ESSAY 4 - THE F TRUMPET AND ITS LAST VIRTUOSO, WALTER MORROW

By Dr. Richard Birkemeier

Walter Morrow famously stated in 1906 that the long F trumpet was the last “real trumpet” in the orchestra. As the previous essays reveal, the F trumpet was the direct descendent of the natural trumpet of the eighteenth century because it still featured the long, straight, cylindrical bore tubing characteristic of the trumpet throughout history. The F trumpet, often crooked into lower keys, was indisputably the instrument of choice for nearly all of the composers of the Romantic period. Mendelssohn, Lizst, Wagner, Elgar, Bruckner, Debussy, Saint-Saens, Strauss, Mahler, and Tchaikovsky all wrote important parts for this instrument, even after the introduction of the high B-flat trumpet to the orchestra.

Though preferred by composers, the F trumpet was clearly less popular with players.  During the second half of the 19th century, the valved cornet became the instrument of choice in France, and the high B-flat trumpet dominated the German orchestras.  The popularity of these shorter instruments seems to have been the result of their relative ease of performance, especially in the upper register, and their greater recognition by the public.  By the end of the century, the valved F trumpet was almost totally extinct in the orchestras of Europe; everywhere, that is, except in England.[1]

A brief but significant renaissance in the use the F trumpet was stimulated at the turn of the century by the English trumpeter, Walter Morrow.  The story of Walter Morrow and his advocacy of the F trumpet in many ways mirrors the history of the instrument itself.  When Walter Morrow grudgingly abandoned the instrument in the second decade of the twentieth century, its fall from use was complete.  Many trumpeters today are not even aware that it ever existed.

The Early Years

Records at the Royal Society of Musicians in London indicate that Walter Morrow was born in Liverpool on June 15, 1850, and died in Wimbledon on December 21, 1937.  He married Sarah Jane Lloyd in 1872, a marriage that produced three children:  Walter Guy Morrow, born in 1874; Jessie Eleanor Morrow, born in 1875; and Horace Charley Morrow, born in 1877.  The only surviving correspondence in Morrow’s handwriting dates from 1887, the year he was elected to the prestigious Royal Society of Musicians.  Morrow was asked to supply biographical information to the society concerning his personal life and family.[2]  It would appear that someone, unfortunately, took exception to Morrow’s claim of three children and accused him of not reporting two additional offspring.  Morrow’s indignant response is reproduced below.  (See Figure 2)

            Morrow attended the Royal Academy of Music as a student of Thomas Harper, the younger.  Morrow played the slide trumpet and the cornet, as did most trumpeters of his day, and established a reputation as the heir apparent to Harper as the premiere trumpeter in London.[3]

            In 1882, Morrow was retained as the trumpet professor at the venerable Guildhall School of Music and in 1894 he joined the faculty of the Royal College of Music.  From 1885 on, Morrow appeared as first trumpeter in most of the orchestras in London.  He played regularly with the Bach Choir conducted by Otto Goldsmith and the Queen’s Hall Orchestra conducted by the great Artur Nikisch.  He also appeared occasionally as a soloist with Robert Newman’s Queen’s Hall Promenade Orchestra.  It was a performance with the Bach Choir, however, that seems to have influenced the direction of his career most strongly.

Walter Morrow and Julius Kosleck

Morrow had a gift for playing in the upper register and was particularly adept at performing the high Baroque trumpet repertoire. He appeared regularly in the 1880’s performing with the Bach Choir orchestra for the Handel Festivals at Royal Albert Hall. At one such concert on the bicentenary of Bach’s birth in 1885, Morrow collaborated with the famous German trumpet virtuoso, Julius Kosleck, on a performance of the B minor Mass. The trumpet parts to the B minor Mass were generally considered unplayable by contemporary standards in London; these difficult parts were either transposed down an octave or played by clarinets. For this particular performance, the Bach Choir secured the services of Julius Kosleck to play the solo trumpet part on his recently developed, so-called Bach trumpet, a two-valved straight trumpet in A pitch (see Essay 3). A rumor spread about that Kosleck’s Bach trumpet was, in fact, invented in Bach’s time and was an original. Morrow, however, revealed the true nature of the instrument in his article, “The Trumpet as an Orchestral instrument, in the Proceedings of the Musical Association, published the next year.“ A story got about that (Kosleck) had discovered an old trumpet in a curiosity shop at Heidelberg, made in the time of Bach, and that it was the sort of trumpet used to play the high trumpet parts. We were all in a high state of excitement to see this trumpet and hear it played, and to hear this first trumpet part which we considered impracticable on any system of trumpet we knew. I had the pleasure of playing the second trumpet part.

“I was delighted with Kosleck’s performance and resolved to do my best to imitate him.  My first feeling on seeing his trumpet was that of disappointment, for two reasons:  First, it had two pistons, and pistons were not invented in Bach’s time; secondly, it stood in A, and all Bach’s trumpet parts were written in C and D (more often in D).  His trumpet, I had no reason to doubt was as old as he said; also, it was used in Bach’s time, but not in Bach’s music, nor was it capable of rendering such parts as he wrote without the aid of pistons, which were not invented them.”[4]

Regardless of the origins of Kosleck’s trumpet, the instrument was a great success and Morrow set out to master it at once.  He later played the first trumpet part to the B Minor Mass himself on a similar instrument.  The significance of this event lies in the fact that Morrow was the first orchestral performer in London to play on a valved trumpet.  Prior to this, English trumpeters played the slide trumpet and the cornet exclusively.[5]  Crispian Steele-Perkins, the English trumpet virtuoso, told me that he found a Bach trumpet pitched in A at Covent Garden.[6] It is quite possible this instrument was played by Morrow himself.

Walter Morrow’s influence on the London musical scene became so strong in the 1890s that, when he made the obvious step from the two-valved Bach trumpet to the three-valved F trumpet for regular orchestral performance, most of the important trumpeters in London followed suit.  Unfortunately, history does not record the sequence of events that led Morrow to this dramatic change of instrument.  We can only guess as to his true motives based on some rather interesting musical criticism by the eminent writer, George Bernard Shaw.

Walter Morrow and George Bernard Shaw

            Using the pen-name Corno di Bassetto, George Bernard Shaw was a regular music critic for The Star and the London Telegraph, and his orchestra reviews between 1888 and 1894 frequently mentioned the first trumpeter, Walter Morrow.  Though Shaw’s reviews deal exclusively with Morrow’s performances on the Bach trumpet, they reveal details of his overall development as a performer and possibly even suggest an explanation for Morrow’s adoption of the F trumpet. Bernard Shaw reviewed one of Morrow’s performances of the B minor Mass held on February 10, 1891: “Mr. Morrow attacked the original first trumpet part with the greatest gallantry; but it was too high for him.  The strain was obvious, and the tone forced and hard…. Mr. Morrow, though he falls short of Kosleck, is able at least to improve on the effects produced by scoring trumpet parts for clarionets or transposing them.”[7] 

            Another performance a year later received a more gracious review.  “Mr. Morrow’s success with the principal trumpet part was much more complete than his former attempt.  On that occasion, as his lip tired early in the performance, so that many of the notes above A were missed during the later half of the concert, the result of this experiment was doubtful.  This time his lip was in good condition; and though he did not attain the infallibility of Kosleck, he quite settled the question as to the practicability of the original parts.”[8]  Shaw also complained about the use of cornets and slide trumpets in the orchestral performances that he reviewed.  Excerpts from two such reviews follow: “I declare, in all sincerity, to Messrs Ellis, Morros (sp.), and Jaeger that all their skill leaves the cornet as objectionable as ever.  I know very well that the slide trumpet of the textbooks is an impracticable nuisance, but cannot something be done with more modern inventions?”[9]  “It is all the more to be regretted that (Morrow’s) effect should have been two-thirds spoiled by his colleagues, Messrs Blackwell and Ellis.  These gentlemen used the old slide trumpets, which they blew sedately into their desks whilst Mr. Morrow’s uplifted clarion was ringing through the hall.”[10]

            Shaw was clearly intrigued with the two-valved Bach trumpet introduced by Kosleck and perfected by Morrow, and he frequently called for its greater use in the orchestra.  Continuing the above review, Shaw wrote: “Now, surely Mr. Ellis and Mr. Blackwell could have procured “Bach trumpets” from Messrs Silvani & Smith without fear of being unable to play the comparatively easy second and third parts on them…. I believe that it is only in its new-old form that the trumpet has any chance of restoration to the orchestra.”[11]

Adopting the F Trumpet

            Shaw’s musical writings were of considerable influence in London at the end of the nineteenth century and it is reasonable to suspect that Walter Morrow might have been influenced by them.  But Morrow may have harbored similar, independent feelings concerning the trumpet in the orchestra.  Regardless, the most reasonable compromise between the F slide trumpet that had dominated the English orchestras, and the two-valved Bach trumpet was the three-valved F trumpet.  Morrow officially announced his “conversion” to the F trumpet in his seminal article, “The Trumpet as an Orchestral Instrument,” published in The Proceedings of the Musical Association in 1894.[12]

The exact date upon which Morrow began to play the F trumpet is unknown, but by 1898 he was proficient enough in its performance to commission a solo. The composer chosen to write the piece was C. Herbert Couldery (1842 – 1930) of the Royal Academy of Music. Morrow performed Couldery’s “Fantasia” for F trumpet and organ at the Crystal Palace in October of that year.

            As Thomas Harper’s use of the slide trumpet influenced all those about him, Walter Morrow’s adoption of the F trumpet stimulated a general revival of the instrument as well.  Morrow’s closest associate in the London orchestras was John Jacob Solomon (1856-1953). Solomon replaced Morrow as the reigning first trumpeter in London after 1903 and was a charter member of the London Symphony Orchestra. And at the turn of the twentieth century, he seems to have been playing the valved F trumpet along with Morrow. Harry Farjeon reported in an article written for the Royal Academy of Music Magazine in 1938 that he heard Solomon play a high D on the F trumpet “some years earlier.”[13]Eric Pritchard, formerly of the Covent Garden orchestra and a student of Solomon’s, confirmed to me in an interview in London in June, 1987 that Solomon played the F trumpet. And Pritchard related that in his own career he played occasionally on one of Solomon’s trumpets.[14]

            Morrow and Solomon appeared together in concert programs consistently during the last two decades of the nineteenth century.[15]  The famous 1885 Bach Choir performance of the B minor Mass featured a trumpet section consisting of the aforementioned Julius Kosleck, Morrow, Solomon, and Horton and Lebon as assistants. Ten years later, a program from one of the Nikisch orchestral concerts at Queens Hall featured Morrow, Solomon, and Pague, probably all playing F trumpets.

The Cornet and the Trumpet as Solo Instruments

            After 1895, Morrow and Solomon never appear in concert playing the cornet. For many other players, however, the cornet remained a popular solo and orchestra instrument until the turn of the century.  Robert Newman’s Queen’s Hall Promenade Concerts were an annual autumn event in London.  The orchestra performed nightly for three months each year and concerts consisted of a variety of orchestral works from vocal and instrumental solos and concertos to overtures and complete symphonies. During the orchestra’s second season in 1896, the London cornetist Howard Reynolds was the featured soloist on every concert.  The cornet solo seems to have been programmed as a lighter spot of popular music entertainment in these long concerts. These solos were transcriptions, often drawn from popular songs of the period and included Arthur Sullivan’s “The Lost Chord,” and Balfe’s “When Other Lips.”  Reynolds was, on occasion, joined by the popular cornet quartet, “The Park Sisters.”

            In 1898, the cornet soloist for the “Proms” was F. L. Kettlewell.  He appeared much less frequently than Reynolds, performing only a couple of times a week.  Frank James, who later played second trumpet to Solomon in the London Symphony, was cornet soloist in the 1899 season and only played once a week, on Thursdays.  From that point on, the appearance of the cornet solo once a week seems to have become standard.

            Though the cornet was the favorite solo brass instrument of the period, the trumpet did appear in a solo capacity on occasion.  Newman hired Walter Morrow to solo with “The Proms” once each season for three years.  In 1898 Morrow performed the Brandenburg Concerto no. 2, presumably on his Bach trumpet.  In 1900 he repeated his performance of Couldery’s “Fantasia,” and in 1901 he performed the Serenade for trumpet, piano, and strings by Saint-Saens.  John Solomon was hired the next year as the trumpet soloist.  It is interesting to note that Morrow’s choice of solo literature was of considerably higher quality than that performed by the cornetists.  Complaints by many writers about the trivial nature of the cornet seemed to be supported by this observation.  The shortage of solo literature for the nineteenth century trumpet could have been responsible for the fact that Morrow only performed once a year.

Walter Morrow and Ernest Hall and the End of the F trumpet

Morrow seems to have retired from active performance around 1902 and in 1903 he accepted the position of Collector for the Royal Society of Musicians, a position he held until his death in 1935.[16] But Morrow still held his position as Professor of Trumpet at the Royal College of Music and in this position, he remained an important influence on thehistory of the trumpet. This was because Morrow continued to insist that all his RCM students learn to play the F trumpet, into the twentieth century. Eric Pritchard told me that Morrow was supported in this requirement by the principal of the school himself. In an effort to provide adequate lesson material on the F trumpet, Morrow revised and republished two earlier trumpet and cornet method books: Julius Kosleck’s School for the Trumpet, originally published c. 1872 in Berlin and revised and republished by Breitkopf & Hartel in 1907, and Otto Langey’s Tutor for the Cornet, originally published in 1885, and edited and republished in 1911.

Despite Morrow’s single-minded advocacy of the F trumpet, performers in London were discovering what the Europeans had previously learned, that the instrument was very hard to play accurately, especially in the upper register.  John Solomon’s high d"' concert on the F trumpet reported by Harry Farjeon was not performed without pain.  “John Solomon…did once nearly split his gizzard (or whatever it is that trumpeters do split) in obtaining for me a high D on the F trumpet.  This was in the days when composers were commonly kept in check by their interpreters; Strauss had already begun the revolt, but we lesser beings had not his temerity – not as a rule; but on that occasion, I, fresh from studentship, did assert my sway.  I wanted that high D, I wrote it, he played it (I came, he saw, he conquered – and then he laid me low with invective and abuse.”[17]  Clearly, Solomon disliked playing in the extremely high register on the instrument and as composers were ever more frequently writing to high c"' and beyond, Solomon and others quickly abandoned the F trumpet for the performance of contemporary music.

            Morrow seems to have been finally persuaded that the F trumpet was inappropriate for much of the new literature by his most famous student, Ernest Hall.  Ernest Hall (1890-1984), who played Principal Trumpet in both the LSO and BBC Symphony and was a teacher to many of the greatest English trumpet players of the twentieth century, came to the Royal College of Music in 1910 on a scholarship to study with Morrow.  Hall arrived at the RCM having already been a member of the Liverpool Philharmonic and was a veteran performer on the cornet and the high B-flat trumpet.  At the RCM, Hall tried to play his B-flat trumpet for his lessons.  But Richard (Bob) Walton (1923 - 2002), former trumpeter with the London Philharmonic and the BBC Symphony and one of Hall’s students, related to me in an interview in June 1987, that Morrow insisted that Hall’s lessons by played only on the F trumpet.  At the time, Hall was a busy cornetist, playing regularly at the Delphi Theater in London and had no time to practice the outmoded F trumpet.  He, therefore, only practiced the F trumpet the day before each lesson so as to please his old teacher.[18]

Morrow, finally convinced that the B-flat trumpet was here to stay, ceased requiring the F trumpet at the RCM.  Ernest Hall’s lessons on the F trumpet were not completely wasted however.  He is reported to have played the older instrument occasionally in the orchestra as late as the mid-1920’s.  An article published in the Musical News and Herald in 1925 reports that Hall used the F trumpet for a performance of Prokofiev’s Chout.[19]  David Mason (1926-2011), former First Trumpet in the Royal Philharmonic and the Beatles’ famous “Penny Lane” trumpeter, told me that Hall also played the F trumpet during the 1926 Wagner “Ring” season at Covent Garden.[20]  And he would know, Mason was also a student of Ernest Hall.

The F trumpet appeared on at least three more occasions in orchestras in England after 1925.  Eric Pritchard told me that he played the instrument twice, early in his career, first in 1928 for an on-stage fanfare during a performance of Boris Godonov at Covent Garden and later, in 1931 on the third trumpet part for Prokofiev’s ballet Chout.[21]  And Richard Walton reported what was probably the final use of the F trumpet on a recording of some Beethoven marches in the 1950’s.  He related that the London Mozart Players had so much trouble with the F trumpets that they switched to B-flat trumpets to finish the recording.[22] In fact, it appears that by the second decade of the new century, many players were actually cutting their F trumpets down to make high B-flat trumpets.  Eric Pritchard reported that Frank James often played such a cut-down F trumpet after he joined the London Symphony Orchestra[23] and Richard Walton told me that his first trumpet, a gift from his father, was a Distin F trumpet that had been cut down to B-flat.[24]  In the year 1910, Hawkes & Son of London was still advertising an F trumpet, but it was listed only as a band instrument.[25]

The Final Years

With the graduation of Ernest Hall from the RCM in 1914, Walter Morrow seems to have faded from trumpet history.He continued to teach there until 1920 and remained active in the Royal Society of Musicians until 1935, but nothing else is known of his last years. Morrow died on December 21, 1935, in Wimbledon. His death went completely unmarked, with not so much as a death notice in the local newspaper to record his passing.

            In many ways, Walter Morrow was a throwback to an earlier time.  He advocated the use of the valved F trumpet twenty years after it had disappeared from the orchestras on the continent, at a time when even composers had begun writing exclusively for the high B-flat and C trumpets.  Yet, in my opinion, Morrow was correct.  The noble sound of the “real” trumpet was lost in the orchestra by the use of the cornet and he sought to reverse that trend, and succeeded.  That the F trumpet so quickly succumbed to the B-flat trumpet was inevitable, given the new music that composers such as Mahler, Stravinsky, and Ravel were writing at the time.

Of greatest interest, however, is the way Morrow’s career so closely reflected the history of the F trumpet itself. Morrow began by playing the outmoded slide trumpet, he fought every attempt to incorporate the cornet into the orchestra, he recognized that the valved F trumpet was the only “real” trumpet left to play, and he advocated it’s use without reservation. In the end, both the F trumpet and its last great virtuoso, Walter Morrow, vanished from the musical horizon together.

[1] Richard Birkemeier, “The History and Music of the Orchestral Trumpet of the Nineteenth Century,” Journal of the International Trumpet Guild, Vol. 9, No. 3 (Feb 1985), p. 22.

 [2] The biographical information referred to has been lost.

 [3] Edward Tarr, “Walter Morrow,” The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (6th ed), London: MacMillon & Co. Ltd, 1980, Vol. XXII, p. 592.

[4] Walter Morrow, “The Trumpet as an Orchestral instrument,” The Proceedings of the Musical Association, Vol. XXI (1894-95), p. 141.

 [5] William Stone, “Trumpet,” in A Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Vol. VI, 1st edition (London: MacMillon & Co. Ltd., 1900), p. 181.

 [6] Crispian Steele-Perkins, Interview with the author, (London: June, 1987).

 [7] Bernard Shaw, Music in London (1890-1894), Vol. I (London: Constable & Co. Ltd., 1937), p. 129.

 [8] Shaw Vol. II, p. 59.

 [9] Ibid., p. 166.

 [10] Ibid., p. 59.

 [11] Ibid.

 [12] Morrow, op. cit., p. 141.

 [13] Harry Farjeon, “John Solomon,” Royal Academy of Music Magazine, No. 112 (Nov. 1938), p. 54.

 [14] Eric Pritchard, Interview with the author, (London: June, 1987).

[15] Information taken from programs collected at the British Library.

[16] Betty Mathers, “Walter Morrow,” The Royal Society of Musicians of Great Britain List of Members 1738-1984 (London: Royal Society of Musicians, 1985), p. 103.

[17] Farjeon, op. cit.

[18] Richard Walton, Interview with the author, (London: June, 1987).

[19] “Ernest Hall,” Musical News & Herald (June 20, 1925), p. 588.

[20] David Mason, Interview with the author, (London: June, 1987).

[21] Pritchard, op. cit.

[22] Walton, op. cit.

[23] Pritchard, op. cit.

[24] Walton, op. cit.

[25] Hawkes & Son, Illustrated Price List (London c. 1910), p. 16.