Wolpe wrote the Solo Piece for Trumpet in response to a commission from Ronald Anderson, the then long-time trumpeter for the Group for Contemporary Music. He wrote the piece during a belated period of professional recognition, which followed years of emigration, lack of recognition by the American musical establishment, and difficulty in securing a long-term teaching position. It was also during this period that Wolpe contracted Parkinson's Disease. Because of the debilitating disease, Wolpe was unable to complete Anderson's commission, a work for solo trumpet and chamber ensemble. Instead, the composer presented Anderson with the short Solo Piece for Trumpet as a substitute for the intended piece. In 1971, shortly before his death, Wolpe completed the original commission, the Piece for Trumpet and Seven Instruments. The two trumpet pieces share several similarities. Both exemplify Wolpe's late style, which shows Neo-Classical tendencies.

The Neo-Classical designation may seem incongruous, because Wolpe's aesthetic prized relentless progress, innovation, and renewal. He disdained nostalgia and traditionalism in music, describing conservative composers as people "who have tried to sit out history and its yesterday's implications ... The better among them are dissatisfied by the images of their art, which have become flat and dull." Rather, according to Wolpe, "one has to practice one's art with a knowing sense of its radical nature ... then truly will the moment be rallied into the vast depths of time which history is: the ever-restored and ever-advancing moment." Why is it that, in his final works, Wolpe seems to have cast a backward glance? Wolpe claimed that "one's attitude must remain ever alerted by examining rigorously and without fear how much history one carries along with oneself, and whether this load, in effect, interferes with a radical attack on all genuinely fresh musical problems." The late trumpet pieces may perhaps be such a reflection.

The Solo Piece for Trumpet consists of two short, exquisitely constructed movements. The first movement sounds like an uncanny fusion of a written-out classical cadenza and an extended jazz solo. With its changing tempi, repeated figures, and easy, developmental quality, it nearly sounds improvisational. The miniature precision with which each trumpet phrase is constructed, however, reveals a great deal of compositional forethought. The movement's expressive marking is "graceful, talking." Each phrase comments on the next in a conversation consisting of questions, answers, and elaborations. Each phrase has a sharply defined contour, which is set off by highly specific and contrasting dynamics, articulations, and expressive markings. In fact, it is these specifications that help to distinguish the piece's aesthetic from that of a classical cadenza or a more conservative Neo-Classical style. They help to guarantee that each phrase has a character or mood that strikingly contrasts with the next. The movement suddenly shifts between forceful, impetuous phrases and more relaxed, ruminative ones. Written for the now-obsolete, ethereal-sounding F alto trumpet, the second movement continues in a similar fashion. This music, however, dwells in the lower register. Its character is easy and dream-like. Then, without a transition, the music abruptly charges upward in a triumphant, fanfare-like finale. This sudden, surprising ending reflects a central concept of Wolpe's aesthetic, the idea of "adjacent opposites." Through such extreme juxtapositions, Wolpe sought to create a musical experience resembling a continuous "unfoldment of nows," an enlightening "shock situation" that reveals "the ever-restored and ever-advancing moment."

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