The mock trumpet is a single-reed

woodwind instrument Woodwind instruments are a family of musical instruments within the greater category of wind instruments. Common examples include flute, clarinet, oboe, bassoon, and saxophone. There are two main types of woodwind instruments: flutes and r ...

popular during the second half of the seventeenth century, especially in England. By the 1720s, the mock trumpet was documented in use in the New World. The mock trumpet predated the

chalumeau The chalumeau (; ; plural chalumeaux) is a single-reed woodwind instrument of the late baroque and early classical eras. The chalumeau is a folk instrument that is the predecessor to the modern-day clarinet. It has a cylindrical bore with ei ...

and may be one of the primary predecessors of both the chalumeau and clarinet.

Thurston Dart Robert Thurston ("Bob") Dart (3 September 1921 – 6 March 1971), was an English musicologist, conductor and keyboard player. Along with Nigel Fortune, Oliver Neighbour and Stanley Sadie he was one of Britain's leading musicologists of the post ...

wrote that the mock trumpet was the name for the chalumeau in England, and that music was published for it in 1698. Reeds kataglott anaglott

Mock trumpets are keyless reed-pipes, closed on one end by the natural joint of the cane and wrapped in leather. The reed is idioglottal, meaning that it is a tongue cut but not detached from the reed itself. The reed was placed on the upper side of the instrument and vibrated against the upper lip; the pipe had six tone holes on top and one in the back. Early chalmeaus used idioglot reeds, as shown in the debate as to whether to install reeds up or down. Rice said the idioglot reed was installed with the split going from the top downward (anaglott). Documented music for the mock trumpet primarily includes tutors and method books, indicating that this was an instrument studied in the Western Classical tradition. File:Zurna, bülban, and koşnai, Russian Turkestan 1865 to 1872.jpg, Example of an idioglotic reed pipe with a wooden body (center instrument), Central Asia, circa 1869. From the left:

zurna The zurna ( Armenian: զուռնա zuṙna; Old Armenian: սուռնայ suṙnay; Albanian: surle/surla; Persian: karna/Kornay/surnay; Macedonian: зурла/сурла zurla/surla; Bulgarian: ''зурна/зурла''; Serbian: зурла/zu ...

, bülban and

dozaleh Dozaleh (Persian: دوزَله) is as Iranian- Kurdish folk instrument. The dozaleh is made of two pipes. One of them produces melody and the other harmony. It sounds like a Ney-anbān and it is very dynamic. The instrument is played in the Midd ...

. File:Sipsi.jpg, Example of an idioglot reed in a reed body, the

sipsi The sipsi () is a clarinet-like, single-reed instrument used mainly in folk music and native to the Aegean region of Greece and Turkey. The word ''sipsi'' is possibly onomatopoeic. In ancient Greece, it was known as kalamavlos (καλάμαυλος ...

. Reclam_de_xeremia.jpg, Reed pipes in which the idioglot reeds were carved into the same reed as the rest of the pipe. Reclam de xeremies. File:Strohhalmchalumeaux Mersenne.jpg, Marin Mersenne's illustration of a chalumeau made from wheat stalks, split to create a idioglot reed.

Tuning

The instrument as played in England was in the key of G. Content from ''The Fourth Compleat Book for the Mock Trumpet'', "published between November 1706 and October 1708" showed the available notes to be G₄, A₄, B₄, C₅, D₅, E₅, F₅, G₅. (Converted to

scientific pitch notation Scientific pitch notation (SPN), also known as American standard pitch notation (ASPN) and international pitch notation (IPN), is a method of specifying musical pitch by combining a musical note name (with accidental if needed) and a number ide ...

.) While this is almost a diatonic scale in G major, it would need an F^# for that. Rather this is C major, with the music included written in that scale.

References

{{Single reeds Single-reed instruments