In 1971, I had the enormous good fortune to meet and befriend the great American trumpeter and scholar Edward H. Tarr. He and his first wife Madeleine gratiously invited me to stay with them at their house on the Oberer Rheinweg in Basel, Switzerland during my first trip to Europe.
Over the next few years, while I was working in Germany, I visited Ed a couple of times at his home. During one visit, I photographed the famous Johann Leonard Ehe trumpet in his collection (see below); this eventually ended up in his English translation of the Altenburg treatise that was published in 1974.
This led to another collaboration when Ed asked me to make an exploded drawing of a historical mouthpiece in the Basel Museum. This appeared in his book Die Trompete (Hallwag, 1977).
Ed trying out a keyed trumpet in the shop of Adolf Egger, with son Philip.
Bell of a trumpet by Johann Leonard Ehe II (1663-1724)
Another view of the Ehe trumpet
Exploded isometric drawing of the Steiger mouthpiece for Die Trompete (Hallwag, 1977)
Click on the link below to read an article I wrote about Ed for Continuo Magazine in 1994:
In Praise of Edward Tarr and in Defense of the Trumpet Music of the Later 18th Century
Because Ed's recordings are little known nowadays, I have created a link to an MP3 file of a cut from one of his albums called "Musicalishe Feste in fürstlichen Gärten", recorded around 1967. This is a delightful little march by George Frideric Handel for trumpet, oboes, and bassoon:
Click here to play the excerpt
