Trumpet Etude Kopprasch Pdf
Leslee Galyan
Kopprasch is well known for his etudes, but his duets are something to be seen as well. These Grand Duets are exactly that, big and long! These 3 duets take up an entire 18 pages, which should give you a pretty good idea of how involved they are.
Originally intended for the French Horn, these are equally happy in the hands of a trumpeter (or really any treble clef brass) and their endurance and technical challenges translate beautifully between instruments.
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The Kopprasch etudes. Practically every serious student of the horn today has studied these etudes, but who exactly was Kopprasch and when were his etudes first published? In spite of their popularity, until the recent research of Dr. Robert Merrill Culbertson, Jr. (completed in 1990) very little information was available about the original publication of these etudes or their composer.
Of all the hornists that worked in Berlin during the period that Heinrich Stölzel (1777-1844) was there actively promoting his invention of the valve, one name stands out today: Georg Kopprasch. Kopprasch was the son of bassoonist and composer Wilhelm Kopprasch (ca. 1750-after 1832), who was a member of the orchestra of the Prince of Dessau [Culbertson, 2]. Georg Kopprasch first came to notice as a hornist in the band of the Prussian regiment, and was a member of the orchestra of the Royal Theater in Berlin in the 1820s. Kopprasch is listed as being second hornist in an 1824 roster [Pizka, 25]. By 1832 Kopprasch had returned to his family home of Dessau as second horn in the court orchestra, as is noted on the title page of the original edition of his etudes, where he likely spent the remainder of his career. A conservative estimate as to his dates would place Georg Kopprasch living from just before 1800 until sometime after 1833.
The etudes were first published in 1832 or 33 by Breitkopf and Härtel in Leipzig [Culbertson, 47-48]. While it is not known if any specific event inspired Kopprasch to write these etudes, it is possible that they were written for use at the Musical Institute in Dessau, which had been founded in 1829 by Friedrich Schneider (1786-1853), Kapellmeister to the Duke of Dessau [Gehring, vol. 4, 269]. Notably, Schneider had written one of the first reviews of the valved horn earlier in his career from Leipzig. This review, which appeared in Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung in 1817, gives some insights into the musical world that Kopprasch worked in, and vividly explains how Schneider felt music would benefit from the valve.
Returning to Kopprasch, there are a total of 120 etudes; Op. 5 contains 60 etudes for Cor alto and Op. 6 contains 60 etudes for Cor basse. As Fétis noted, Kopprasch adopted the terms for the two types of horn from those advocated by Louis-Françios Dauprat (1787-1868) in his Méthode de Cor alto et Cor basse of 1824. Horn players of the time felt that the four octave range of the horn could not be mastered by one player, which resulted in specialization by range. Dauprat's comments on this subject are most relevant in considering the distinct division between high and low horn players at this time.
The Op. 5 etudes are for the Cor alto and cover a written range from b to f''', with a general tessitura in the range from written c' to c'''. These high horn etudes are especially virtuostic, but within the parameters of what was considered possible for the high horn players of the period. The work contains a mixture of technical and lyrical studies; the following are examples of both.
The Op. 6 etudes for the Cor basse cover a written range from F-sharp to c''', with a general tessitura in a range from written c to a''. While this was within the normal range of the Cor basse of the period, the even distribution of pitches in the low range was quite new. Composers of low horn etudes before Kopprasch generally centered their low range pitches around the open tones of the natural horn, while Kopprasch wrote for a completely diatonic/chromatic low range. This is obvious right from the first etude.
A number of the etudes in both volumes expanded on thematic ideas from exercises found in the methods of Dauprat and Heinrich Domnich (1767-1844) [Culbertson, 60]. The following examples show the common thematic materials and how Kopprasch transformed them into a cohesive binary form. (Kopprasch Op. 5, etude no. 8 is based on the same material as well. Culbertson gives other examples of transformations of this type in his dissertation on pages 63-66.)
Finally, Kopprasch used what is known today as "new" notation for the bass clef writing, as had Domnich in his Méthode de Premier et de Second Cor (1808). The following etude is an example of this. An accompanying footnote explained the notation. [NOTE: Only the edition by Oscar Franz maintains the original bass clef notation of Kopprasch. In Gumpert derived editions these notes are printed in "old" notation, and in the Schantl edition these bass clef notes are taken an octave higher, in treble clef. See the article Later Editions of the Kopprasch Etudes for more on these editions.]
Kopprasch presents many technical challenges to the hornist through these etudes, especially in the approach to the extreme ranges of the instrument. While many of the Op. 5 etudes would certainly lie better in terms of range in a lower key, there are no indications to transpose or use a lower crook. In fact, there are no technical indications of any sort with regard to the use of crooks, fingerings, hand stopping, or transposition in any of the Kopprasch etudes as originally published. The complete lack of these markings raises a difficult question: did Kopprasch write these etudes for the valved horn or for the natural horn?
The title pages give no clues, therefore we turn to the music itself. While the overall character of these etudes does not rule out natural horn writing on a virtuoso level, the approach to the low range shown in example 3 would point very strongly to the use of the valved horn.
The central issue is the low horn writing. Since Kopprasch adopted the terms Cor alto and Cor basse from Dauprat, his Méthode is a very appropriate source which may be used in a comparison with Kopprasch's horn writing. In comparing the pitch content of large sections of both works containing the same general technical requirements, for example the Cor basse etudes found in Kopprasch, Op. 6, book I, and the Cor basse exercises found in the Dauprat Méthode, part 2, one finds the same overall gamut of pitches used rather differently. By making a chart of the frequency of the appearance of all the pitches one notices distinct clusters around the open tones of the natural horn in Dauprat, while in Kopprasch one finds a much more even distribution of pitches. While this could indicate nothing more than a difference of compositional styles (or even just bad natural horn writing on the part of Kopprasch), this even distribution of pitches does tend to lend even more support to the theory that these etudes were written for the valved horn.
After examining the evidence in his study of Kopprasch's etudes, Culbertson concluded "It is quite plausible . . . that Kopprasch saw a developing need for studies which, while playable on the hand horn (with a good deal of difficulty, in some studies), gave the valve horn player a good workout as well" [Culbertson, 101-102]. This may well be the case. It is, however, equally possible that the etudes were actually written for the valved horn, and were published without this designation in order to avoid affecting the marketability of the publication among natural horn players. The low range writing in particular is very well suited to performance on the valved horn and extremely difficult and even uncharacteristic for the natural horn. Kopprasch certainly knew Heinrich Stölzel and other performers actively performing on the valved horn in Berlin. Additionally, hornist and composer Georg Abraham Schneider (1770-1839), the composer of one of the very first works for the valved horn, was Kapellmeister in the first years that Kopprasch performed in Berlin. [See the related article, The First Works for the Valved Horn.] These facts, combined with the already noted favorable attitude toward the valved horn of Dessau Kapellmeister Friedrich Schneider, points to the probability of these works being for the valved horn. Kopprasch was at the very least familiar with the valved horn and, as a second hornist himself, he could hardly have escaped noticing its advantages in the lower range.
Unfortunately, there is not enough evidence to definitively state that Georg Kopprasch even played the valved horn. It is to be hoped that further research will shed light on this significant question. But whatever instrument he played, we can say for certain that his etudes opened new technical challenges for hornists, and that his etudes have secured for Kopprasch a certain immortal fame among brass players far beyond anything he could have ever dreamed.
Active in the Berlin horn playing scene in the early 1800s, Kopprasch was acquainted with the inventor of the valved horn, Heinrich Stölzel. Because horns could not play chromatically prior to Stölzel's invention of valves, no chromatic etudes existed for the horn and it is likely Kopprasch composed his now seminal works to fill that need.[3]
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