baroque period, ‘natural’ valveless trumpets were all that were available. Valves were not added to trumpets (well, cornets first) until the mid-19th century. There was a particular art of virtuosic trumpet playing which concentrated on the upper harmonics (the ‘clarino’ register), where, being close together, the harmonics allowed more melodic playing than lower down in the harmonic series where the notes are further apart. The F trumpet Bach was writing for is a whole octave higher than the 19th-century valved
