A Trumpeter’s Quest: Bringing Rare Baroque Masterpieces to Life with PBO

As I write this post, I am surrounded by the glorious just-past-peak autumn foliage of the Upper Valley region between Vermont and New Hampshire, and while I am absolutely savoring my time here with one more performance of our beautiful program of music by Charpentier, Vivaldi, and Handel, I’m can’t help looking forward to being back in Portland soon.

When I was invited to curate a program for PBO this season, it took some time to narrow down all of the wild ideas swirling in my overactive imagination. In the end, my heart and ears led me to one of the most influential recordings from my early days of discovering this world of early music that was so fresh and new at the time. I was absolutely mesmerized by the sound and subtleties of the musicianship of Michael Laird, featured with Peter Holman’s group Parley of Instruments, on the recording: Sound the Trumpet (Sound the Trumpet … - CDA66817 - Hyperion Records - MP3 and Lossless downloads). I especially loved hearing the trumpet playing with strings on equal footing, expressive, joyful, and full of character. Hearing that album decades ago was so inspiring and I clearly remember hoping I’d get to perform these pieces someday.

Once I decided on a theme for the program, I knew which pieces from that album I wanted to include. A couple of the pieces I have always wanted to program I have suggested multiple times over the years, but so far hadn’t been able to convince anyone to program them — but now I was in charge and allowed to hold the keys to the sports car that is Portland Baroque Orchestra!

Great, super excited. Then I quickly realized one of those desert island disc pieces (Eccles: Made for the Queen’s Coronation) was going to be nearly impossible to find a performing edition for the musicians to play from. To make an incredibly long story as short as possible, here is a “highlight” list of the trials and tribulations involved in the process:

1. Find a library holding the facsimile (a print of the original handwritten part book, since they didn’t usually produce scores at this time). Great — it’s in the special collections library at Indiana University, where I teach!
2. Contact the Lilly library to request a scan.
3. Receive scan to find it is missing the first violin part. Ask the librarian to double check and their copy didn’t have the part either. Not great!
4. Reach out to the gracious leader of the recording, Peter Holman, after tracking down his email contact from a British trumpet colleague, Russell Gilmour. Peter was kind enough to send some sketches of the trumpet parts and scores they used during the recording process. So nice!
5. Realize the first violin part wasn’t part of the sketches he sent so I had to ask for his help with acquiring the missing treble part, which he kindly sent, from a different printing than the handwritten facsimile but it was also very legible. Great!
6. Thinking I had reached the end of this exciting mystery novel of “The Missing Parts”, it came to my attention that half of the last page of the bass part from the original part book had been ripped (see photo) — meaning a number of measures of music were missing altogether too! Really not great! For a few hours, I set out to transcribe the missing measures from the recording but being a trumpet player and not a continuo player meant there were limitations to my abilities in this regard…
7. After more hours of internet sleuthing, I learned there was another version of the part books at the Magdalene College Cambridge library special collections. I contacted them and received an auto-reply that the library was under renovations until sometime in 2025… Later the librarian got back in touch and sent the page connected with the listing of this piece. Great! But wait. It was from a different piece and they actually didn’t have the piece I was looking for after all, or if they did, it wasn’t part of the entry. Really not great!
8. More digging around in the dark corners of the early music facsimile world led to a listing of a collection from the same year including coronation music and Eccles was one of the composers contained in the collection. Wonderful! I contact the publisher and express my wish to place an order. Of course, they’re out of stock but say they will get back to me within a week. I’m told they can order it from England so I order it with express shipping and wait for it to arrive. Great — just a few more days and it will be mine!
9. Imagine my excitement as I hear the doorbell of the delivery! I quickly tear open the package as if it contained a golden ticket only to open the part books to see that, you guessed it, IT WAS NOT THE CORRECT PIECE!
10. More sleuthing led me to learn there was a Collected Works of Eccles in progress by the publisher A-R Editions. Maybe the editor had access to complete parts for Made for the Queen’s Coronation?! Once I had the email contact for the editor, we were nearly there!
11. The editor, Bryan White, graciously allowed PBO to use the score and parts he is working on for our production in exchange for credit in the program. Excellent!
12. Receive the parts and score from the editor. Very excited. Realize two of the movements are missing! Nooooo! Luckily, it was only another day to hear back from him with the last two movements attached, bringing the gathering of music part of this adventure to a close. Victory is ours!
I’m always excited to play with PBO but I must say I am looking forward to this program even more, especially after going to such lengths to make sure this piece will be heard live for the first time in Portland for sure, and likely all of North America! Hope to see you there.

EVENT:

The Royal Trumpeter: Kris’ Podium

Nov 16, 2024 | 7:00 PM
Sanctuary Hall at First Congregational
1126 SW Park Ave. Portland, OR 97205


Nov 17, 2024 | 3:00 PM
Kaul Auditorium
3017 SE Woodstock Blvd
Portland, OR 97202