The Carnival of Venice
(Arban) is one of the toughest pieces in the trumpet repertoire. It involves
blisteringly fast scales, double tonguing (ta-ka-ta) and triple tonuing
(ta-ta-ka-ta), crazy intervals over an octave in difference, 32nd
notes, and on and on. I played an easier version (Clarke) my senior year of
high school, and it took me a fair bit of practice to get it as perfect as I
could.
I’ve heard it said that masterpieces are never finished,
merely abandoned; and if you’ve ever gazed long at a renaissance painting you’ll
begin to understand. The details could go on forever, and one wonders at the
process… how the painter went about his business. When did he paint what? How did
the pieces fit together in time as he created it? What made him move on from
one zone of the canvas to the next and why? And at what point did he abandon
it, effectively saying (in Italian, no doubt), “enough is enough!”
Wynton Marsalis, whom I practically worshipped as a young
trumpeter in high school, produced a pinnacle of the art form in his recording
of The Carnival of Venice on the
record Carnaval. And yeah. It’s the
Arban’s version, which is in another universe from the Clarke’s. Here's a YouTube link of Marsalis with John Williams and the Boston Pops orchestra that will blow your freaking mind. He's playing a cornet, not a trumpet, in that video.
It’s a theme
and variations, so it starts off with the basic melody. It’s in 6/8 time, so it
feels like a waltz; oom-pah-pah, oom-pah-pah. It’s a nice little melody, if it
does anything it lilts. I said lilts. Now I get a triple score. Anyway as the variations go on, they get more difficult
until gradually, in the final variation it literally sounds like there are two
trumpets playing simultaneously. I am not making this up. Just a shower of
sound. Marsalis did this to perfection on the record Carnaval (aforementioned), released in the early nineties. It was
and is incredible. I’m waiting on my public library to call me with my reserved
copy of that recording; I just have to hear it again.
As you may or may not have gleaned from the buzz in the ether
around here lately, I’ve picked up a trumpet after about a seventeen year
hiatus. Right now I’m just using loaners however I can get them, but I’m back
into practicing again nevertheless. Today during my routine I cracked into a dusty long-forgotten
section of the Arban’s book.
J.B. Arban’s first comprehensive trumpet and cornet method
was published in the late 1800’s and quickly became the ultimate authority on
the instrument. I’d argue that it still is too, in many ways. It’s over an inch
and a half thick and has everything you could ever and never think of inside
it. Included is the trumpet part for The Carnival
of Venice.
When I collided with it today it was glorious. I just thought
you should know. As I was playing it, fond old memories started coming into
focus again. That melody, those notes, are up near the rarified heights of
musicianship that I was just beginning to know so many years ago. For me to
make my clumsy little forays around the edges today was nothing less than a
delight.
Mind you, our collision was probably hideously ugly to my
next door neighbors. But to me, in my heart and head, it was a thing of beauty.