Trumpets & horns

Trumpets and horns (or olifant) are called “lip reed aerophones”. In the majority of cases, the quality of the sculpture does not allow either a precise organological identification or a formal determination of the material. This may be due to the structural simplicity of some of them: simple cow, buffalo or wild bovid horn whose tip has been cut and pierced with a glowing iron, bamboo... Some prestigious trunks were probably made from elephant tusks; world ethnography bears witness to this. However, there is one exception: the most beautiful trumpets can be seen on the Historical Parade bas relief in the third south gallery, west wing, of Angkor Wat. They appear to be metallic instruments because of their length, curvature, and the peculiar shape of their pavilions.

Like the conches, their basic functional organization is the pair (or couple?), which could be duplicated at will, as is still the case in contemporary India. This system of parity of trumpets and conches is found in Tibetan Buddhist orchestras.

In this scene of the Historical Parade, one sees two long and two short trumpets, one in profile and the other in front. The latter can only be distinguished from its mouthpiece and the upper end of the tube just behind the attachment point of the big drum. These long and short trumpets have a length ratio of one to two, which suggests that they sound theoretically at the octave. If we take 1.65 m as the mean size of characters, the total size of the large horns would be close to 1.30 m and 0.65 m for the short one.

The long trumpet at the extreme left and the small one view in profile show a conical mouthpiece.

For the long trumpets, the first section of the tube is straight and the bell is curved, shaped like a stylized makara mouth. On the tube extending from the mouth to the base of the bell, there are no connections, which is however the case on most large Asian trumpets, which can be disassembled or telescoped. This connection may be concealed by the left hand of the musicians.

On the small trumpet seen in profile appear two series of striations, one above the musician's hands, a second one at the base of the bell's flare.

Angkor Wat, west gallery, south wing, Battle of Kurukshetra.

Angkor Wat, west gallery, south wing, Battle of Kurukshetra.

The 16^th century trumpets in the north gallery of Angkor Wat  are similar to those of the south one (12^th century). Some of these instruments seem metallic.

Pair of curved trumpets.

Angkor Wat, Battle of Devas and Asuras, north gallery, west wing. 12th c.

Flared bell trumpet. Angkor Wat. Krishna’s Victory over Asura Bāna, north gallery, east wing. 16th c.

The iconography of the north gallery of Angkor Wat also reveals some rare C-shaped horns of poor quality in their design, perhaps made of buffalo horn or metal.

In India and Nepal exist until now C-shaped metal trumpets.

C-shaped trumpet. Angkor Wat. Krishna’s Victory over Asura Bāna, north gallery, east wing. 16th c.

In Bayon, most of the trumpets representations are of poor quality. The mouthpieces are invisible.

A bas-relief of the Bayon shows an atypical trumpet compared to the overall corpus. One can see the mouthpiece and a conical-shaped bell.

Sanskrit text

Original French translation

Que dans lʼavenir le culte des dieux, fixé ici par lui, pourvu dʼor, plein dʼune quantité de joyaux, ayant pour bruit des vagues le son des instruments de musique, soit comme lʼocéan augmenté par le temps [ou : le flot].

Revised French translation

Que dans lʼavenir le culte des dieux, fixé ici par lui, pourvu dʼor, plein dʼune quantité de joyaux, ayant pour bruit des vagues le son des trompes, soit comme lʼocéan augmenté par le temps [ou : le flot].

There are two qualities of buffalo horns: light and heavy, all proportions kept. The first are preferred because only the tip of the horn is filled with material.

After cutting the tip of the horn, the manufacturer fires at least two to three irons to make the work more fluid. He opens the insufflation duct millimeter by millimeter. Then the mouthpiece is adapted to facilitate the insufflation without injuring the lips. The horn is then cleaned and polished with sandpaper. In the past, polishing was perhaps done with wild plant leaves, which are still known to forest populations today. A model was made by adding a copper border with a lotiform decoration.