Musical instruments have an ancient history; the oldest-known flutes are over 30,000 years old, and odds are humans used objects as makeshift drums even earlier.

In time, new ways of making sounds - and new sounds at that - started to be discovered.

Trumpets, the first brass instruments - which are defined by the way sound is produced, through vibration of the lips, and not the material they are made of, are known to have existed for over 3,500 years.

Two trumpets were found in the burial chamber of Tutankhamun, who died in 1323BC, and they remain operational: they were played a BBC broadcast in 1939. The instrument is also mentioned several times in the Bible.

However, the trumpet as we know it today - a staple of orchestras, brass bands and jazz ensembles alike - has a much shorter history.

 

Turning a signalling tool into an instrument

For thousands of years, only natural trumpets existed, without any keys or valves to alter pitch, which could thus only produce the notes of a single harmonic series as a bugle would, with many gaps in its musical range.

Consequently, trumpets were only used for signalling purposes for most of their history; they only began to be used as musical instruments in the late middle ages. And once they were incorporated into music, the need for a trumpet with fewer limitations started to be felt; but it took a few more centuries for this to happen.

A breakthrough only arrived in the late 18^th century, through the experimentations of the renowned Viennese trumpeter Anton Weidinger, which culminated in the development of a keyed trumpet in 1792.

This trumpet used keyed openings in its bore - as do clarinets and flutes - which made it possible to play all the notes of the chromatic scale, thus greatly increasing the instrument's usefulness.

This development was welcomed by the trumpeter's friend, the composer Joseph Haydn, by then semi-retired and living on a generous pension which allowed him to devote himself solely to composing, composed a work to showcase the new instrument's capabilities.

The Trumpet Concerto, written in 1796, proved to be a ground-breaking work.

In the first few measures the trumpet simply plays notes that any previous trumpet could; but soon enough, the new instruments showed its true colours; at the première in 1800, the audience was startled to hear a trumpet melody they had previously thought impossible.

But the keyed trumpet had a notable drawback; its sound quality was inferior to that of natural trumpets, and ultimately, relatively few works for it were composed.

All this would change with the development of trumpets using piston valves in the first half of the 19^th century. When pressed, the valves increase the length of tubing the air passes through, lowering the pitch and allowing the same range afforded by the keyed trumpet without the accompanying loss in quality of sound.

Even so, it took some time for the instrument to gain popularity. The trumpet, however, came into its own in the 20^th century, not least with the spread of brass bands and the arrival of jazz.

 

Saving the harpsichord from extinction

The harpsichord - which produces sound by plucking a string when a key is pressed - appeared in the late middle ages, and its versatility ensured that it was extensively used in Renaissance and Baroque music.

But it started heading towards obsolescence when a variant which produced sound by striking strings with a hammer - the ancestor of the modern piano - was developed, which allows performers to change the volume of each key through the pressure they apply to it.

The harpsichord all but disappeared in the 19^th century, with the singular exception of opera, where it is routinely used to accompany recitative parts. However, the piano started making inroads even in this field.

The instrument was saved from becoming solely a museum piece in the 20^th century, when composers started to increase the variety of sounds available to them. As a result, the harpsichord was reappraised on the basis of its distinctive tone, rather than dismissed as a primitive, limited, piano.

It has even been used in pop music; notable examples include The Stranglers' 1981 hit Golden Brown and songs by The Beatles, The Beach Boys and Simon and Garfunkel.

And while modern-day harpsichords are use the same mechanism as their Baroque counterparts,

Among the most notable recent works for harpsichord is the Concerto for Harpsichord and Orchestra composed in 2002 by the renowned American composer Philip Glass, who is arguably primarily known for his numerous film scores. The work has echoes of the music of the harpsichord's heyday, but is also clearly a contemporary work of music.

The same quest to increase the variety of sounds available that led to the harpsichord's revival has even led composers to incorporate non-musical instruments in their work, primarily as percussion instruments. The cash register, for instance, features prominently in Pink Floyd's Money and in the theme song of the famous 1970s British sitcom Are You Being Served?

But similar examples can also be found in contemporary classical music, including in Leroy Anderson's 1950 work The Typewriter, in which the sounds of a typewriter - the keystrokes, the carriage return, and the typewriter bell, accompany an orchestra.

The work served as background music in one of the most famous skits by comedian Jerry Lewis, which involved him typing on an imaginary typewriter and which first featured in the 1963 film Who's Minding the Store.

Incidentally, using household objects as makeshift instruments was just what our ancestors would have done, providing further confirmation that musical instruments do not become obsolete; they are simply waiting for someone to use them properly.

In fact, when asked about whether synthesisers would replace musical instruments, Glass emphasised that the piano hadn't even replaced the harpsichord.

"If you look at how technology has evolved, it doesn't actually replace instruments," he remarked.

"It rather augments the choices that a composer might have in his work."

Instruments of Innovation will be performed at Robert Samut Hall, Floriana on Saturday, 25 March at 7.30pm; a special performance for schools is being held on the morning of the 24^th. Tickets for the Saturday performance can be obtained through www.showshappening.com