Peter Maxwell Davies: Sonata for Trumpet (his opus #1, written too early - in 1955 - to be included in this list if it weren’t for the following works), Trumpet Concerto, Strathclyde Concerto (for horn and trumpet), and Litany for a Ruined Chapel Between Sheep and Shore (for solo trumpet). For a video of a performance by Gabri of a fragment from Sequenza X at Chosen Vale (2006), click here. I greatly admire the ease, panache, and confidence with which performers such as Gabriele Cassone perform these works. Luciano Berio: Sequenza X (commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and written for Thomas Stevens) and Kol Od (a re-working of the same material for trumpet and orchestra). These rarely performed masterpieces, especially the operas, might be called the late Beethovens of our repertoire and were all written for his virtuoso son, Markus (and later performed under Stockhausen’s direction, by Markus’ brilliant student Marco Blaauw). (This could get very technical, but probably not so appropriate for our purposes.) The ensemble works are both re-workings of material from HARMONIEN, which turns melody groups into suspended sound (“harmonies”) through a process of rapid repetitions of the pitches of each group without rhythm. Three “recent” additions to the repertoire from Stockhausen’s unfinished KLANG cycle. Harmonien (solo trumpet), Schoenheit (trumpet, flute, bass clarinet), Erwachen (trumpet, soprano saxophone, cello) A solo trumpeter, representing the archangel Michael is the central figure in Stockhausen’s seven operas entitled Licht (Light), subtitled “The Seven Days of the Week.” Karlheinz Stockhausen: Michael’s Reise um die Erde (trumpet and large ensemble), Eingang und Formel, Halt, Mission und Himmelfahrt (all from Michaels Reise), Aries (trumpet and electronic music), In Freundschaft (solo 4-valve Eb trumpet), Oberlippentanz (for piccolo trumpet), and Pieta (for flugelhorn and electronic music). That said, I fervently believe that many of the most masterful compositions for the trumpet have been written in the past fifty years and continue to be written today.Ī short list of these works would certainly include the following: I have spent many wonderful hours on concert stages being distracted by them and would give most anything to sit onstage at New York’s Carnegie Hall, Boston’s Symphony Hall, Vienna’s Musikvereinssaal or Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw as a young principal trumpeter once again. The role of the solo trumpet in the works of Richard Strauss (ie: Ein Heldenleben), Gustav Mahler (ie: Symphonies #3 and 5), and Alexander Scriabin (ie: The Poem of Ecstasy) are the embodiment of Romantic passion. Looking back at this music is like looking through a scrapbook of my musical past and I am flooded with warm thoughts of various churches, festivals, concert stages, and colleagues when I hear this music in my mind’s ear.

Biber, and George Philipp Telemann, and their various cantatas, masses, oratorios, suites, and concerti were once the lifeblood of my personal and recorded repertoire. I remain haunted by the beautiful trumpet writing of Johann Sebastian Bach, Georg Friedrich Handel, H.I.F. The “Golden Ages” of the trumpet might be defined as the Baroque and today.

Most beautiful trumpet repertoire