Tromba marina
Encyclopedia
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
trompette marine; Ger.
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
Marientrompete, Trompetengeige, Nonnengeige or Trumscheit, Pol.
Polish language
Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...
tubmaryna) is a triangular bowed
Bow (music)
In music, a bow is moved across some part of a musical instrument, causing vibration which the instrument emits as sound. The vast majority of bows are used with string instruments, although some bows are used with musical saws and other bowed idiophones....
string instrument
String instrument
A string instrument is a musical instrument that produces sound by means of vibrating strings. In the Hornbostel-Sachs scheme of musical instrument classification, used in organology, they are called chordophones...
used in medieval and Renaissance Europe that was highly popular in the 15th century in England and survived into the 18th century. The tromba marina consists of a body and neck
Neck (music)
The neck is the part of certain string instruments that projects from the main body and is the base of the fingerboard, where the fingers are placed to stop the strings at different pitches. Guitars, lutes, the violin family, and the mandolin family are examples of instruments which have necks.The...
in the shape of a truncated cone resting on a triangular base. It is usually four to seven feet long, and is a monochord
Monochord
A monochord is an ancient musical and scientific laboratory instrument. The word "monochord" comes from the Greek and means literally "one string." A misconception of the term lies within its name. Often a monochord has more than one string, most of the time two, one open string and a second string...
(although some versions have sympathetically-vibrating strings). It is played without stopping the string, but playing natural harmonic
Harmonic
A harmonic of a wave is a component frequency of the signal that is an integer multiple of the fundamental frequency, i.e. if the fundamental frequency is f, the harmonics have frequencies 2f, 3f, 4f, . . . etc. The harmonics have the property that they are all periodic at the fundamental...
s by lightly touching the string with the thumb at nodal points. Its name comes from its trumpet
Trumpet
The trumpet is the musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments, dating back to at least 1500 BCE. They are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air...
like sound due to the unusual construction of the bridge
Bridge (instrument)
A bridge is a device for supporting the strings on a stringed instrument and transmitting the vibration of those strings to some other structural component of the instrument in order to transfer the sound to the surrounding air.- Explanation :...
, and the resemblance of its contour to the marine speaking-trumpet
Megaphone
A megaphone, speaking-trumpet, bullhorn, blowhorn, or loud hailer is a portable, usually hand-held, cone-shaped horn used to amplify a person’s voice or other sounds towards a targeted direction. This is accomplished by channelling the sound through the megaphone, which also serves to match the...
of the Middle Ages.
Construction
The body of the trumpet marine is generally either three slats of wood joined in an elongated triangleTriangle
A triangle is one of the basic shapes of geometry: a polygon with three corners or vertices and three sides or edges which are line segments. A triangle with vertices A, B, and C is denoted ....
shape with a pegbox at the apex; or a body of three to six ribs, a frontal soundboard
Sounding board
A sound board, or soundboard, is the surface of a string instrument that the strings vibrate against, usually via some sort of bridge. The resonant properties of the sound board and the interior of the instrument greatly increase loudness over the string alone.The sound board operates by the...
, and a distinguishable neck. In most cases the bottom end of the instrument is open; some historical models use sound-holes. The single string, generally the D string of a cello
Cello
The cello is a bowed string instrument with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is a member of the violin family of musical instruments, which also includes the violin, viola, and double bass. Old forms of the instrument in the Baroque era are baryton and viol .A person who plays a cello is...
, most often is tuned to the C three octave
Octave
In music, an octave is the interval between one musical pitch and another with half or double its frequency. The octave relationship is a natural phenomenon that has been referred to as the "basic miracle of music", the use of which is "common in most musical systems"...
s below middle C
Middle C
C or Do is the first note of the fixed-Do solfège scale. Its enharmonic is B.-Middle C:Middle C is designated C4 in scientific pitch notation because of the note's position as the fourth C key on a standard 88-key piano keyboard...
. It attaches at the soundboard and passes over one foot of the bridge
Bridge (instrument)
A bridge is a device for supporting the strings on a stringed instrument and transmitting the vibration of those strings to some other structural component of the instrument in order to transfer the sound to the surrounding air.- Explanation :...
, leaving the other foot to vibrate freely on a plate of ivory or glass set into the soundboard, creating a brassy buzz. From its curiously irregular shape, the bridge was also known as the shoe; it was thick and high at the one side on which rested the string, and low and narrow at the other which was left loose so that it vibrated against the belly with every movement of the bow. A string called a guidon is tied around the playing string below the bridge and runs up to the pegbox where it is wrapped around a peg. The guidon adjusts the balance of the bridge by pulling the playing string.
The measurements of the tromba marina varied considerably, as did also the shape of the body and the number of strings. An octave
Octave
In music, an octave is the interval between one musical pitch and another with half or double its frequency. The octave relationship is a natural phenomenon that has been referred to as the "basic miracle of music", the use of which is "common in most musical systems"...
string, half the length of the melody string, and even two more, respectively the twelfth and the double octave, not resting on the bridge but acting as sympathetic strings, were sometimes added to improve the timbre by strengthening the pure harmonic tones without increasing the blare due to the action of the bridge.
History
In the days of Michael PraetoriusMichael Praetorius
Michael Praetorius was a German composer, organist, and music theorist. He was one of the most versatile composers of his age, being particularly significant in the development of musical forms based on Protestant hymns, many of which reflect an effort to make better the relationship between...
(1618), the length of the Trummscheit was 7' 3" and the three sides at the base measured 7", tapering to 2" at the neck. There was at first only one string, generally a D cello
Cello
The cello is a bowed string instrument with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is a member of the violin family of musical instruments, which also includes the violin, viola, and double bass. Old forms of the instrument in the Baroque era are baryton and viol .A person who plays a cello is...
string. The heavy bow, similar to that of the cello, is used between the highest positions of the left hand at the nodal points and the nut of the head. In a Trummscheit in the collection of the Kgl. Hochschule, at Charlottenburg
Charlottenburg
Charlottenburg is a locality of Berlin within the borough of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, named after Queen consort Sophia Charlotte...
(No. 772 in catalogue) the frets are lettered A, D, F, A, D, F, G, A, B, C, D.
In Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, at the time when the trumpet
Trumpet
The trumpet is the musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments, dating back to at least 1500 BCE. They are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air...
was extensively used in the churches, nuns often substituted the tromba marina because women were not allowed to play trumpets — whence the name Nonnengeige (literally, nuns' violin). In France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, the Grande Ecurie du Roi comprised five trumpets-marine and cromorne
Cromorne
Cromorne is a French woodwind reed instrument whose design originates in the early Baroque period in France, with a sound that is similar in sound to an oversize oboe...
s among the band in 1662, when the charge was mentioned for the first time in the accounts; and in 1666 the number was increased to six. The instrument fell into disuse during the first half of the 18th century, and was only to be seen in the hands of itinerant and street musicians. In modern times, the group Corvus Corax
Corvus Corax (band)
Corvus Corax is a German band known for playing Neo-Medieval music using an abundance of authentic instruments. Their name is the latin name for the Common Raven. The band was formed in 1989 by Castus Rabensang, Wim and Meister Selbfried in East Germany...
still regularly plays the tromba marina.