A COMPUTATIONAL MODEL OF THE BAROQUE TRUMPET AND MUTE
Robert W. Pyle · Historic Brass Society Journal · 1991
nlike modem trumpet mutes, the Baroque trumpet mute raises the playing pitch of the instrument.This pitch change is the subject of this paper.The Baroque mute is turned from hardwood and fits snugly into the bell.Air and sound pass through a relatively small-diameter hole bored through the center of the mute.As discussed by Keller and Smithers in previous papers,' musical examples and contemporary written material indicate that the pitch rise is a whole tone.However, trials with extant mutes have shown a pitch rise of only a semitone.In this paper, we report on a computational model of trumpet and mute which allows the calculation of the air-column resonance frequencies that determine the playing frequencies of the instrument.