The Trumpet is the highest brass instrument in register, above the horn, trombone, baritone, euphonium and tuba. A musician who plays the trumpet is called a trumpet player or trumpeter.
The most common trumpet by far is a transposing instrument pitched in B flat - the note read as middle C sounds as the B flat 2 semitones below - but there are many other trumpets in this family of instruments.
The oldest trumpets date back to 1500 B.C.E. and earlier.
The earliest trumpets were signaling instruments used for military or religious purposes, rather than music in the modern sense.
The modern bugle continues the signaling tradition, with different tunes corresponding to different instructions, but the advent of radio made its use more ceremonial.
The trumpet players were often among the most heavily guarded members of a troop, as they were relied upon to relay instructions to other sections of the army.
Improvements to instrument design and metal making in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance led to an increased usefulness of the trumpet as a musical instrument.
The development of the upper, "clarino" register, by specialist trumpeters, would lend itself well to the Baroque era, also known as the "Golden Age of the natural trumpet."
The melody-dominated homophony of the classical and romantic periods, relegated the trumpet to a secondary role by most major composers.
The Arabic word for trumpet was naffir. The Spanish used the Arabic name al naffir and changed it into anafil, while the French gave the trumpet its own name, buisine, derived from the Latin word buccina.
Today, the trumpet is used in nearly all forms of music, including classical, jazz, rock, blues, pop, ska, polka and funk.
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