Performing Mr Purcell’s ‘Exotick’ Trumpet Notes

Abstract On 9 November 1686 Nicholas Staggins, Master of the Music, was paid ‘for faire writeing of a composition for his Majesty’s coronation day from the originall in score the 6 parts, [and] for drawing ye said composition into forty several parts for trumpetts, hautboyes, violins, tennors, [and] bases’. While the composition itself has not survived, the payment record supplies some very illuminating information. Assuming that he was the composer rather than the arranger, Staggins’s piece, which was performed on 23 April 1685, holds the honour of being the earliest recorded example of English scoring for full Baroque orchestra, anticipating by almost five years the orchestra used by Henry Purcell in the Yorkshire feast song (Z333) of 1690. Although it is often suggested that the ‘composition’ was, in fact, one of the coronation anthems performed on that date-Purcell’s ‘My heart is inditing’ (Z30) has been proposed, despite the major scoring and textual mismatches -it seems to have been a purely orchestral work which was performed separately from the coronation service itself The casual manner in which the scoring details are given suggests that the inclusion of trumpets was not so remarkable at this time. In addition, the instruments are listed in an order which mirrors that found in similarly scored English works which date from the 1690s.