Composers of organ music have tended to highlight the instrument’s more colourful registers, and the trumpet stop has been an inspiration since at least the eighteenth century, when John Stanley and his contemporaries wrote movements for it. By the end of the nineteenth century, the mildly voiced trumpets of the Baroque organ had been supplanted by heavy-pressure examples, and these created a vogue for pieces in which their stentorian tones are heard against the rest of the organ. The
Festive Trumpet Tune of David German (b1954), an American composer, belongs to this tradition and was written for the composer’s wedding. Its form is basically AABA plus a coda, the B section being in the relative minor (D minor), the coda featuring a key-shift up a semitone, from the F major of the A sections to the sparkle of F sharp major.
from notes by Relf Clark © 2006
