Category: Cornet
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Gabriël Parès, except for his scale book, a forgotten cornetist
Today, I wanted to highlight the career of Gabriël Parès (November 18, 1862 to January 2, 1934). Pares. Pares. Where have we heard that name before? We know him today from the “Pares” scale book (Americans often pronounce his name like the word “Pairs”). In fact, today, I heard a music jury at the…
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Trumpet Books: An Autobiography From Herbert L. Clarke
Trumpeters and cornetist all over the world usually know a little about Herbert L. Clarke, but what a lot of us may not know is that he wrote a marvelous memoire, How I Became a Cornetist. You can buy this fairly short and easy to read book from various retailers or you can get a…
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Trumpet Journey Celebrates Herbert L. Clarke’s Birthday!
Today, I had a enough free time to go down to the Congressional Cemetery in the District of Columbia to pay my respects to Herbert L. Clarke, perhaps the greatest cornet virtuoso to ever live. For me, the connection is personal, because he is my musical grandfather: one of my teachers, Charles Gorham, was a…
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Repertoire: Some Suggested Easy Pieces
There are thousands–tens of thousands–of trumpet pieces available today. It would be very difficult to have a comprehensive knowledge of all of them. Nevertheless, I thought I would list a few of my favorite “easy” pieces. These pieces will challenge young trumpeters who have studied consistently for 3 to 5 years. Many of these pieces…
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A Second Look at Two 19th-Century Books of Cornet Music: Wagner’s Solo Compositions for Cornet
As I mentioned yesterday in “A Look at Two 19th-Century Books of Cornet Music,” All of the pieces in Philippe Goetz’s “solo” book now owned by Dr. Robert Hazen are for F- or G-crooked cornet. It is my guess that the F- and G-crooking were especially comfortable to horn players who wanted to play the new…
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A Look at Two 19th-Century Books of Cornet Music
My friend, distinguished scientist and trumpeter Dr. Robert Hazen, acquired two privately-bound music books in 1988 and wrote a very nice article about these two for the International Trumpet Guild Journal (“Parisian Cornet Solos of the 1830s and 1840s: the Earliest Solo Literature for Valved Brass and Piano,” May 1995). Bob loaned them to me…