Things changed also with regard to trumpet and shawm playing, and music progressed[lit. ascended], and had never been as good as it has now started to become. For he who was known, five or six years ago, as a good shawm player throughout the whole country is not worth a fly now...Wegman leaves it as something of a mystery as to what was the significant change that occurred. However in looking at the evidence for early trumpet and shawm ensemble, including a controversy I was previously unaware of, about the existence or otherwise of the slide trumpet as a precursor to the sackbutt/trombone, it seems very plausible that it was exactly the invention and spread of the slide trumpet that Wolfhagen experienced first in 1360. An article by Keith Polk notes that there is an explosion of town and household accounts recording payments to shawm and trumpet groups in Germany from about 1350 on, and specifically the term 'posaune' starts to be used in 1360 and (at least in later references) seems clearly distinguished from the standard signalling trumpet, as the instrument used to play along with shawms.
As an aside, my favourite account book reference mentioned in the article is a payment from town records in Hildesheim in 1427 "dem nigen basuner unde dem bumbarde te dranckgelde" - to the new (slide?) trumpet player and bombarde player for drink money.
As yet I don't know if anyone else has made this connection to Wolfhagen's innovation, but it seems plausible that a shawm player who previously had played in ensemble with a natural trumpet, but was now accompanied by a slide trumpet, would have a much greater flexibility in the music they could play, with a consequent noticeable jump in apparent virtuosity. There also seems to be evidence that one of the causes or consequences of this development was the ability to play instrumentally the latest Ars Nova chansons.
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