Clarion (instrument)

[1] Tonally, clarin or clarino also came to refer to melodic playing in the upper register of the trumpet "with a soft and melodious, singing tone"[6] By 1600 the term clarin came to be a musical term used by composers for "the highest trumpet part" in Germany and Spain and was limited to German and Spanish composers from the 16th–19th centuries.

[8][3] The straight sheet-metal tubular-trumpet persisted in the Middle East and Central Asia as the nafir and karnay, and during the Reconquista and Crusades, Europeans began to build them again, having seen these instruments in their wars.

Then Europeans took a step that hadn't been part of trumpet making since the Roman (buccina and cornu); they figured out how to bend tubes without ruining them and by the 1400s were experimenting with new instruments.

[3][11] These bent-tube variations shrunk the long tubes into a manageable size and controlled the way the instruments sounded.

It is not clear whether they are meant to refer to an actual instrument or simply the high register of the trumpet.

[17] The various iterations of "clarion" occur alongside the idiomatic usage of "trumpet" in the literature and historical records of several countries.

Nicot defines the clarion as a treble instrument, which is paired with trumpets playing the tenor and bass.

[18] In The Knight's Tale, Chaucer writes, "Pypes, trompes, nakers, clariounes, that in bataille blowen blody sounes", which adds to the notion that clarions must somehow be distinct from trumpets.

There are even records from trade guilds like the Goldsmith's Company of London which specify that a clarion is 70% lighter than a trumpet.

The fundamental confusion is over whether or not they refer to an actual instrument or to a style of playing in the high register of the trumpet.

Even the Spanish historian Sebastián de Covarrubias confused the meaning in his Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, writing that the clarin was a "trumpetilla", a tiny trumpet capable of playing in the high register or that the term could simply refer to the high register of the trumpet.

[20] The confusion over the usage of these terms seemed to mainly dissipate in the Baroque era, when "clarino" (plural: "clarini"), and its variants, came to be specifically understood as the practice of playing the natural trumpet in its high register.

The bent-tube trumpets likely had an increased range of about 4 playable notes in the "Late Middle Ages", the "naturals 1-4.

[24] In the 17th century, when the Ottoman writer Evliya Çelebi (1611 – after 1683) wrote his travelogue Seyahatnâme, the nafīr was a straight trumpet that was played in Constantinople by only 10 musicians and had fallen behind the European boru (also tūrumpata būrūsī), for which Çelebi states 77 musicians.

[25] Nefir, or nüfür in religious folk music, was a simple buffalo horn without a mouthpiece, blown by Bektashi in ceremonies and by itinerant dervishes for begging until the early 20th century.

Clarion as heraldic device depicted in the coat of arms of Grenville , a mid-16th century carving which clearly shows the labium openings in the pipes of a pipe organ. Bench end in Sutcombe Church, Devon
Straight trumpet, short enough to have clarion notes. High pitched trumpets are shorter instruments. [ 13 ] In comparison to the busine , the trumpet pictured is shorter. The añafil (Spanish renaming of Arabic Nafir , also called buisine was between 4 and 7 feet long. [ 14 ] Calling it "clairon," Nicot said the nafir at 4.25-5 ft long served as treble for the Moore's other trumpets, which sounded tenor and bass tones. [ 14 ] Some of those trumpets such as the modern Moroccan nafir reach about 6 ft long, and the Tajikistani karnay can reach as long as 6 ft 10 (210 cm). [ 15 ] [ 16 ]
Angels sounding trumpets. With the exception of some early European instruments such as the Greek salpinx and Roman tuba , cornu and buccina , pre-13th century European trumpets were horns , shaped like oxen horns until encounters with Islamic armies' nafirs inspired creation of instruments such as the Spanish añafil and French buisine .
1636 illustration from book by Marin Mersenne , showing notes playable in the natural trumpet. His illustration shows from the 1st to the 13th partial. The clarion range was 8–13 at this time.
Mehterhâne , Ottoman miniature circa 1568. The musicians play two zurna , two spiral trumpets ( boru ), a cylinder drum davul and a pair of kettle drums ( nakkare ). In 1529, the "Turkish field clamor" reached Vienna for the first time.