How A Mouthpiece Was Made In The XVII Century

By a delicate craft process is possible to rediscover the sounds of the past.

- How A Mouthpiece Was Made In The XVII Century:

Classical era, mouth-piece design (such an important piece) has suffered many changes and variations, not only in its shape but in its manufacturing process.

We must bear in mind that at the beginning and for many years, mouth-pieces were made in the same way as instruments from a tin sheet and other metals which was bent and hammered and welded in order to finally made the ring with the edges bent.

This technique or let’s say the lack of it made them light, in weight and width on their walls which had great influence on their sound with no doubt. Neither could they obtain inner forms as the ones we know and use nowadays, so it was basically a cone that was decreasing steadily from one end to the other.

This inner form with no doubt is the one that distinguises the sound of real historical instruments and determines a lot the techniue wich is to be used in its utilization on original instruments.

Another important feature which has been going on for many years and it’s not to be overlooked is the division between professional trumpet-players, first or “high” ones and second or “low” ones with different skills and registers and so with totally adapted mouth-pieces to their needs and so with very different shapes specially in sizes.

Besides those measures varied a lot not only depending on the countries but even on different players from the same city.

It is refreshing that crasftsmen like T.Romera, thanks to his restless curiosity, keep on trying to rebuild as similar as possible mouth-pieces used more than 200 years ago from historical models. With no doubt, it will be a great help to professionals of historical performances in order to try rediscovering the real sound of that era.

Write by Javier Bonet.

1º We get a brass sheet 0.7m/m thick and cut it according to the pattern which was made before.

2º We bend from the sheet centre with a hammer on an iron mould in order to give it a similarity to the final shape.

3º When it’s well bent we weld both sides of the sheet.

4º Once it’s cold we hammer, with the mould inside, the welded part until it’s completely flat.

5º We get the mould which has the mouth-piece final shape and place it on the emboss winch. We let the sheet in, with a steel-end stick we press it on the inner mould so as the sheet will have the mould shape.

6º We turn on a lathe the ring shape with a piece of solid brass.

7º We weld the mouth-piece ring and polish it so as to give it the final shape.

In this way, we get an old mouth-piece.