Trumpet Concerto (Haydn)

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Joseph Haydn's Trumpet Concerto in E Flat Major was written in 1796, when he was 64 years old, for his long time friend Anton Weidinger.

[edit] The Instrument

Weidinger had developed a keyed trumpet which could play chromatically throughout its entire range. Before this, the trumpet was commonly valveless and could only play a limited range of 'harmonic' notes by altering lip pressure. These harmonic notes were clustered in the higher registers, so previous trumpet concertos could only play melodies at very high pitches (e.g. Brandenburg Concerto No. 2). Haydn's concerto plays melodies in the lower registers.

There were attempts all over Europe around the mid-classical era to expand the range of the trumpet using valves, and Weidinger's idea of drilling holes and covering them with flute-like keys proved reasonably unpopular. Diaries of those who attended the first performance on this instrument (of Haydn's concerto) are uncomplementary of the sound, saying that the modified trumpet sounded like an oboe.^{[citation needed]}