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Restoring the Sound of the Keyed Bugle
Jürgen Voigt has made it his job to carry out research into craftsmanship techniques used by 19th century brass instrument makers – techniques that have almost completely disappeared now – and use this knowledge to make two models. He has reconstructed a keyed bugle within the scope of a “Musicon Valley” project, which is part of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research’s InnoRegio Initiative.
It is true that there is a growing interest in using original instruments from the period to play the individual parts when interpreting 19th century compositions.
But in contrast to natural trumpets or Baroque trumpets, there is little or hardly any documentation on making the instruments that were manufactured at a later stage. There are a few keyed bugles in collections or private ownership, but most of them are in a poor state and can hardly be repaired or played.
Demand for replicas of these instruments has grown once again on the international market, but it is impossible to make them without having carried out thorough research in advance. Jürgen Voigt was only able to use historical data related to the instruments’ development, but not any documents that would provide technical information on how to manufacture them. Using modern procedures and after carrying out detailed research, he tracked down and understood the necessary techniques. Thankfully instruments were made available from private ownership or collections, such as the Musical Instrument Museum in Markneukirchen.
The brass instrument maker Jürgen Voigt took exact measurements of a 200-year-old keyed bugle from a museum, prepared the technical drawings and completed the manufacturing work using machining marks on the instruments that he examined (the originals are owned by Dr. Ralph Dudgeon).
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31.05.2004 Kremsmünster
The American trumpet professor and initiator of the keyed bugle project, Dr. Ralph Dudgeon, with the trumpeter and instrument collector Franz Xavier Streitweiser at the first musical test for keyed bugles in the castle at Kremsmünster in Upper Austria
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