The natural trumpet for Tristan und Isolde

'This is an incredibly exciting project. Although the passage seems just a detail, nothing is a detail with Wagner'

- Artistic director Jan Vandenhouwe

To build the instrument, last year, OBV knocked on the door of Gunther Cogen, an instrument builder specialising in historical trumpets. He took on the challenge of researching exactly what Wagner wanted based on the sparse information the composer left us. For this project, Gunther Cogen collaborated with Daniël Vernooij, builder of historical clarinets, with great expertise in making wooden sound cups. Ultimately, and based on research that follows the latest views on historical practice, the choice was made to build a natural trumpet. A natural trumpet is a wind instrument without valves or keys and where the tones are determined by the lip tension of the trumpeter. Think like a clarion, for example.

For the experts, the trumpet was built in an eight-foot configuration as it was common in the eighteenth century, but with an all-wood bell made of flamed maple wood. The sizing was slightly adjusted so that the wooden cup could be as long as possible, contributing to the typical sound. A cord binding holds the cup and brass together.

While there are orchestras that have built trumpets for this deliberate musical passage in the past, in each case they built a valve instrument or a variation of it. Never was a trumpet built within the natural scale, which, according to our research, is the most plausible and responsible choice.