An arrangement of the ’’Allegro’’ from Torelli’s Trumpet Concerto 2nd Movement, for younger players in the key of Bb concert.

This arrangement will suit players, looking to venture into the music of the Baroque, but whose embouchures are not yet strong enough to peform in the extreme clarino tessitura , of the Brandenburg Concertos.

May I recommend players explore the upper register of the trumpet with scales using harmonic rather than scalic fingering?

This is the way to explore the clarino register, and for aspiring trumpeters, may I recommend Clyde Hunt’s excellent introduction to clarino trumpet playing entitled ’’Sail the seven seas’’.

In addition, recordings of clarino artists such as John Wilbraham, Crispian Steele-Perkins from the UK, Maurice Andre from France, and Don Smithers and Wynton Marsallis should be in every ones CD collection.

Giuseppe Torelli (22 April 1658 – 8 February 1709) was an Italian violist, violinist, teacher, and composer.

Torelli is most remembered for his contributions to the development of the instrumental concerto (Newman 1972, p. 142), especially concerti grossi and the solo concerto, for strings and continuo, as well as being the most prolific Baroque composer for trumpets (Tarr 1974).

Torelli was born in Verona. It is not known with whom he studied violin though it has been speculated that he was a pupil of Leonardo Brugnoli or Bartolomeo Laurenti, but it is certain that he studied composition with Giacomo Antonio Perti (Schnoebelen and Vanscheeuwijk 2001). On 27 June 1684, at the age of 26, he became a member of the Accademia Filarmonica as suonatore di violino (Schnoebelen and Vanscheeuwijk 2001). By 1698 he was maestro di concerto at the court of Georg Friedrich II, Margrave of Brandenburg-Ansbach, where he conducted the orchestra for Le pazzie d'amore e dell'interesse, an idea drammatica composed by the maestro di cappella, the castrato Francesco Antonio Pistocchi, before leaving for Vienna in December 1699 (Schnoebelen and Vanscheeuwijk 2001). He returned to Bologna sometime before February 1701, when he is listed as a violinist in the newly re-formed cappella musicale at San Petronio, directed by his former composition teacher Perti (Schnoebelen and Vanscheeuwijk 2001).

He died in Bologna in 1709, where his manuscripts are conserved in the San Petronio archives. Giuseppe's brother, Felice Torelli, was a Bolognese painter of modest reputation, who went on to be a founding member of the Accademia Clementina. The most notable amongst Giuseppe's many pupils was Francesco Manfredini