(Fr. bande; Ger. Kapelle; It., Sp. banda).
An instrumental ensemble. This article deals exclusively with Western uses of the term ‘band’.
KEITH POLK (II, 1), JANET K. PAGE (II, 2(i–ii)), JANET K. PAGE, STEPHEN J. WESTON (II, 2(iii)), ARMIN SUPPAN, WOLFGANG SUPPAN (III, 1–3, 5), RAOUL F. CAMUS (III, 4; IV, 4), TREVOR HERBERT (IV, 1, 3, 5), ANTHONY C. BAINES/R (IV, 2), J. BRADFORD ROBINSON (V), ALLAN F. MOORE (VI)
The word ‘band’ has many applications in music, more or less precise. In a general sense, it may refer to almost any ensemble of instruments. When used without qualification it commonly applies to a group of musicians playing combinations of brass and percussion instruments (a brass band; see §IV below) or woodwind, brass and percussion (e.g. a wind band, a circus band or a symphonic or concert band; see §III below). The ‘24 violons’ of Louis XIV were called ‘la grande bande’ to distinguish them from Lully's ‘petits violons’, and Charles II's similar ensemble was known as ‘the king's band’. By extension, ‘band’ came to mean orchestra in colloquial British usage: the two terms can also be used interchangeably. In Europe the wind and percussion band is descended from the ‘high’ or ‘loud’ groups (see Alta (i); and see §II(a) below) of the medieval period and from the civic waits or the Stadtpfeifer, who generally performed outdoors and therefore used predominantly loud brass and percussion instruments. Bands were often mobile, had a vernacular appeal (they usually performed lighter forms of music, often to a non-paying audience; as such they have also served as useful propaganda tools, or at least assisted in promoting nationalistic or patriotic fervour), and were often associated with specific military or civic duties and were thus uniformed. The Orchestra, on the other hand, is descended from the medieval ‘low’ or ‘soft’ instruments (strings and softer wind instruments), and usually plays indoors. It was originally associated with the church or the nobility, and later with formal concerts of more ‘serious’ and sophisticated music for which audiences paid.
‘Band’ is often qualified by the dominating instrument or family of instruments, as in brass band, Horn band, Steel band, accordion band (piano accordions of various sizes with percussion instruments), banjo band, pipe band (bagpipes and drums), fife and drum band, and flute band (a marching band of flutes and percussion found particularly in Northern Ireland). In a Jug band or a Washboard band the eponymous instrument plays an integrated part in the musical texture rather than a dominant role.
Bands may also be named according to their function rather than their constitution (although mixed wind bands are often misleadingly described as ‘military bands’ whether they have a military role or not), as in the dance band, the theatre band (or ‘pit band’, if it plays in the theatre pit), the marching band and the showband. The stage band is a group of musicians playing either on stage or behind the scenes; a familiar example is the band in Mozart's Don Giovanni (1787), and many instances may be found in French and Italian operas by Meyerbeer, Spontini, Verdi and his successors. In Italy it is called ‘banda’, as is also sometimes the brass section – or the brass and percussion together – of an orchestra.
Bands may also be named according to, or in a way that associates them with, the style of music that they play, as in jazz band and big band (related to the dance band; see §V below), pop, skiffle, rock and folk bands (see §VI below). During the 20th century the words ‘band’ and ‘group’ have often been used synonymously in popular culture.
See also March, and Military music.
Band (i), §II: History to 1800
The earliest wind bands in Europe were well established by the 13th century; they were similar to those of the Near East, consisting of shawms, trumpets and drums (see Naqqārakhāna). By about 1400 the trumpets and drums had split off into separate ceremonial ensembles (fig.1). Early in the 15th century a slide instrument was added to the shawms, and the ensemble, consisting of three or four musicians (one or two shawms, bombard and trombone), quickly developed (by 1475) a highly sophisticated performance tradition (fig.2). This was the group of choice for dancing, processions, banquets and other secular ritual occasions (see Alta (i)). By the late 15th century it was a preferred ensemble throughout Europe, as every major court and important city patronized one. Courtly ensembles were engaged from the beginning exclusively for their musical capabilities, as was also the case in many German cities where the musicians were known as Stadtpfeiferei (‘town pipers’; see Stadtpfeifer). In many regions, however, city bands initially combined a watchman function with their musical duties, which was reflected in such names as ‘waits’ in England and wachters in the Low Countries (see Wait. The watch function was dropped almost everywhere by the late 15th century, although the bands continued to perform from church and city towers. Soon after 1500 some shawm-based ensembles expanded to six or even eight performers, and at the same time these musicians were expected to command a wider range of instrumental doublings, including cornetti, crumhorns and recorders. Musical demands also expanded, as wind players increasingly joined singers in all manner of performances, including those within church services (see Performing practice, §I, 4). In the early 16th century the ensemble reached an artistic peak with musicians such as Tromboncino and Susato, whose careers were rooted in the wind band tradition. By about 1550 a new fashion for string instruments (especially the violin) began to mount a challenge, and by late in the 16th century the artistic position of winds began to decline. The decline was gradual, however, and until the early 17th century leading chapel masters and composers (such as Hans Leo Hassler) continued to be associated with wind bands.
See also Shawm.
Band (i), §II: History to 1800
Musicians in the army of the German Empire were usually supplied by a guild of trumpeters and kettledrummers which had certain privileges. Towards the end of the Thirty Years War (1646) the Brandenburg Dragoon Guards had a band of shawms (two treble and one tenor, with a dulcian for the bass) and drums. Under Louis XIV bands were organized in the French army after the model of those in the German regiments. With the development of the new French hautbois (oboe) around the middle of the century, the French bands, probably gradually, adopted the new instrument; by 1665 each company of Mousquetaires had three hautbois, and the number soon increased to four, including a tenor instrument (possibly at first a cromorne, later a taille de hautbois; see Oboe §III, 2(ii)) and a dulcian or bassoon. Many of the marches and airs written for them by Lully, Philidor l'aîné, Martin Hotteterre and others are preserved in the manuscripts of the Philidor Collection under the title Partition de plusieurs marches et batteries de tambour tant françoises qu'étrangères avec les airs de fifre et de hautbois a 3 et 4 parties (F-Pn Rés. F.671; see ex.1). The use in this period of the word ‘hautbois’ for both the shawm and the new instrument makes it sometimes difficult to determine which instruments were intended, and it is unclear how long shawms or transitional instruments remained in use in the French army and elsewhere. Many of the pieces in the Partition de plusieurs marchescould be played by either shawms or oboes. The bassoon appears to have replaced the one-piece dulcian by the end of the century.
The new hautbois soon spread, through military and diplomatic contact, across Europe. Johann Philipp Krieger's Lustige Feld-Music of 1704 is an early German example of music for the new ensemble of French hautbois. Krieger advised certain doublings of the four parts in the open air, and by the end of the 17th century such bands often had six members: a band of six young ‘Hautboisten’, led by a French musician who trained and directed them, played at Zeitz castle in 1698 and was sent to Vienna at the request of the Habsburg court in 1700. Hans Friedrich von Fleming noted in 1726 that bands of French hautbois consisted of six instruments – two trebles, two tailles and two bassoons – ‘because the [French] hautbois were not as loud, but sounded much sweeter, than the shawms' (Fleming, p.181). The combination of three treble hautbois, a tenor and two bassoons was also common. By 1720 the tenor instruments had been replaced by horns in many bands in central Europe: such ensembles are depicted in engravings from the period, including one from Leipzig dated 1720 (with three treble hautbois, two horns and a bassoon), and music for woodwinds and horns had begun to appear (the earliest dated work is a Marche by J.G.C. Störl for pairs of oboes, horns and bassoons, dated 1711). Some bands had a trumpet instead of horns; Fleming considered this combination characteristically English. In Prussia, a trumpet was added to the wind sextet. Bands of Hautboisten played for marching; they also played morning and evening before the residence of the commander and when the commander entertained (then they might sometimes play string instruments). As well, they provided music for processions and other public ceremonies (see Festival, §2). A collection of music assembled between about 1712 and 1725 with pieces scored for two or three oboes, taille and bassoon or for three oboes, trumpet and bassoon (most with two bassoon parts) survives as the Sonsfeldische Musikaliensammlung (D-HRD Fü3741a). The Douze grands hautbois of the French court still consisted solely of double-reed instruments in 1722, when they played for the coronation of Louis XV (see Oboe, fig.4). Elsewhere in Europe bands had become somewhat larger by the middle of the century with the doubling of the upper parts, and ensembles of eight or ten musicians were not unusual. Also about the middle of the century, clarinets began to be used in place of, or as a supplement to, the oboes. An engraving published in London in 1753 depicts a band of two oboes, two clarinets, two horns and two bassoons preceding a company of grenadiers (fig.3) and in 1762 the Swiss Guards in France were authorized to have a band consisting of four each of oboes, clarinets, horns and bassoons. In 1763 Frederick the Great stipulated that Prussian army bands should consist of two oboes, two clarinets, two horns and two bassoons. However, bands of six players in which the treble instruments were either oboes or clarinets remained common, and many musicians played both. There were also bands of other combinations: the grenadier company in Salzburg had a band of two clarinets, two fifes and two drums in 1766 (see also Feldmusik).
At the Restoration in England the band of the King's Life Guards consisted of trumpets and kettledrums, but the practice of using the ‘hautboy’ as a military instrument was soon imported from France: oboes were appointed to the Horse Grenadier Guards in 1678 and to the Foot Guards in 1684–5. The fife, use of which had been discontinued during the period of the Commonwealth, reappeared in the British army in the mid-18th century. The cavalry was still normally restricted to trumpets and kettledrums, although some regiments adopted fifes and drums for unmounted playing. Horns were usual in British army bands by mid-century. Handel wrote marches and other pieces for two oboes, two horns and basso (and also two marches for trumpet, two oboes and basso). His ‘Grand Overture of Warlike Instruments’, or Music for the Royal Fireworks (1749) is scored for an expanded version of the ensemble, with the addition of kettledrums. Clarinets were in general use after the middle of the century; the common scoring for two clarinets, two horns and bassoon is exemplified by J.C. Bach's four Military Pieces (the bassoon part may often have been doubled). In 1762 an ensemble was brought from Germany to serve as the ‘Royal Artillery Band’: it consisted of ‘eight men, who must also be capable to play upon the violoncello, bass, violin and flute as other common instruments’ and was provided with two trumpets, two horns, two bassoons and ‘four hautbois or clarinets’ (Farmer, C(i)1904, p.36). A perhaps not uncommon arrangement was described by Richard Hind in The Discipline of the Light Horse (London, 1778, pp.206–7): ‘in the year 1764 … each troop [had] one trumpet, who when they are dismounted, form[ed] a band of music, consisting of two French horns, two clarinetts and two bassoons’.
European musical traditions, including bands, were taken to North America by colonists and military units. Bands took an important role in musical life there and distinct customs soon developed (see §III, 4 below).
An important development during the 18th century was the adoption by European military bands (and orchestras) of ‘Turkish’ or ‘janissary’ music (see Janissary music). In a miniature from the early 18th century (fig.4) a Turkish mehter (military band) is shown playing boru (trumpet), zil (cymbals), davul (cylindrical drum played on one side with a drumstick, on the other with a switch of twigs) and kös (large kettledrums). Such ensembles might also include the zurna (shawm) and nakkare (small kettledrums). The bands of the Sultan of Turkey's elite troops (the janissaries) made a great impression on the European armies during the wars of the 17th century and the first half of the 18th. The Sultan presented a band to Augustus II of Poland (reigned 1697–1733) and an imitation of Turkish music was performed at the Court of Empress Anne of Russia in 1739. A Turkish band had been added to the Austrian Commander Freiherr von Trenck's troop by 1741, and in the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–48) the French Marshal de Saxe's Uhlans adopted this music too. Prussian regiments used janissary instruments and later engaged Turkish musicians to play them. Around the mid-18th century European bands began to add ‘Turkish’ instruments, first a large bass drum, later cymbals and triangle. The Turkish crescent was added at the end of the century. Some percussionists were Moors or black; they were dressed in an exotic manner and used extravagant gestures. By the 1780s a ‘Turkish band’ in Europe was usually one of European instruments with added percussion and a piccolo; a band reported in Vienna in 1796 included oboes, bassoons, horns and clarinets, a trumpet, a triangle, a piccolo, a very large drum, an ordinary drum and a pair of cymbals (Schönfeld, Jahrbuch der Tonkünst in Wien und Prag, Vienna, 1796, p.98). This band was not engaged in military duties, but rather played outdoor concerts in the summer. British bands often added a tambourine. The janissary influence remained visible at the end of the 20th century in the tiger- and leopard-skin aprons used by bass drummers and in their elaborate drumstick flourishes, while the shape of the marching band's bell-lyra recalled the Turkish crescent.
Towards
the end of the 18th century military bands added more instruments, partly
because the increase of percussion under the influence of janissary music made
it necessary, for purposes of audibility, to increase the wind as well. More
clarinets were added: there were six in the Grenadier Guards in 1794 and in the
bands provided from 1795 in France by the Conservatoire Nationale de Musique
(founded as the Ecole de Musique de la Garde Nationale by Bernard Sarrette in
1792 to supply the need for military musicians). New instruments came into use:
a Divertimento written by Thomas Attwood in collaboration with Pleyel and
Storace was scored for pairs of clarinets, basset-horns, horns and bassoons
with serpent. An arrangement of J.C. Bach's Overture to Lucio Sillacopied
by Henry Pick in about 1800 includes parts for two flutes, two oboes, three
clarinets, two horns, two trumpets, two bassoons, serpent and alto and tenor
trombones; some of his other arrangements include parts for side drum. French
bands grew larger and more varied during the Revolution. Catel's Ouverture
militaire, for example, includes parts for two petites flûtes, two
flutes, two clarinets, two trumpets, two horns, three trombones, two bassoons,
serpent and timpani. By about 1810 the larger European military bands had
reached their present size (Table 1), having further increased
the number of clarinets and added small clarinets and in Germany often
basset-horns; the brass instruments regularly included trombones while extra
pairs of horns and trumpets made different crookings simultaneously available.
In England the serpent was supported by the bass horn and in the German lands
by the double bassoon (ex.2). A typical French infantry
band of 1809 consisted of piccolo, E
clarinet, six to eight B clarinets, two bassoons, two horns,
trumpet, two or three trombones, one or two serpents, side drum, bass drum,
cymbals and pavillon chinois (Turkish crescent).
From
the end of the 17th century bands of hautbois often did double duty,
playing military music and for outdoor festivals as required, but also playing
indoors for court events, either as an independent ensemble or as part of an
orchestra. The eight hautbois of the Mousquetaires played for
divertissements, water parties, balls and other events at the French court. Two
horn players appointed to the Württemberg court in 1713 were expected to play
both in the orchestra and in the regimental band. When the Treaty of Utrecht
brought peace in 1713, the band was employed for baptisms, balls, church
services and carnival, and accompanied members of the royal family on their
travels. Later in the century, contracts for the wind players hired by the Esterházy
court in 1761 indicate that they too performed both military and court duty. It
was from such groups that the ‘Harmonien’ developed; the term was applied both
to groups of wind instruments employed by the aristocracy (and others) and to
small military bands. The size of Harmonie ensembles ranged from two
instruments to above 20 (21 were required for a special piece by Georg
Druschetzky, performed for the coronation ceremonies for Leopold II in
Pressburg in 1790), but most had between five and nine instruments, most
commonly in three or four groups – horns and bassoons, with either oboes or
clarinets or both – and in pairs (sometimes there was a single bassoon part,
played by two bassoons). Flutes, english horns and basset-horns were also
occasionally used and a double bass or double bassoon was sometimes added
(especially towards the end of the 18th century). Harmonie bands played
at the Concert Spirituel in Paris in the 1760s and 1770s, and Mozart's Serenade
in B k361/370a
for 12 wind instruments and double bass was performed at a public concert in
Vienna in 1784. Although Harmonien were supported primarily by
aristocrats, similar ensembles played in the streets and for less exalted patrons.
Mozart's Serenade in E
k375 (1781), originally written for an ensemble of
clarinets, horns and bassoons, was played in the street (the composer commended
the players' performance); it was reworked the following year for pairs of
oboes, clarinets, horns and bassoons, perhaps with one of the aristocratic
ensembles in mind. The latter combination was popularized by Emperor Joseph II
in Vienna in the 1780s. His ensemble was made up of the best wind players of
the day, and played a repertory consisting primarily of opera transcriptions.
Many Harmonien had been disbanded by the end of the 18th century, but
some remained active well into the 19th (see Harmoniemusik).
Bands of musicians continued to form part of the civic establishment throughout the 17th and 18th centuries and into the 19th. They performed civic duties, such as sounding Retreat, and played for celebrations, processions and church services, public and private balls, parties and concerts. To match the wide variety of duties assigned to him the town musician required skill on several instruments (including string instruments: see, for example, the account of a town musician's training in Quantz's Lebenslauf) and a wide repertory, including signal pieces, dance pieces, conversation music and, in the 18th century, sinfonias and concertos (see also Stadtpfeifer). Some town musicians were retired regimental musicians; others came from families in which the profession was traditional. In their competition with other musical organizations, such as the guild of trumpeters and kettledrummers, the town bands had acquired certain rights and privileges governing, for example, where and when they might play. By the end of the 18th century, however, the social structures that supported this order were disappearing and with them the bands of all-purpose musicians: most bands in Germany had disappeared by the 1790s, and in England many were dissolved at the time of the Napoleonic wars. In France new types of bands sprang up to fill in music the ideals of the new Revolutionary order. Gossec became conductor of the Corps de Musique de la Garde Nationale (with Sarrette) and wrote fervently Revolutionary music for it, beginning with a Te Deum performed on 14 July 1790 by a band of over 300 woodwind and brass instruments, serpents and violas, with 300 drums and a chorus of as many as 1000 (violas were not used in subsequent outdoor works). Similar works as well as purely instrumental pieces by Gossec, Méhul and Grétry were performed on state occasions by bands of between 30 and 70 wind players, together with drums.
In Russia a unique type of band was established in 1751 by J.A. Mareš: it consisted of an ensemble of hunting horns ranging from 30 cm to 2 metres in length, each able to play only one or two notes; horn bands of up to 22 players visited Western Europe in 1817 and 1833 and sets of the instruments were exhibited in Vienna as late as 1892 (see Horn band). Similar bands of about 13 players were known in Bohemia and Saxony.
In England by about 1740 the singing of the choir had begun to be accompanied in parish churches – which usually had no organ – by an instrument or two, such as a bassoon or bass viol on the bass part and occasionally an oboe to double the melody (the tenor part) an octave higher. By about 1770 ‘church bands’ included singers and two to five or six instrumentalists. Their music was sometimes known as Gallery music because they often performed from a specially built gallery. The instrumentalists were an integral part of the ensemble, supporting the vocal lines and leading the singers. Before the turn of the century double reeds predominated (bassoon, oboe and occasionally vox humana), but after about 1800 string instruments (bass viol, cello, violin) were more usual, supplemented by clarinets and, later, brass instruments such as keyed bugles, cornopeans and ophicleides. The instrumentation was never standardized, but depended on local resources. Some bands remained active into the 20th century, but most had been replaced by reed organs or barrel organs by the middle of the 19th (see also Psalmody (ii), §I and fig.2).
An ensemble of double-reed instruments, known as the Hautbois d'eglise, was used for a similar purpose – to accompany the singing of Lutheran chorales – in Protestant Switzerland between about 1760 and 1810. The instruments included two dessus de musette, oboes, recorders or flutes on the upper parts, a basse de musette to play the tenor and a basson d'amour.
Band (i), §III: Mixed wind bands
The term ‘military band’ dates from the late 18th century and denoted at that time a regimental band consisting of woodwind, brass and percussion instruments. During the following century it came to be applied as well to civilian bands of similar constitution. With the growth of civilian wind bands for all sorts of activities (outdoor entertainment, marching etc.) the epithet ‘military’ became increasingly inappropriate; the more general ‘mixed wind band’ is accordingly used here to define the whole group of bands, ‘military band’ being reserved for a mixed wind band maintained by the armed forces. The words used in other languages as equivalents for ‘military band’ support a more general designation since many of them make no reference to a specific military function: Fr. bande, harmonie; Ger. Blaskapelle, Blasorchester, (Militär-)Musikkorps; It. banda, corpo di musica; Sp. banda. A wind ensemble is distinguished from a wind band in having one player to each part.
Band (i), §III: Mixed wind bands
The band of the Garde Républicaine, among the first of the new, larger bands founded immediately after the French Revolution, set the pattern for the 19th century. A new concept, that of the symphonic wind band, in which groups of like instruments serve in sections analogous to those of the orchestra, began to gain prominence; the new ensemble is apparent in works such as Beethoven's March woo24 of 1816. The instrumentation of bands evolved separately in different regions, but all came to conform to the new concept (see Table 1). The development of valved brass instruments by both Stölzel and Blühmel early in the second decade of the 19th century was of overwhelming importance, allowing the entire range of brass instruments to play chromatically.
Infantry bandmasters in Germany and Britain have from the onset of the valve era, out of conservative feeling and practical consideration, generally kept to the well-balanced instrumentation advocated by military journals of the mid-19th century (exemplified in England by C. Boosé's Military Journal from c1845). As shown in ex.2, this consists of a contemporary orchestral wind and percussion group augmented to fulfil band requirements and filled out with a few extra instruments. Saxophones, invented for the band, were first used in French infantry bands about 1845. The treble is led by cornets, flugelhorns or trumpets and the bass is supplied by valved basses; a string bass is often added in concert performance. The only other instrument foreign to the orchestra is the euphonium, which helps with nearly everything prominent in the tenor and bass registers.
In Austria, the new style of military band, with choirs of woodwind instruments and brass, the clarinets predominating, is mentioned in documents from 1800 onwards. A report of the Hofkriegsrat to Emperor Franz I (20 September 1820) draws attention to the large size of some ensembles – 50 to 60 men – and their expensive and ‘unmilitary’ dress, all due to the officers' desire for prestige and magnificence. Two years later the emperor decreed that infantry bands be limited to 34 men apiece and regimental staff bands to ten. The combination was determined by individual bandmasters. Wind instruments with keys and brass instruments with valves were adopted early in Austria: the Allgemeine Schule für die Militärmusik(Vienna, 1845) confirms that trumpets, flugelhorns, horns and even trombones had changed to valves by this time. Table 2 shows the composition of Austrian military bands in 1820 and 1845. The band of Fahrbach's Organizzazione is a typical Austrian infantry band, with a large clarinet section, trumpets of different sizes, and the soft-sounding flugelhorns and euphonium. The army Kapellmeister Andreas Leonhardt (1800–66) introduced far-reaching reforms in Austro-Hungarian military music with his Systemisierung der Militär-Musikbanden of 1851. The strength of each band was increased to 60 men and the bands of the infantry, cavalry and jäger were made similar. These ensembles remained largely unchanged until World War I. Leonhardt's reforms were influential in the USA and Japan, and above all in Prussia.
In
Prussia soon after 1800 different ensembles were assigned to different branches
of the military: trumpet corps to the cavalry; horn bands to the jäger; and
mixed wind bands to the infantry (ten ‘Hoboisten’, or military bandsmen), the
grenadiers (18 men) and the guards (24 men). In 1816 line regiments were
permitted to expand to 30 members, and Prussian bands developed in a similar
way to the French and Austrian ensembles, with woodwind and chromatic brass
instruments complemented by percussion instruments from janissary music.
Wilhelm Wieprecht (1802–72), director of music of the corps of guards from
1838, was in contact with Leonhardt, and reformed the military bands of Prussia
after the Austrian model. Wieprecht played a leading role in the development of
new valved brass instruments including the Tenorhorn (Bass-Flügelhorn),
the Tenorbasshorn in B, the Sopran- and Altkornett and the Bass-Tuba.
He specialized in large-scale concerts: in Lüneburg in 1843 he conducted the
entire musical corps of the 10th Deutsches Bundesarmeekorps, comprising over
1000 bandsmen. Wieprecht's ideal ensemble consisted of two flutes, two oboes,
11 clarinets, two Tenorhörner, euphonium, two tenor trombones, bass
trombone, four Bombardons(tubas), two bassoons and two double bassoons,
four trumpets, two soprano and two alto cornets, four horns, drums, cymbals,
triangle and Turkish crescent. In Prussia, as elsewhere, military bands
undertook a variety of musical and cultural tasks, bringing the army into
contact with the civilian population. The repertory included music for military
use, original works for military band and transcriptions of the latest music. Table 3 shows the instrumentation of European
military bands in the mid-19th century.
The instrumentation of the military bands at a competition at the Paris Exposition of 1867 provides a useful survey of the state of European military bands of the time (Table 4). The Prussian band, however, consisted of the combined musical corps of the Prussian guards; the band of the Garde de Paris was made up of professional musicians recruited from the theatres. The first prize was shared by Austria (band of the 73rd Infantry Regiment), Prussia and the Garde de Paris. Table 5 shows the instruments used in late 19th-century bands.
In 1873 a course to train bandmasters was set up at the Musikhochschule in Berlin. In the following decades Berlin became a centre for the training of military bandmasters, not only for Prussia and other German states, but also for some non-European countries such as Japan. Around 1900 there were some 560 military bands in Germany with 23–40 musicians in each, but after World War I there remained only 140 military bands, each with 27–37 members: civil wind music had mostly disappeared also. Military bands frequently played concerts consisting of marches and arrangements by Wieprecht and others of his generation. With the rise of National Socialism military music came to be regarded as an important tool, and many new bands were formed. Between 1935 and 1945 the band of the Luftwaffe occupied a special position: it followed the band of the US Air Force in including a larger woodwind section than usual, and its Inspector of Music Hans-Felix Husadel (1897–1964) commissioned new works from leading German composers. With the founding of the two German states in 1949 there were two separate military music organizations. In the DDR the Ministry of Defense had a band of 72 and each corps had a band for marching and for concerts. The literature was restricted mostly to new works and arrangements of workers' songs. Each corps also had a big band for dancing. The Luftwaffe band became the model for the new Bundeswehr music corps of the Federal Republic of Germany after 1956. From the 1950s there were bands for the border guards (four), the army (13), the air force (four) and the navy (two); at first each band had about 50 members, but the number was increased to 60 in 1958. There were also specialized ensembles, including a ceremonial ensemble (founded 1959) and a big band (founded 1969). In 1998 the military music of Germany consisted of one staff band, 21 bands attached to various army, navy and air force divisions, a training band and a big band.
French military bands in the 19th century included orchestres d'harmonie of woodwind, brass and percussion instruments; fanfare bands of brass instruments, saxophones and percussion; and the cavalry trumpet corps of brass instruments and timpani. Instrumentation was strongly influenced by the many new wind instruments developed during the 19th century by makers such as Adolphe Sax. Infantry bands of the 1830s were organized on an extravagant scale: they included full woodwind and the classic brass, strengthened by cornets, keyed bugles, alto ophicleides or clavicors, and bass ophicleides (the first edition of Kastner's Cours d'instrumentation, 1839, includes an example in score). The addition of a ‘bande turque’ made a colourful effect. However, bands were soon ‘improved’ by the mass of very efficient saxhorns and flugelhorns with which Sax and others smothered the old nucleus, producing a densely homogenous, somewhat bland sonority; saxhorns were widely adopted by French bands following a reorganization in 1845. Leading bands were expanded for concert performance by adding every sort of woodwind instrument, and even in some cases two desks of cellos to warm the lower register. The French model, which grew to enormous proportions, was largely followed in Italy and Spain as well. A peculiarity of French marching music is the clairon march, in which horn calls alternate with the band. At the end of the 20th century the Musique de l'Air of Paris was one of the leading professional wind bands in Europe.
A ‘military music class’ was founded at Kneller Hall in Twickenham in 1857. In 1865 it became the Royal Military School of Music. Its influence on music may be traced in the growth and improvement of the Royal Artillery Band: in 1857 the band was doubled from 40 to 80 players, and in 1887, at 93 strong, it became the largest band in the service. British army musical directors were often civilians, and mostly foreigners. (It was the proliferation of non-military, foreign bandmasters, together with the need to regulate and standardize British service bands, that stimulated the setting up of Kneller Hall). From about 1860 bandmasters were ranked as First Class Staff Sergeants and from 1881 they were allowed to be promoted to Warrant Officers; later still they could be commissioned. By 1876 there remained only 35 civilian bandmasters in British army bands.
British military bands were standardized at a conference held at Kneller Hall in 1921: the tenor horn was abandoned and saxophones added, a trend already apparent somewhat earlier in works such as K.J. Alford's march Colonel Bogey (1914; ex.3). The instrumentation then established remained in force at the end of the century (for specifications of British bands in the 1980s, see GroveI, ‘Band (i)’, Table 4). The bagpipe tradition has been maintained by the Army School of Piping, founded in 1910. The RAF School of Music, whose first Organizing Director of Music Walford Davies composed the famous March Past, was founded in 1918. Bands have long been associated with services such as the fire brigade and the police in Britain; the band of the Metropolitan Police was formed in 1927. At the end of the 20th century the United Kingdom supported 16 military staff bands 35–50 musicians strong and 53 regimental bands with 21–35 musicians in each.
The
problem of discrepancies in pitch between bands was overcome in Britain by the
issue to all regiments in 1858 of a standard B tuning fork, which introduced the ‘high Philharmonic
pitch’. European military bands adopted the recommendations of the Paris
conference of tuning standards of 1885 (Habla, C1990).
In Switzerland, where many outstanding municipal bands were initially conducted by German military bandmasters, military music was confined to militia bands and Rekrutenspiele. Only with the founding of the Schweizer Armeespiel in 1960 did that country acquire a professional military wind band. The Netherlands and Belgium, at first influenced by France and Germany, went their own way from the 1950s and by the end of the century had begun to extend their influence outwards through their excellent music publishing firms (Molenaar, Tierolff, de Haske) and composers. Important bands have included the Grand orchestre d'harmonie des guides, founded in 1832 as the Belgian royal musical ensemble; the Royal Military Band of Belgium; the Marine Band of the Royal Navy of the Netherlands (founded 1864); and the Kapel van de Koninklijke Luchtmacht (founded 1945). The Musique militaire grand ducale of Luxembourg enjoys a high reputation. In the Irish Republic Wilhelm Fritz Brase, a former German military bandmaster, founded the army music school, serving as its director from 1932 to 1940. At the end of the century there were four military musical ensembles in Ireland with 33–44 musicians each. In Spain, military music in the 19th century was influenced by France; the Real Cuerpo de Alaberderos was regarded as the finest military band there between 1875 and 1931. At the end of the 20th century the music corps of the Royal Guard was considered the leading ensemble; like the municipal bands of Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia, it includes cellos and double basses. The Scandinavian countries developed variants on the Prussian, French and English models. Bands there are usually small: the band of the Royal Danish Lifeguards has 35 members and three further Danish bands have 16 members each. The largest band is that of the Norwegian Royal Guard, with 60 members; the staff band has 28 members and the six regional bands have 21 musicians each. The situation is much the same in Sweden (fig.5) and Finland, where there are semi-professional bands of national service personnel. Only the band of the Swedish Navy is entirely professional.
An independent Italian development began with Alessandro Vessella (1860–1929), director of the Banda municipale di Roma from 1885 to 1924. He standardized the scoring of small, medium and large bands and wrote a treatise on instrumentation, Studi di strumentazione per banda (Milan, 1954). From the 1920s most Italian wind bands followed his model in scoring and repertory.
With the exception of the Horn band, military music in 19th-century Russia was influenced by the Prussian model. In 1873 Rimsky-Korsakov was appointed Inspector of Naval Bands and worked to improve standards. After the Revolution of 1917 Russian military music broke away from the Western model. Semyon Aleksandrovich Chernetsky (1881–1950) was appointed Inspector of Music for Soviet bands in 1924; he reorganized the training of military bandsmen and encouraged the composition of new music. In 1935 he established the wind band of the Soviet Ministry of Defence to serve as an example for other military bands; it included tenor horns but had no bassoons or saxophones. Works written for this ensemble include Myaskovsky's Symphony no.19, op.46 (1939) and Dramatic Overture (1942), and marches by Prokofiev and Khachaturian. States formerly part of the Soviet Union (e.g. Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan) or in the Soviet orbit paid particular attention to military music in the late 20th century. Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria have preserved their own traditions while the Baltic states and Slovenia were, at the end of the century, striking out on new paths of their own.
In some countries financial concerns resulted in retrenchment during the final decades of the century. In Belgium, for example, a number of bands were decommissioned when it was decided that only a single band for each corps would be supported.
Band (i), §III: Mixed wind bands
The
19th century saw a steady increase in large civic bands in continental Europe.
French civilian music was divided into the brass band with saxophones (fanfare)
and the wind, percussion and brass band (harmonie). In 1850 the Banda
Municipal of Barcelona was dissolved, but later reformed with 40 players
associated with the School of Music. The Banda Communale di Roma,
founded with 40 members in 1871, doubled in size on the appointment of
Alessandro Vessella as its director in 1885; it is typical of the ‘banda
municipale’ of a major Italian city, with its brilliant tone colour, excellent
players and repertory of orchestral and opera transcriptions. The following
list of instruments specified in a ‘transcrizione libera’ (1927) of Puccini's Turandot
illustrates the maximum instrumentation found in such bands: Ottavino;
2 Flauti; 2 Oboi; Corno inglese; 2 Clarinetti piccoli in La; 2
Clarinetti piccoli in Mi; Clarinetti soprani in Si I.;
Clarinetti soprani in Si II.; Clarinetti contralti in Mi;
Clarinetti bassi in Si; Sarrussofono baritono in Mi;
Sarrusofono basso in Si; Saxofono soprano in Si; 2
Saxofoni contralti in Mi; Saxofoni tenori in Si; Saxofono
baritono in Mi; Saxofono basso in Si; Sarrussofono contrabasso;
Contrabasso ad ancia; Contrabassi a corda; 4 Corni in Fa; 2 Cornette in Si; 2 Trombe
in Fa; 2 Trombe in Si basso; 2 Tromboni tenore; Trombone
basso in Fa; Trombone contrabasso in Si; Timpani; Triangolo–Tamburo; G.C.
Piatti–Tam-tam; Glockenspiel–Xilofono; Xilofono basso–Gong Chinesi; Celeste; 2
Flicorni sopranini in Mi; 2 Flicorni soprani in Si; 2
Flicorni contralti in Mi; 2 Flicorni tenori in Si; 2
Flicorni baritoni in Si; 2 Flicorni bassi in Si; 2
Flicorni bassi gravi in Fa-Mi; 2 Flicorni contrabassi in Si. (Contrabasso
ad ancia; a double reed instrument of brass, different from the
sarrusophones which in this example replace bassoons; Flicorni; generic
title covering flugelhorns, alto and tenor horns, baritone and the brass
basses; the deeper trombones are valved, sometimes the tenors as well; G.C.
Piatti: one player, cymbal attached to the bass drum.)80 players
became a common size for municipal bands in southern Europe and Latin America.
The Portuguese Banda da Guarda Nacional had 60 members by 1901.
In many towns and cities of southern Europe the tendency towards the large ensemble continued. Until 1981 Venice maintained such a band, which played in the Piazza S Marco. Large bandas municipales were still thriving in Spain at the end of the 20th century, and in major cities these were made up of professional players; in addition there were many cultural societies that supported bands. An annual contest, which became international in 1982, has been held in Valencia since 1886 during the Gran Feria in July.
In
the Benelux countries and Switzerland there are many amateur bands, mostly
mixed wind bands, but also brass bands. There are also many in Scandinavia, in
Germany, and in central and eastern Europe. Bands have tended not to have fixed
instrumentation: Spanish bands often include cellos; in Scandinavia, Belgium
and the Benelux countries bands follow the British model sometimes adding
trumpets; in Germany and elsewhere in central Europe flugelhorns and Tenorhörner
(Bass-Flügelhörner) are employed; in Italy, Austria and parts of central
Europe the small E
clarinet is often seen; in Eastern Europe and France saxhorns may be used.
In the final decade of the 20th century national pride in countries newly freed from Soviet domination led to the revival of popular local traditions, including bands. In Lithuania, for example, the Symphonic Wind Band of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which had been disbanded in 1944, was restored in 1989, and an Association of Lithuanian Wind Instrument Players was formed in 1993 to improve the skills of its members and to promote Lithuanian music.
Band (i), §III: Mixed wind bands
European musical customs and traditions were brought to North America by the colonists. In American military organizations, as in European ones, a distinction was made between ‘field music’ and the ‘band of music’. The former consisted primarily of a snare drum, with a fife, bagpipe or other instrument added wherever available to provide melody. It was used mainly for functional purposes – to set the cadence for marching men and to beat warnings, orders and signals – and normally provided the camp duty calls that regulated the field or garrison. The band of music, on the other hand, served ceremonial and social functions.
The earliest reference to a ‘band of musick’ in North America is a newspaper account of the celebrations for the accession of George I of England in New York in 1714 where it is stated that the governor and the regular forces marched ‘with Hoboys and Trumpets before them’. By the 1750s the term ‘band of musick’ appears frequently in connection with parades and civic ceremonies. British regimental bands (normally Harmoniemusik ensembles) gave concerts in New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Canadian garrison towns before the American Revolution, and residents were quick to form bands of their own. Both British and American regiments supported bands during the Revolutionary War, and performances were frequent. The 3rd and 4th Continental artillery regiments had bands as early as 1777; both served until the end of the Revolution and achieved exceptional reputations. In post-Revolutionary USA, bands welcomed George Washington in almost every village and city that he visited on his grand tour in 1789. Taverns, coffeehouses, theatres, and pleasure gardens all featured bands performing medleys, selections from popular stage works, battle pieces, transcriptions of orchestral works, original compositions, marches and patriotic songs (for examples of the music, see Camus, C(ii)1992).
The Militia Act of 1792, by which every able-bodied adult white male was required to perform military service for at least two ‘muster days’ each year, greatly promoted the development of bands. A further impetus was supplied by the regular meetings, for drill and ceremonies, of élite organizations. No military, civic, festive or holiday occasion was complete without music, and bands were organized to provide it; these were usually attached to militia units, and, while retaining their civilian status, the bandsmen normally wore uniforms. Tutors such as Timothy Olmstead's Martial Music (1807) began to appear in print. Other Revolutionary War bandmasters active into the Federal period included Philip Roth and John Hiwell, the former Inspector of Music in the Continental Army. New leaders, such as Peter von Hagen, James Hewitt and Gottlieb Graupner, came from Europe.
Widespread interest in Turkish (janissary) music in America at the beginning of the 19th century brought the bass drum and cymbals into the band and the field music. Combined performances of the two groups became more frequent, and the snare drum soon became an integral part of the band. Further changes to Harmoniemusik in the Federal period included new keys on the woodwind instruments and the addition of the piccolo, bass clarinet, trombone, bass horn and serpent. William Webb's Grand Military Divertimentos were published for an ensemble including these newly-added instruments (Table 6, 1828). Another new instrument, the Keyed bugle, became popular in New York through the performances of Richard Willis, who within a year of his arrival from Dublin in 1816 became the first teacher of music and leader of the band at the US Military Academy at West Point. Other virtuosos on the keyed bugle included Frank [Francis] Johnson in Philadelphia and Edward [Ned] Kendall in Boston. Keyed bass horns and ophicleides were also added, and bands continued to increase in size. By 1832 US Army infantry regiments had bands consisting of 15 to 24 members, a size emulated by militia bands. In that year, however, infantry bands were limited to ten privates and a chief musician, a drastic reduction that led to the elimination of woodwind instruments in favour of the new and versatile valved brass instruments. Beginning in 1834, many, but not all, bands changed to all-brass combinations (see §IV, ii, below). The 7th Regiment Band, a 42-piece woodwind and brass ensemble led first by Joseph Noll, later by Claudio S. Grafulla, achieved a reputation for excellence surpassed only by that of the all-brass Dodworth Band.
Bands proliferated during the Civil War: Bufkin estimated conservatively that the Union Army had 500 bands and 9000 players besides the two field musicians assigned to each company. These bands provided music for military and civilian ceremonies and entertained the soldiers; bandsmen also served as medical corpsmen during battle. Many civilian and militia bands enlisted as a body in the new volunteer regiments. While most conformed to regulations, some (supported, as in the past, by the officers), exceeded their authorized strength and dressed in elaborate uniforms. The 24th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry had 20 drummers, 12 buglers, and a 36-piece mixed wind band led by Patrick S. Gilmore. Other prominent civilian bandmasters who, with their bands, served in the war included Grafulla, Harvey Dodworth, E.B. Flagg, Thomas Coates and Walter Dignam. Gustavus W. Ingalls enlisted a band of 22 men in the 3rd New Hampshire Regiment (fig.6), and their Port Royal Band Books are a primary source for instrumentation and repertory of the period (Table 6, 1863). Eight members of the Salem (North Carolina) Brass Band enlisted in the 26th North Carolina Regiment, and their story (Hall, C(ii)1963) is typical of the experiences of many bands serving on both sides of the conflict. In 1862 Congress ordered the discharge of the three or four regimental bands per brigade, and authorized instead a brigade band of 16 musicians, with a leader and an assistant.
Due mainly to the influence of Gilmore, brass bands gradually disappeared following the Civil War. Gilmore arrived in the USA from Ireland in 1849 and a few years later became leader of the Salem Brass Band. In 1859 he established Gilmore's Band. He later organized and trained all the bands of the state of Massachusetts and organized the music for large-scale events such as the National Peace Jubilee of 1869, and the even larger World Peace Jubilee of 1872, both in Boston. In 1873 he assumed the leadership of the band of the 22nd New York Regiment, and established it as the finest professional band in the country. A skilled promoter, he attracted large audiences by adept programming and by engaging such outstanding soloists as the cornettists Matthew Arbuckle, Alessandro Liberati, Herman Bellstedt and Jules Levy, the saxophonist E.A. Lefèbre, the trombonist Frederick Neil Innes, the euphonium player Joseph Raffayolo, and the sopranos Emma Thursby, Eugenie Pappenheim and Lillian Nordica. The 22nd Regiment Band normally had a complement of 66 musicians (Table 6, 1878), far exceeding the limits imposed by military regulations at the time. During the 1880s they worked year-round: in summer at Manhattan Beach, in winter at the 22nd Regiment armory and Gilmore's Garden (P.T. Barnum's Hippodrome) in New York, and in autumn and spring on tour. At this time there were only four major professional symphony orchestras in the USA, none of which had a full season; as a result the finest musicians sought employment with Gilmore. His band inspired others to reintroduce the woodwind instruments and to raise their level of performance and improve their repertory. Other bandmasters active at the time included Grafulla, Carlo Cappa, David Wallis Reeves, the former Gilmore's Band soloists Arbuckle, Innes and Liberati, the cornettist R.B. Hall and, in Canada, Ernest Lavigne and Joseph Vézina.
In 1889 Harper's Weekly estimated that there were more than 10,000 ‘military’ bands active in the USA. In many western communities the local military post band provided the only music available. Many bands were associated with local militia units but, though uniformed, retained their civilian status. Professional and amateur bands appeared at military and civilian ceremonies and parades, concerts, amusement parks, seaside resorts, county and state fairs, and national and international expositions. Their repertory ranged from the ever popular marches, songs, waltzes and novelties to the classical standards of the day. Many North Americans had their first, and usually only, exposure to the music of Mozart, Beethoven, Rossini, Verdi, Liszt and Wagner through these bands. Opera selections and variations were performed by leading soloists, and even grand operas were staged.
While large bands were conducted, smaller ones were frequently led by their solo cornet player, as in the days of brass bands. Consequently the solo cornet part in printed arrangements usually served as the conductor's cue sheet. Carl Fischer of New York was one of the first firms to publish band music with printed parts for each instrument, and to include a two- or three-line conductor's score. The firm engaged many outstanding editors, among them Louis-Philippe Laurendeau, Frank H. Losey, Vincent F. Safranek, Theodore Moses Tobani and Mayhew Lester Lake, many of whose arrangements are still performed. Thomas H. Rollinson prepared many arrangements during his 40 years with Ditson. Later important publishers of band music included Charles L. Barnhouse, John Church, Harry Coleman, Henry Fillmore, George F. Briegel and several bandmasters who issued their own music, such as Jean Missud, Fred Jewell and Karl L. King.
The most important figure in the golden age of American band music was John Philip Sousa, who formed his own band in 1892. An astute showman, a fine composer and an excellent musician, he engaged the finest available players for each position, and attracted such outstanding soloists as the cornet player Herbert L. Clarke, the trombonist Arthur Pryor, euphonium players Simone Mantia and Joseph DeLuca, the violinist Maud Powell and the sopranos Estelle Liebling and Majorie Moody. He experimented with his band's instrumentation and gradually increased its membership (Table 6, 1900). From 1892 until his death in 1932 he made regular tours, including four in Europe (1900, 1901, 1903 and 1905), and a world tour (1910–11; fig.7). A typical Sousa programme listed about nine titles, ranging from his own suites and marches to novelties, solos, orchestral transcriptions and opera selections. After each scheduled work he normally added one or two encores, usually his own marches.
Other major figures of the period included such veterans as Cappa, Missud, Francesco Fanciulli, Thomas Brooke, Monroe Althouse and Victor Herbert; soloists from Sousa's band who went on to form bands of their own (Liberati, Clarke, Bohumir Kryl, Frank Simon, Pryor, Mantia, Herman Bellstedt and Eugene LaBarre); and bandmasters such as Giuseppe Creatore, Patrick Conway, Edwin Franko Goldman, Innes and Canadians Jean-Josaphat Gagnier and Charles O'Neill who organized new professional ensembles. Since women were not admitted to the professional bands except as violin, soprano or harp soloists, they formed bands of their own, such as Helen May Butler's Ladies Brass Band (fig.8).
Besides the professional bands there were thousands of amateur ensembles: civic bands, bands sponsored by fraternal and sororal organizations, industrial bands, the many brass bands of the Salvation Army and, after World War I, Legion and veterans' bands. A town band was a mark of social status: ‘a town without its brass band is as much in need of sympathy as a church without a choir. The spirit of a place is recognized in its band’ (Dana, C(ii)1878). Many civic bands still in existence date from pre-war times, including the Allentown (Pennsylvania) Band (founded 1828), the Repasz Band (Williamsport, Pennsylvania, 1831) and the Newmarket Band (Ontario, 1843). To train musicians for these bands, many schools were established, such as Hale A. VanderCook's College of Music (Chicago, 1909) and Innes's Correspondence School of Music (Denver, 1921, later Conn National School of Music, Chicago, 1923). There were also bands with specialized styles and repertories such as circus bands (which invariably played everything at much faster ‘circus’ tempos) and the New Orleans bands, which absorbed black American and Creole influences. Often associated with benevolent societies, these bands provided music for club functions and funerals. Since at least the 18th century bands traditionally played a solemn march on their way to the cemetery, but a brisk quickstep, usually ‘Merry Men Home from the Grave’ on their return. The New Orleans musicians began improvising on tunes (such as the spiritual ‘When the saints go marching in’), and developed an early form of jazz. There were many permanent black ensembles at the end of the 19th century, including the Excelsior, Onward, Eureka, Tuxedo and St Bernard brass bands, and many leading jazz instrumentalists gained their first experiences in these groups. As bandmaster of the 369th US Infantry Regiment Band serving in France during World War I, James Reese Europe brought jazz to European audiences for the first time.
Although Sousa continued to draw enthusiastic crowds, the popularity of bands declined after World War I, in the face of competition from radio, recordings and motion pictures. After his death in 1932 the focus shifted to education, a side of the movement that had been growing in the background since the second quarter of the 19th century. Music education in the schools in the 19th century had concentrated on vocal music, but there was a school band as early as 1836 in Canada, many in the USA by 1848, and there were bands all over the latter by the end of the century. Harvard and Yale had bands by about 1827, and other universities soon followed their example. After the Civil War there were bands based on the military model and attached to Officers Training Corps at nearly all educational institutions. Military ceremonies, political rallies, parades, dedications, outdoor festivities and sporting events were all enlivened by the music of these bands, which played popular overtures and medleys, spirited marches and school songs.
The participation of bands at sporting events became increasingly important, and by the end of the century pre-game and half-time football performances were common. With the addition of woodwind instruments, the bands increased in size and were organized more often like professional rather than military ensembles. Professional bandmasters, such as Conway at Cornell University (1895–1908) and Gustav Bruder at Ohio State University (1896–1929), soon replaced student directors. Albert Austin Harding sought to give the University of Illinois Band a symphonic sound by making greater use of woodwind instruments (and in greater variety) and using french horns instead of alto (tenor) horns. Since arrangements for such a band did not exist, he made almost 150 transcriptions of orchestral works for it. The artistic standard of the University of Illinois Band soon equalled that of the best professionals bands, and Harding's work was widely emulated.
World War I brought a renewed interest in military bands, and mobilization fostered an expanded musical instrument industry. American regimental bands compared unfavourably with their European counterparts in size and instrumentation until their membership was increased from 20 to 48 (Table 6, 1918) and greater emphasis placed on thorough musical training. Many members of army bands became band directors in public schools on their return to civilian life, class instruction in band and orchestral instruments having begun to receive support from school officials by the close of the war.
To stimulate demand musical instrument manufacturers organized the first national school band contest, in Chicago in June 1923. Response to such contests was so great that by 1937 the National School Band Association, organized in 1926 to administer the contests, had formed ten regional organizations. By 1941 there were 562 bands (33,398 students) participating, besides the many bands eliminated at district level. Canada had a similar growth, beginning in 1932 when Charles Frederick Thiele founded the Waterloo (Ontario) Band Festival.
Marching bands, now separated from the Officers Training Corps, benefited from the popularity of inter-collegiate football. Larger bands were needed to fill the huge stadiums built between the two worlds wars. The University of Illinois Band under Harding is generally credited with being the first to play opening fanfares from the goal line, and to form a block ‘I’ while marching down the field. Many others soon followed its example and began to form patterns on the field.
During this period measures were taken to raise the musicianship of symphonic and marching bands. As early as 1919 Harding had invited school band directors to observe his rehearsals at the University of Illinois and to discuss specific problems and repertory; in 1930 he began a series of influential band clinics. The American Bandmasters Association was organized in 1929, and the College Band Directors National Association (CBDNA) in 1941. The latter aimed to conduct acoustical and tonal research, improve the musicianship of college band directors, and develop a standard instrumentation (Table 6, 1960), a concept later rejected as too restrictive; it also commissioned original band music. The Canadian Bandmasters Association (later the Canadian Band Directors Association) was founded in 1931.
World War II curtailed the school band movement, but returning veterans inspired its revival in Canada and the USA. Many new works were commissioned by E.F. Goldman (from such composers as Thomson, Piston, Mennin, Persichetti, Creston, Morton Gould and Robert Russell Bennett) and through the League of Composers and the American Bandmasters Association. Marching bands emphasized brass and percussion more and more as football half-time shows developed into elaborate pageants with bands reaching immense proportions and marching with ever higher and faster steps. Symphonic bands also increased in size (Table 6, 1948). In reaction to such developments, Frederick Fennell formed the Eastman Symphonic Wind Ensemble in 1952 (Table 6, 1952). This ensemble originally provided a pool of 45–50 players for composers, and concerts have included works ranging from chamber-sized compositions to large scale works with one player per part, from Renaissance wind music to avant-garde compositions. From 1965 the ensemble was directed by Donald Hunsberger. Symphonic bands and wind ensembles continue to flourish in schools, colleges and universities (fig.9); a 1973 survey counted some 50,000 secondary-school bands in the USA, with 2000 at institutions of higher education. By 1990 Canada had more than 5000 band directors.
Professional bands of the postwar era included the Goldman Band (Table 6, 1946), which remained active until 1980 and commissioned new works from composers such as Bergsma, Giannini and Douglas Moore, and the Detroit Concert Band, founded by Leonard B. Smith in 1946 and still active at the beginning of the 21st century. In 1956 the Ostwald Uniform Company established an award for the best band composition submitted each year to a jury of the American Bandmasters Association; winners have included James Barnes, John Barnes Chance, James Curnow, David Holsinger, Anthony Iannaccone, Robert Jager, Karl Kroeger, Timothy Mahr, Martin Mailman, Ron Nelson, Roger Nixon, Fisher Tull, Clifton Williams and Dana Wilson.
In the military, reductions in the number and size of bands continued. The World War II division band of 56 players (Table 6, 1944) replaced as many as ten regimental bands; the division or post band of the 1980s was a 40-piece multipurpose musical unit (Table 6, 1986). Following reorganization in 1994, Canada maintained four Regular Force Professional Brass & Reed bands (Table 6, 1994) The special bands of the US armed services and the service academies (such as the US Army Band and the US Military Academy Band) may have more than 140 players, choristers and support personnel, and remain the country's leading professional wind ensembles. Community bands enjoyed a revival at the end of the 20th century and some of the 2000 and more adult bands in the USA have achieved a professional level of playing. Many bands have been in existence for more than a century, and some famous names of the past have been revived: the 26th North Carolina and 1st Wisconsin Brigade bands were resurrected in the early 1960s for the Civil War Centennial, and the 3rd and 4th Continental Artillery bands for the Bicentennial in 1976. The American Band of Providence and the Great Western Band of St Paul are only two of the many bands that have taken on new life, and are again entertaining the citizens of their communities in the traditional manner.
Band (i), §III: Mixed wind bands
Outside the major centres, music in the 19th century was provided to a great extent by local bands, who played an important role in the dissemination of music of all kinds. Besides marches, much of the repertory of both military and civic bands throughout the century consisted of arrangements or transcriptions of overtures, symphonies, operas and oratorios by composers including Beethoven, Weber, Rossini, Liszt, Verdi, Tchaikovsky, Brahms and Bruckner. Arias were performed by solo instruments while the remainder of the band took the part of the orchestra (a style of arrangement used also by Harmonie bands of the late 18th century), and each melody was introduced by a cadenza from the instrument about to be heard as a soloist. Composers encouraged the practice of transcription as it helped to disseminate their works: Wagner, for example, appointed Artur Seidel to make wind band arrangements of his latest compositions, and Rossini and Liszt asked bandmasters to arrange their works. Notable works originally composed for band include Mendelssohn's Overture op.24, first written for the spa orchestra at Bad Doberan in 1824 (in 1838 the composer re-set the work for a larger band), Wagner's Trauermusik for the funeral of Weber (1844), Meyerbeer's Fackeltänze (1842–58), Grieg's Trauermarsch zum Andenken an Richard Nordaak (1866, rev. 1878; considered by Goldman to be ‘one of the grandest works composed for band’), Saint-Saëns's march Orient et occident 1869, and Rimsky-Korsakov's Concerto for trombone and military band (1877), Variations for oboe and military band (1878) and Conzertstück for clarinet and military band (1878). In France, celebrations of the anniversary of the Revolution have inspired leading composers to write for the large orchestre d'harmonie. Outstanding works have included Reicha's Musique pour célébrer la mémoire des grandes hommes (?1809–15), Berlioz's Grande symphonie funèbre et triomphale (1840) and Florent Schmitt's Dionysiaques (1914–25). Saint-Saëns, Caplet, Ibert, Auric, Milhaud, Roussel, Koechlin, Honegger, Henry Lazarus, Ida Gotkovsky and Désiré Dondeyne have also contributed such works. A special development in Germany and Austria was music for male choir with wind band: works for this combination were written by Schubert, Weber, Mendelssohn (An die Künstler op.68, 1846), Schumann, Liszt and Bruckner (see W. Suppan, C(i) 1983, and Kinder, C(i) 1995). There were also works in more popular styles such as waltzes and novelty pieces. In 1861 Queen Victoria wrote in her diary: ‘as we approached the Cavalry, they began to play one of dearest Mama's marches, which they did again in marching past.’ The Duchess of Kent was only one of several royal composers of marches.
To meet the growing demand for wind band music specialist publishing houses were founded, including Louis Oertel in Hanover (1861), Bellmann and Thümer in Dresden (1866) and Boosé in London (1845). Their publications began to replace the handwritten music previously used, also helping to standardize the make-up and instrumentation of the bands.
Percy
Grainger's Hill-Song no.2 (1907), Irish Tune from County Derry
(1917) and Lincolnshire Posy (1940), Holst's Suites in E (1909) and F (1911), and Gordon
Jacob's William Byrd Suite (1924) set new standards in original music
for mixed wind band, with Holst, especially, establishing a new idiomatic style
of band writing. Much of the music of this ‘English group’, is marked by the
use of melodic material derived from folk songs or inspired by traditional
music, and pre-Romantic harmonic structures with polyphonic features. There is
a perceptible tendency to give a greater melodic role to the brass instruments,
liberating them from their old roles of supporting the woodwind in tutti
sections and providing fanfare-like flourishes.
The works of the English group were certainly known to Hindemith when he invited composers to write wind band works for the Donaueschingen Festival of 1926. Hindemith composed his Konzertmusik op.41 for this festival and other works included Ernst Pepping's Kleine Serenade, Krenek's Drei lustige Märsche, Ernst Toch's Spiel and Hans Gál's Promenandenmusik. While the tonal language of these works is modern, Hindemith's piece is based on a folk song (Prinz Eugen, der edle Ritter) and those by Toch and Gál achieve a folk-like effect. Hindemith's idea of Gebrauchsmusik (his own term) was not at first successful in central Europe, but the works by Hindemith, Toch and Krenek were taken up in the USA, to where the three composers had emigrated during World War II. After the war these works became popular in Europe as well.
American
commissions for works for wind band were received by Schoenberg (Theme and
Variations, 1943), Hindemith (Symphony in B, 1951) and Krenek (Dream Sequence, 1975).
Other works popular in the USA have included Stravinsky's Symphonies of Wind
Instruments (1920) and Concerto for piano and wind (1924), Martinů's
Concertino for cello and wind ensemble (1924), Weill's Concerto for violin and
wind band (1924) and Milhaud's Suite française (1944).
After World War II American influence made itself felt in Europe in scoring and instrumentation, in serious and light music. The pioneering achievements of Grainger, Holst and Hindemith might thus be said to have returned to Europe by way of the USA. Composers have included Franz Kinzl, Herbert König, Armin Suppan, Sepp Tanzer and Sepp Thaler in Austria; Jacqueline Fonteyn and André Waignein in Belgium; Désiré Dondeyne, Ida Gotkovsky and Serge Lancen in France; Paul Kühmstedt, Edmund Löffler, Albert Loritz, Ernest Majo, Hans Mielenz, Gerbert Mutter, Hermann Regner, Peter Seeger and Willy Schneider in Germany; Adrian Cruft, Joseph Horovitz, Paul Patterson, Philip Wilby and Guy Woolfenden in Great Britain; Jean Balissat, Arpad Balázs, László Dubrovay, Frigyes Hidas, Kamilló Lendvay and Iván Patachich in Hungary; Masaru Kawasaki, Kiyoshige Koyama and Toshiro Mayuzumi in Japan; Hank Badings, Gerard Boedijn, Henk van Lijnschooten, Johan de Meij, Jan van der Roost and Kes Vlak in the Netherlands; Juan Vincente Mas Quiles in Spain; Zdenek Jonák, Jindřich Paveček and Evzen Zámecnîk in Slovakia and the Czech Republic; Georgy Salnikov in Russia; and Albert Benz, Robert Blum, Jean Daetwyler, Albert Haeberling, Paul Huber, Stephan Jaeggi and Franz Königshofer in Switzerland.
3. The British brass band movement.
The brass band is an ensemble usually made up exclusively of brass instruments. In Britain the term signifies a specific genre which can be explained in terms of its history, instrumentation, repertory and performance idiom. This British model has been imitated in various parts of the world. A looser usage refers to any ensemble made up primarily of brass instruments, but the term is not synonymous with other commonly used terms such as ‘brass quintet’ or ‘brass ensemble’. Almost always this looser meaning also signifies music making that is amateur and linked with vernacular traditions. So, taking both meanings, it can be said that there are brass bands throughout the world, including many in non-Western countries and cultures. Because all brass bands use valved instruments it follows that none originate – in their present form – earlier than the 19th century.
Though
cavalry regiments in the 18th century occasionally employed a band of woodwind
and horns, they did not forsake the traditional corps of trumpets and
kettledrums, which has survived in many countries to this day. It also formed
the nucleus of the true cavalry band, instituted in France under Napoleon but
cultivated with greater enthusiasm in Germany and Austria. Natural trumpets in
E dominated this Trompetenmusik,
but the introduction of trombone or serpent supplied a diatonic bass and horns
enriched the middle range. The Keyed bugle, patented by the Bandmaster of the Cavan
Militia, Joseph Haliday, supplied a much-needed brass melody instrument; it
became a virtuoso instrument in its own right and was favoured especially in
the USA.
Stölzel's
valve trumpets and valved Tenorhorn and Basshorn were regarded
specifically as cavalry instruments in Prussia. Under Wilhelm Wieprecht the
cavalry band grew into the type of combination illustrated in ex.4: the cornet in B (‘Cornett in B’) is the Berlin type, almost
indistinguishable from the flugelhorn, and ‘piccolo cornet’ is the smaller
size; the cornet in E
(‘Cornett in Es’) is the bell-to-front alto horn and the euphonium (Tenorbass)
is pitched a 4th lower; the trumpets (Trombe), the heart of the band,
are all valved; and the basses would have consisted of the new Moritz tubas.
Cavalry bands elsewhere varied the pattern: in Austria, Italy and France trumpets were of special importance (a typical French cavalry band of the First Empire had 16 trumpets, six horns, three trombones and kettledrums); in England the cavalry band was constituted like that of the infantry.
Brass bands, in the form by which they are recognized today, originated in the Victorian period. Some writers have sought to establish a continuous link between them and earlier types of communal, instrumental music making such as waits and church choir bands, but such links are tenuous. Though brass bands existed in Britain from at least the 1830s, most of these very early bands were private or professional. The earliest and most celebrated private brass band is probably the Cyfarthfa Band, which was founded in Merthyr Tydfil, South Wales, by the industrialist R.T. Crawshay, in 1838. Amateur, working-class brass bands became popular from the 1840s. The greater availability of piston-valve instruments was an important factor, and the acquisition of the British franchise for Adolphe Sax's design of instruments by the Distin family in 1844 may have been particularly influential in this respect. Valved instruments were easier to play than keyed instruments, and because of economies gained through the scale of production, the availability of hire-purchase schemes, and other favourable economic circumstances, they were affordable to sectors of the population that would previously have been unable to buy sophisticated musical instruments. By the middle of the century many working-class British people had, for the first time, a modest quantity of free time and some disposable income. They were encouraged to engage in music making activities, which were perceived by their social superiors as respectable, rational recreations.
Brass bands were founded in a number of different ways. Some were the recipients of direct industrial sponsorship, as was the Black Dyke Mills Band which was established in Queenshead (now Queensbury), Yorkshire, in 1855 by the textile manufacturer John Foster. Others were formed by public subscription or through an affiliation with a working-class organization, such as a mechanics' institute. From 1859 several bands became attached to the Volunteer Movement, but most of these associations were pragmatic rather than patriotic and were seldom permanent.
By the end of the 19th century most brass bands aspired to a single format and style. Magazines such as The British Bandsman (founded in 1887 and still the main specialist periodical) disseminated common musical values, and by this time the term ‘brass band movement’ was widely used. However, it was the proliferation of contests – the central, identifying feature of the movement – that was the most influential element in raising standards and creating a common idiom.
Contests
of the modern type originated in the 1840s as professional entertainment
promotions. The composer and entrepreneur Enderby Jackson is credited with
being the most important figure in establishing these events. An ‘Open’ contest
was held at the Belle Vue Gardens, Manchester, from 1853 and many national,
regional and local contests developed. It was the instrumental line-ups
favoured by the three most successful contest band conductors of the 19th
century – John Gladney, Alexander Owen and Edwin Swift – that led to the
adoption of a standard instrumental line-up which is still used today: soprano
cornet in E, four solo
or 1st cornets, repiano cornet, two 2nd cornets, two 3rd cornets, all in B; 1st, 2nd and 3rd tenor
horns in E; 1st and
2nd baritones in B;
1st and 2nd euphoniums in B; 1st and 2nd tenor trombones; bass trombone; two
basses in E and two
basses in B.
Percussion instruments have frequently been used in concerts and for marching
but their use in contests has not always been permitted.
From the late 19th century a printed repertory for this instrumentation replaced local, bespoke arrangements made by bandmasters, and the simple, printed music which had been available as subscription ‘journals’ from the late 1830s. Arrangements and transcriptions have always been a central feature of brass band repertory but many original pieces have been written too. However, very few original works for brass band were written in the 19th century. The earliest surviving substantial work is probably Joseph Parry's Tydfil Overture (c1879), written for the Cyfarthfa Band, but other less ambitious pieces such as Enderby Jackson's Yorkshire Waltzes (1856) also survive. In the 20th century composers such as Elgar, Holst, Howells, Vaughan Williams, Bantock, Birtwistle and Henze have written for the brass band, but other more specialist composers such as Percy Fletcher, Cyril Jenkins, Eric Ball, Denis Wright, Gilbert Vinter and Edward Gregson have provided the central core of the repertory. Most of the major works for brass bands have either originated as, or become, test-pieces for national contests.
Though brass bands have been particularly strong in the north of England they are found throughout Britain and many receive commercial sponsorship. The most influential figure in the brass band movement in the 20th century was probably Harry Mortimer, a member of a dynasty of brass band musicians, who became a brilliant cornet soloist and an orchestral trumpeter before taking responsibility for the broadcasting of brass bands for the BBC. For the same reason that brass bands were popular with working-class people in the 19th century – the robustness and cheapness of the instruments, the ease with which they could be learned, the fact that when played together they easily produce a homogenous sonority – they have remained a popular and valuable form of music making in schools.
Since the earliest days of its foundation the Salvation Army has used brass bands. The Fry family from Salisbury formed the first Salvationist band in 1878, and since then Salvation Army bands have been formed throughout the world. For almost a century the Salvation Army produced its own instruments and music, but in the mid-1960s the instrument-manufacturing operation was wound up. At that time Salvationist bands, along with brass bands in general, relinquished the characteristic sharp pitch in favour of the standard a' = 440.
The high point of the brass band movement, as far as the number of bands and players is concerned, came in the late 19th century. But most of the major developments in the repertory have occurred since then. Despite the many alternative attractions posed by the 20th-century leisure industry, brass bands have retained an important and distinctive place in British musical life. In the 19th century they were an important agency for disseminating instrumental art music to working-class people. In the 20th they have tended to occupy a position somewhere between art and popular music, and some music colleges have incorporated brass band studies into their curricula. Contesting remains a fundamental part of their ethos and many of their musical values and practices are exclusive. It is likely that the vast majority of British professional orchestral brass players in the 20th century had their musical origins in brass bands.
In the early 1830s many American bands, among them Thomas Dodworth's City Band of New York (later the Dodworth Band), the Boston Brass Band and the Providence Brass Band, changed to all-brass instrumentation. Such bands included keyed and valved instruments, posthorns, bugles, trombones and ophicleides. Over the next two decades manufacturers such as Thomas D. Paine, John F. Stratton, Isaac Fiske, Samuel Graves, J. Lathrop Allen and E.G. Wright produced a family of conical-bore valved bugles with deep-cupped mouthpieces similar to those developed by Sax in Paris; the new design permitted ease of execution and accurate intonation, and produced an even, mellow timbre throughout the range. This homogeneous brass family soon supplanted mixed woodwind and heterogeneous brass groups. The change to all-brass instrumentation was so swift and complete that by 1856 the editor of Dwight's Journal of Music complained that ‘all is brass now-a-days – nothing but brass’. The terms used to denote the new instruments were loosely applied; bands using them were called cornet, saxhorn or brass bands. Besides bell-front and bell-upward instruments, a valved over-the shoulder family was developed. Allen Dodworth claimed that these instruments were first introduced by his family in 1838; he explained that they were intended for military bands ‘as they throw all the tone to those who are marching to it’, but for general purposes those with their bells upward were ‘most convenient’. He also advised that ‘care should be taken to have all the bells one way’.
After the reduction of US Army infantry bands to ten privates and a chief musician in 1832 these bands became all-brass. In 1845 the regulations authorized an increase to 16 musicians, and since most civilian bands were associated with militia organizations patterned on army models, this change had a significant impact on the size of these bands as well.
Brass bands flourished in the 1850s: one writer estimated there were some 3000 bands with more than 60,000 members in existence in the years preceding the Civil War (Felts, C(ii)1966–7). While musicianship in amateur groups varied widely, many professional bands performed at the highest level. The Salem (Massachusetts) Brass Band, led in the 1850s by Kendall and later by Patrick S. Gilmore, the Boston Brass Band, led by Eben Flagg (fig.10), and the American Brass Band in Providence led by Joseph C. Greene, were highly reputed. Russel Munger's Great Western Band of St Paul and Christopher Bach's Band of Milwaukee were well known among the many bands organized in the newly settled Midwestern states.
Little
printed band music from this period is extant; most bands played from
manuscript copies. Published piano music frequently included the statement ‘as
performed by [some famous band]’ to increase sales, and often a note stating
that parts for military band – presumably manuscript – were available from the
publisher. In 1844 Elias Howe added several brass band arrangements to his
collection of dances and other light numbers. In 1846 E.K. Eaton published Twelve
Pieces of Harmony for Military Brass Bands, an excellent compilation for
17-piece ensemble that demanded advanced technical facility not only from the
player of the high E
bugle but from the entire group (for instrumentation, see Table 6 above, 1846). To meet the ‘increasing
demand for such a work, caused by the rapid advancement of the brass bands of
our country’, Allen Dodworth published his Brass Band School in 1853.
Besides the rudiments of music, he provided fingering charts, advice on
rehearsing and choosing an instrument, and military regulations, tactics and
camp duties; he also included 11 popular airs and marches arranged for a band
of 12 players, with drums and cymbals (ex.5). The music may be played by
as few as six, or, with doubling, as many as 21. In 1854 G.W.E. Friederich
published his Brass Band Journal, a collection of 24 pieces with similar
instrumentation, and in 1859 W.C. Peters & Sons published Peters'
Sax-Horn Journal. These collections consisted principally of patriotic
songs, popular airs, arrangements of songs by Stephen C. Foster, operatic
excerpts, waltzes, polkas, schottisches and marches. The music was intended for
a large audience and was therefore not technically difficult. The better
professional bands relied on extensive manuscript collections.
At the beginning of the Civil War, infantry regiments were authorized to have bands of 26 musicians (18 for cavalry regiments), but in 1862 in the intersets of economy regimental bands were abolished and brigade bands of 16 musicians authorized. Enforcing regulations in so large an army was difficult, and some regimental, militia and post bands continued to serve until the end of the war. The band of the 107th US Colored Infantry (fig.11), typical in size and instrumentation of the many brigade bands in service, was a regimental unit.
Civilian brass bands proliferated after the Civil War. At a time when there were few orchestras, a band was seen as a status symbol: ‘it is a fact not to be denied that the existence of a good brass band in any town or community is at once an indication of enterprise among its people, and an evidence that a certain spirit of taste and refinement pervades the masses’ (Patton, D(i)1875). Some Indian brass bands were formed in British Columbia in the 1880s and 90s. In the USA, however, except for Salvation Army bands, the brass band period gradually drew to a close with the coming of Patrick S. Gilmore who, with the standards and instrumentation set by his mixed wind band, inspired other bands throughout the country to reintroduce the woodwind instruments (see §III, 4, above).
In 1982 Perry Watson spearheaded a movement to introduce British brass bands into North America. The North American Brass Band Association (NABBA) was formed in 1983 to ‘foster, promote, and otherwise encourage the establishment, growth, and development of amateur and professional British-style brass bands throughout the United States and Canada’. The NABBA holds yearly graded competitions (Youth through advanced Championship level). In 1996 there were more than 70 member bands in the USA and Canada and more than 1400 individual members. The NABBA publishes a journal-newsletter, Brass Band Bridge. Some contemporary American composers who have written for the British brass band are James Curnow, Bruce Broughton, Joseph Turrin and Stephen Bulla.
The British brass band idiom is imitated most strongly in those parts of the world, such as Australasia, where British colonization was strong in the 19th century. Many European countries have brass band traditions, and some have cloned the British model. In general, the instrumentation of other European bands is not predictable; they are sometimes less serious in their quest for virtuosity, less motivated by a contesting ethos, and individual bands tend to relate more to their own communities than to a broad national movement as in Britain. This does not, however, mean that these traditions are less robust, or less important in the musical life of their countries. Brass bands in central Europe, particularly Bulgaria, are extremely strong and well organized, and their repertories often expose strong ties with other forms of vernacular music. The brass bands of some Scandinavian countries have a strong tradition. This is especially true in Finland, where the form known as Torviseitsikko can be reliably traced to the 1870s. Torviseitsikko is, in its classic form, a brass septet made up of three cornets, tenor horn, baritone, euphonium and tuba.
In many countries brass bands have tended to reflect an alchemy of vernacular traditions and aspects of the received art music values imported with colonizing powers. In several Asian, African and Pacific regions instrumental line-ups are often similar to those of British bands, and marches, transcriptions and other music from the Western repertory may be performed. But Western playing styles are not always imitated. Often these bands have developed their own distinctive sound-aesthetic, and some include percussion instruments to provide accompanying rhythmic figurations that owe more to local traditions and customs than to a colonial inheritance. Brass bands are particularly popular in South Asia, though many of these include clarinets and saxophones. Indian bands – sometimes known locally as ‘band parties’ – are owned and run by entrepreneurs called māliks. They are employed for various functions, particularly weddings, and it has been estimated that there are 500,000–800,000 people in India involved in such bands. Here, as in other parts of the world, the use of Western brass instruments does not obscure more indigenous musical traditions and functions. Repertory in South Asia is almost entirely indigenous, often deriving from film music (see India, §VIII, 1(v)).
Each successive style of jazz has produced its own characteristic instrumental formations to suit its musical demands. Hence there is no such thing as a standard jazz band, but rather a historical chain of different combinations with certain classical groupings emerging as paramount. However different their instrumentation, all these groupings have one common principle: the distinction between the rhythm section (consisting of piano, drums, bass and optional guitar or banjo), and the melody section (including not only the brass and reed instruments, but also the vibraphone, electric guitar, etc.). Despite the many changes in instrumentation over the years, and although the capability of ‘rhythm’ players to improvise full-scale solos has increased, this basic distinction between rhythm and melody sections is still valid. Since about 1935 a distinction has also been made between a ‘combo’ and a ‘band’. A combo is a small formation of up to seven or eight players (though usually no more than five), whereas the term ‘band’ is generally reserved for larger groups. (For further discussion and illustration, see Jazz.
Recent research has discovered many regional variants and corresponding differences of instrumentation in early jazz. Jazz instrumentation was to a large extent dependent on the social circumstances surrounding the performance: violins might be appropriate for the indoor, social occasions of the white or Creole middle classes, but not for outdoor funerals or cane-cutting contests, where black brass bands predominated. By 1917, however, when the first jazz recordings were issued, white New Orleans musicians had settled on a certain standard combination consisting of three melody instruments (trumpet or cornet, clarinet and trombone) and two rhythm instruments (piano and drums). This combination was chosen by the first recorded jazz group, the Original Dixieland Jazz Band; their extraordinary popular success spawned an enormous number of imitators throughout the world, known collectively as ‘The Fives’. However, early photographs and recordings of black New Orleans groups sometimes reveal quite different forces: King Oliver’s 1923 recordings added a banjo and second cornet to the five-man Dixieland group; Louis Armstrong’s Hot Fives of 1925 dispensed entirely with drums; and ‘Jelly Roll’ Morton’s widely varying ensembles of the 1920s almost always included a tuba or double bass. Although Morton sometimes called on as many as ten musicians, the polyphonic basis of New Orleans jazz made a small number of melody instruments of differing timbres desirable, and by the time this style was revived in the late 1930s a six-piece combination consisting of trumpet or cornet, clarinet, trombone, piano, drums and double bass had become standard.
From the mid-1920s to about 1950 the jazz orchestra was continually enlarged. It was necessary to accommodate the many emerging soloists in an ensemble with written, or at least fixed, accompaniment. The number of instrumental combinations attempted were many and varied, but by 1928 both Duke Ellington and Fletcher Henderson in New York had established identical formations consisting of a four-piece rhythm section, three trumpets, two trombones and a multi-instrument reed section of three players, who could double on the clarinet and any member of the saxophone family. Although it had occasionally been used in New Orleans jazz, the saxophone was the most important permanent new addition to the jazz band. It gradually took over the ensemble function of the clarinet, which was reserved for solos or special colouristic effects; by about 1945 the clarinet had become a rarity in big band arrangements and the saxophone the most favoured instrument of younger jazz musicians.
Both the Ellington and Henderson bands clearly divided the melody instruments into brass and reed sections, and this distinction was even more evident in the South-West and Kansas City groups which began to dominate ensemble jazz from the mid-1930s. By 1935 most large jazz bands consisted of 14 players: a four-man rhythm section (with guitar instead of banjo, and double bass instead of the earlier brass or reed bass instruments), a brass section of three trumpets and three trombones, and a four-piece reed section. The instrumental soloists were drawn from the various sections of the band, and some groups regularly featured vocalists. The 14-piece big band has proved remarkably versatile, as is shown, for example, by the wide range of colours produced by the Ellington-Strayhorn groups. During the 1940s, and particularly in Stan Kenton’s ‘progressive’ bands, the numbers were expanded to five trumpets (one a high-note specialist), four trombones and five saxophones. This combination has served as the basis of most big band jazz ever since, as well as the many ‘stage bands’ found in North American high schools and colleges. Variations include the addition of horns and tuba to Claude Thornhill’s band, the use of bass trombone and tuba in Shorty Rogers’s groups and, since the advent of electronic amplification, the appearance of flutes in the ‘reed’ section. The oboe and bassoon, on the other hand, have never been incorporated comfortably into the big band setting; and although string sections appeared regularly in ‘sweet’ dance bands of the 1930s, their use in big bands is generally regarded by jazz musicians as a concession to popular taste.
As swing-band arrangements of the late 1930s became more commercialized and stereotyped it became customary for jazz musicians to perform in smaller group settings. These groups were generally drawn from larger bands: there are many recordings of Count Basie’s sidemen using his celebrated four-piece rhythm section, and similar Ellington sub-groups. Benny Goodman’s first chamber ensemble was a trio of piano, clarinet and drums, to which he later added vibraphone, electric guitar and double bass; and Artie Shaw’s Gramercy Five sometimes featured a harpsichord instead of a piano. One especially enduring combination was the trio of piano, drums and guitar or double bass explored by Nat ‘King’ Cole from 1939; there was also some experimentation with duos, such as the Duke Ellington–Jimmy Blanton partnership in recordings made in 1940.
The bop style developed in the early 1940s from these smaller swing groups; since it was almost entirely an improvised art, there was no need for a large ensemble. Furthermore, the complex rhythmic interaction and harmonic explorations of the players rendered the rhythm guitar obsolete, and it was consequently dropped from the rhythm section, just as the clarinet and trombone largely disappeared from the melody instruments. The classic bop combo consisted of two ‘horns’ (usually trumpet and tenor or alto saxophone) and a rhythm section of piano, double bass and drums; any instrument might be called on to play solos. Innumerable bop and hard bop groups of the 1940s and 1950s followed this arrangement, and it has become the standard vehicle for jazz instruction at conservatories and universities. Attempts by musicians such as Dizzy Gillespie to transfer the bop style to a big band setting were singularly unsuccessful, possibly because a closer rapport between performers is necessary.
While bop relied on a standardized small group, the cool and West Coast styles of jazz thrived on unusual combinations of instruments, for example the various nonets and ‘tentettes’ of Gerry Mulligan, Miles Davis and teddy Charles, the chamber groups of jimmy Giuffre, and Mulligan’s ‘pianoless’ quartets, which consisted of baritone saxophone, bass, drums, and trumpet or valve trombone. Perhaps the most important ‘cool’ arranger for jazz band was Gil Evans, who made full use of symphonic wind instruments such as the piccolo, tuba, bassoon and bass clarinet, and also employed instruments even more unusual to jazz, such as the harp. Evans’s and other cool groups produced music of high artistic value, yet their unusual instrumental combinations were seldom adopted by later musicians.
Free-jazz musicians of the 1960s were largely content to explore further solo possibilities of familiar jazz instruments. In the 1970s and 1980s, however, they systematically expanded jazz instrumentation in several directions at once to include previously untried variants of conventional instruments (e.g. Don Cherry's ‘pocket trumpet’), new inventions or personal adaptations (e.g. Roland Kirk’s ‘stritch’ and ‘manzello’, both modifications of the saxophone) and a vast number of exotic instruments and noise-makers reminiscent of the novelty effects of the 1920s, ranging from kazoos and harmonicas to slide whistles and steer horns. Many of these were employed as much for theatrical effect as for their acoustical properties. At the same time, there was a large influx of instruments from non-American (especially African) cultures, signifying the increasing internationalization of this music. The size of the groups ranged widely from intimate duos to Sun Ra’s twenty-piece ensembles, and a new sub-genre emerged in the saxophone quartet. As a rule, however, free-jazz musicians distinctly avoided electric instruments and electronic distortion, and by the late 1980s they had returned to variants of more familiar combo formats.
New instrumentation was a key feature of the jazz fusion music which arose after 1970, combining elements of jazz and rock. This was apparent in the electronic amplification of the entire ensemble and particularly in the use of electric bass guitar, electric piano or synthesizers, and distortion devices such as wah-wah pedals, fuzz bass and bend bars. Another instance of the influence of rock was the new solo importance accorded to the electric guitar, which supplanted the saxophone to some extent. Additional percussion instruments, especially Latin American instruments such as congas, claves, gourds and berimbaus, were quite frequently added for colouristic effect. The number of players in jazz fusion groups varied widely from the four regular members of Weather Report to the massed rhythm sections in Miles Davis’s groups of the early 1970s, which often called for two electric pianos, two drum kits, electric guitar, electric bass guitar, bass clarinet and much additional percussion to accompany a small number of improvising soloists.
Today all the styles of jazz history are still being avidly cultivated, and with them their characteristic ensembles: the six-piece New Orleans ensemble among amateurs and semi-professionals, the big band at high school and jazz clinics, the bop combo at jazz clubs and concert circuits, and avant-garde groupings in the loft scene and European festivals. The timbral experiments of the 1970s have left a permanent mark on the jazz drum kit and the use of ancillary percussion, and the electric bass guitar and keyboard have replaced their acoustic counterparts in the big band. At the end of the 20th century, although the eclectic and international character of jazz makes the precise constitution of the modern jazz band difficult to define, offshoots of the standard bop combo, divided into two or three melody instruments and rhythm section, are still very much in evidence.
In structural terms, the foremost aim of a rock band's instrumentation is to enable the occupation of four distinct textural layers. These may identified as: the explicit ‘beat’ layer, the harmonic ‘bass’, the ‘tune’ and the harmonic ‘filler’. The first of these is the function of the drums or other unpitched percussion; the second is supplied by the bass guitar (or double bass or, very occasionally, a keyboard instrument); the third may be heard through a solo voice or through a melodic instrument such as a solo guitar, a keyboard, saxophone, violin or flute; while the fourth can be the preserve of one or more guitars or keyboards, sometimes supplemented with or substituted by an orchestration such as a horn or string section, or backing voices. Within this list can be found those instruments which dominate the rock ensemble: electric guitar, electric bass guitar, drum kit and keyboards (organ, piano or synthesizers). Occasionally, an unusual instrument (in a rock context) can help to define a band's sound, e.g. flute (Jethro Tull), violin (early King Crimson), or organ and piano combined (The Band).
As particular band formations have become established they have remained open to appropriation by other bands, often with very different stylistic goals. This article discusses the instruments that are played by members of rock bands and which are the basis of their sound in live performance. Once a band enters a recording studio there is limitless potential for adding the instruments or voices of session musicians who for economic or aesthetic reasons may not travel with the band on tour, or specially created sounds which, until the advent of sequencers, could not be recreated on stage. A live performance by a rock band and the creation of a recording of the same music by the same group may be approached as two completely different art forms (see Pop, §II).
The ways that the early rock and roll bands of the 1950s approached the layering in their instrumentation varied according to the influence of the musical tradition from which each band arose. Thus, Chuck Berry inherited the guitar-dominated line-up of Chicago rhythm and blues (solo voice, one or two amplified guitars, double bass, drums, and occasionally piano), making much use of ‘call and response’ phrases between his voice and his guitar. Fats Domino's New Orleans-rooted style combined a dominant piano (playing a rhythmically articulated ‘filler’) with a sizable horn section (tenor and baritone saxophones, trumpet), bass and drums. Bill Haley's band, the Comets, which came from the jive and western swing traditions, consisted of guitars, saxophone, double bass and drums. Although in this period the individual identities of sidemen were not considered to be particularly important, certain instrumentalists (such as Scotty Moore, Elvis Presley's guitarist) played a crucial role in defining the singer's sound.
The skiffle bands of mid-1950s Britain emphasized the role of the guitar at the expense of the piano, partly out of a desire to imitate the ‘wild’ American rock and rollers, and partly out of a need (for aesthetic as well as economic reasons) for instruments that were both cheap and portable. The line-up of their successor, the ‘beat combo’ (short for ‘combination’; by the 1990s the term was used only derogatively), was formalized in the late 50s by the Shadows as two guitars, electric bass, guitar and drums. The roles of the two guitars were distinct: Bruce Welch played rhythm guitar, largely strumming conventional chord shapes with rhythmic definition, while Hank Marvin played lead, exploiting the instrument's upper register and its ability to sustain sound.
Early rock bands in the 1960s tended to organize their sound either around guitars (e.g. the Rolling Stones and the Beatles) or around keyboards (the Animals), depending on their principal American stylistic models. The difference in technique is crucial to the sound of the band: whereas a keyboard player can perform separable lines simultaneously (fulfilling both ‘filler’ and ‘tune’ functions) and many varieties of chord voicings, the guitar's strengths lie in picking patterns, repeatable chord ‘shapes’ and, following developments in amplification in the mid-60s, in the physical control of feedback by the guitarist as an expressive device. From this period onwards, in styles where the influence of rhythm and blues or soul was prominent, for example in the work of Van Morrison, the keyboard-dominated ensemble was supplemented by two to six ‘horns’ (various combinations of trumpets, saxophones and trombones).
In the early music of the Kinks (1965–6), the role of the rhythm guitar dwindled to the point where it simply provided riffs (very short, repeatable melodic ideas which minimally outline the song's harmonies). In the contemporaneous work of the Who the rhythm guitar was dispensed with altogether and Pete Townshend tended to cover both guitar roles, although he did not play many of the florid solos associated with other virtuoso lead guitarists of the day. Indeed, their song Substitute (1966) is notable in that the ‘guitar solo’ was taken by the bass player, John Entwistle. The use of controlled feedback on the guitar enhanced its power to fill out musical space, such that the Who's practice of using a single guitar, bass and drums was developed by the end of the 60s into the so-called ‘power trio’, defined by bands such as Cream and the Jimi Hendrix Experience, in which one or more of the players also took up the vocal duties. This combination was subsequently employed by the Jam (in the late 1970s) and by Nirvana (in the late 80s), where it connoted a return to the ‘no frills’ raw essentials of music, allied with an aggressive, confrontational aesthetic. The unavailability of overdubbing facilities in live performance meant that some compromises had to be made: on record, Cream's Eric Clapton would often add a rhythm guitar part in addition to playing lead (hence the differences between the studio and live recordings on the album Wheels of Fire, 1969), while Led Zeppelin's bass player John Paul Jones would sometimes move over to the organ in live performance, requiring exceptional power from the drummer John Bonham to cover the lack of the bass layer.
There was a resurgence in the use of the keyboard in rock with the development of Progressive rock (also in the late 60s), with its stylistic references to European art music, too foreign to the blues-based guitar styles of the time. Keyboard players such as Keith Emerson and Rick Wakeman transplanted the visual spectacle of the guitar virtuosos to the keyboard. A concurrent trend was towards using two lead guitars (e.g. Derek and the Dominos, the Allman Brothers Band, and Wishbone Ash); this has survived as an aspect of ‘stadium rock’ (Big Country) and also in heavy metal (Saxon).
In the late 70s, a new guitar-based style flourished: Punk rock. Its nihilistic, audience-disdaining stagecraft was an antidote to the lavish spectacle and huge touring forces employed by groups such as Emerson, Lake and Palmer (who were accompanied on tour by three massive trucks, a revolving drum kit and even an entire orchestra of individually microphoned musicians). The second resurgence of the keyboard was due to the new generation of cheap and portable synthesizers and sequencers of the late 1970s, as bands such as the Human League went on stage with everything except the vocals pre-recorded (i.e. sequenced for live playback). Within the next two decades this approach to performance became dominant in the dance music of the nightclub scene.
One aspect of the use of synthesizers and sequencers, particularly since the invention of MIDI, has been the ability to reproduce during live performance a host of sounds originally created in the recording studio. A line-up of keyboard and guitar can be balanced in different ways: equally (early Yes), with the keyboard dominant (Elvis Costello and the Attractions) or with the guitar dominant (early Deep Purple).
The early 1980s tended to be overrun with bands made up entirely of synthesizers and sequencers (e.g. Depeche Mode, Soft Cell and Ultravox). Against this background, a space was left for a new generation of bands who paraded the ‘authenticity’ of their line-ups to create a sense that their emotional expression was to be trusted. For Bruce Springsteen's seven-piece touring band (including two keyboard players), the song lyrics and Springsteen's emotional intensity were crucial. Bands like U2 or, in the 1990s, the Manic Street Preachers, emphasized the idea that the guitarist is directly, physically in touch with his or her sound-producing source in a way that the synthesizer player is not. A similar desire or perceived need appears to have promoted the occasional return of established artists such as Eric Clapton and Rod Stewart to acoustic-only performances, most famously in MTV's ‘unplugged’ concert series.
Another line of development, exemplified by British ‘indie’ bands such as the Smiths in the early 80s and the Inspiral Carpets later in the decade, reinvestigated the classic guitar-led line-ups and used them in new musical contexts. Bands such as the Stone Roses adopted Hendrix-inspired guitar techniques, and guitar-work was prominent in the various waves of Britpop in the 1990s (The Verve, Oasis, Suede, etc.). The strong sense of recalling the 1960s has also led to a resurgence of the use of analogue keyboards (Pulp uses a Farfisa organ in its line-up) and even small string sections (Catatonia).
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J. Pöschl: Jagdmusik: Kontinuität und Entwicklung in der europäischen Geschichte (Tutzing, 1997)
C. Mandel: A Treatise on the Instrumentation of Military Bands (London, 1859)
A. Kalkbrenner: Wilhelm Wieprecht, Direktor: sein Leben und Wirken nebst einem Auszug seiner Schriften (Berlin, 1882)
A. Kalkbrenner: Die Organisation der Militärmusikchöre aller Länder (Hanover, 1884)
A. Vessella: Studi di strumentazione per banda (Milan, 1897)
H.G. Farmer: Memoires of the Royal Artillery Band (London, 1904)
G. Miller: The Miltary Band (London, 1912)
H.E. Adkins: Treatise on the Military Band (London, 1931, 3/1958)
H.G. Farmer: History of the Royal Artillery Band, 1726–1953 (London, 1954)
R. van Yperen: De Nederlandse militaire muziek (Bussum, 1966)
E. Rameis: Die österreichische Militärmusik von ihren Anfängen bis zum Jahre 1918, ed. E. Brixel (Tutzing, 1976)
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A. Suppan: Repertorium der Märsche für Blasorchester (Tutzing, 1982–90)
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EMC2 (H. Kallman and others)
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A.A. Clappé: The Wind-Band and its Instruments (New York, 1911/R)
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E.F. Goldman: Band Betterment (New York, 1934)
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H. Kallmann: A History of Music in Canada, 1534–1914 (Toronto, 1960/R)
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H.H. Hall: A Johnny Reb Band from Salem: the Pride of Tarheelia (Raleigh, NC, 1963/R)
J. Felts: ‘Some Aspects of the Rise and Development of the Wind Band during the Civil War’, Journal of Band Research, iii/2 (1966–7), 29–33
C. Bryant: And the Band Played On, 1776–1976 (Washington DC, 1975)
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F.J. Cipolla: ‘Annotated Guide for the Study and Performance of Nineteenth Century Band Music in the United States’, Journal of Band Research, xiv/1 (1978–9), 22–40
F.J. Cipolla: ‘A Bibliography of Dissertations Relative to the Study of Bands and Band Music’, Journal of Band Research, xv (1979–80), no.1, pp.1–31; xvi (1980–81) no.1, pp.29–36
K.E. Olson: Music and Musket: Bands and Bandsmen of the American Civil War (Westport, CT, 1981)
R. Garofalo and M. Elrod: A Pictorial History of Civil War Era Musical Instruments & Military Bands (Charleston, WV, 1985)
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K. Kreitner: Discoursing Sweet Music: Town Bands and Community Life in Turn-of-the-Century Pennsylvania (Urbana, IL, 1990)
W.H. Rehrig: The Heritage Encyclopedia of Band Music: Composers and Their Music, ed. P. Bierley (Westerville, OH, 1991–6)
R.F. Camus, ed.: American Wind and Percussian Music (Boston, 1992) [incl. ‘Index to Three Centuries of American Music’]
F. Battisti: 20th Century American Wind Band/Ensemble: History, Development and Literature (Fort Lauderdale, FL, 1995)
R.F. Camus: ‘Die Geschichte der Amerikanischen Blasmusik’, Pannonische Forschungsstelle Oberschützen, vi (1995), 3–114
A. Suppan: ‘Blasmusik-Dissertationen in den USA’, SMH, xxxvi (1995), 181–226
G.F. Patton: A Practial Guide to the Arrangement of Band Music (Leipzig, 1875/R)
A.S. Rose: Talks with Bandsmen: a Popular Handbook for Brass Instrumentalists (London, 1895, rev. 1996 with introduction by A. Myers)
E. Jackson: ‘Origin and Promotion of Brass Band Contests’, MO, xix (1895–6), 392–3, 454–5, 538–9, 673, 814–15; xx (1896–7) (1896–7), 101–3
C.J. Vincent: The Brass Band and How to Write for it (London, 1908)
H.C. Hind: The Brass Band (London, 1934/R)
J.F. Russell and J.H. Elliott: The Brass Band Movement (London, 1936)
F. Wright, ed.: Brass Today (London, 1957)
B. Boon: Play the Music, Play! (London, 1966/R)
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A.R. Taylor: Brass Bands (London, 1979)
C. Bainbridge: Brass Triumphant (London, 1980)
H. Mortimer and A. Lynton: Harry Mortimer on Brass (Sherborne, 1981)
A.R. Taylor: Labour and Love: an Oral History of the Brass Band Movement (London, 1983)
A. Hailstone: The British Bandsman Centenary Book: a Social History of Brass Bands (Baldock, 1987)
D. Russell: Popular Music in England, 1840–1914: a Social History (Manchester, 1987, 2/1997)
G.D. Booth: ‘Brass Bands: Tradition, Change, and the Mass Media in Indian Wedding Music’, EthM, xxxiv (1990), 245–62
T. Herbert, ed.: Bands: the Brass Band Movement in the 19th and 20th Centuries (Milton, Keynes, 1991)
R.B. Flaes: Bewogen koper (Amsterdam, 1993)
K. Karjalainen: Soumalainen torviseitsikko: Historia ja perinteen jatkuminen (Tampere, 1995)
T. Herbert, ed.: The British Brass Band: A Musical and Social History (Oxford, 2000)
E. Howe: First Part of the Musician's Companion (Boston, 1844)
A. Dodworth: Dodworth's Brass Band School (New York, 1853/R)
G.W.E. Friederich: Brass Band Journal (New York, 1853–4) [music; some pts repr. as American Brass Band Journal]
W.C. Peters & Sons: Peters' Sax-Horn Journal (Cincinnati, 1859)
W.J. Schafer and R.B. Allen: Brass Bands and New Orleans Jazz (Baton Rouge, LA, 1977)
J. Newsom: ‘The American Brass Band Movement’, Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress, xxxvi (1979), 114–39
J.P. Watson: Starting a British Band (Grand Rapids, MI, 1984)
R.W. Holz: Heralds of Victory: a History Celebrating the 100th Anniversary of the New York Staff Band & Male Chorus, 1887–1987 (New York, 1986)
P. Watson: The Care and Feeding of a Community British Brass Band (Farmingdale, NY 1986)
M.H. and R.M. Hazen: The Music Men: an Illustrated History of the Brass Bands in America, 1800–1920 (Washington DC, 1987)
N.M. Hosler: The Brass Band Movement in North America: a Survey of Brass Bands in the United States and Canada (diss., Ohio State U., 1992)
A. Lange: Arranging for the Modern Dance Orchestra (New York, 1926)
G. Miller: Glen Miller's Method for Orchestral Arranging (New York, 1943)
L.G. Feather: The Book of Jazz: a Guide to the Entire Field (New York, 1957, 2/1965 as The Book of Jazz from Then till Now: a Guide to the Entire Field)
W. Russo: Composing for the Jazz Orchestra (Chicago, 1961)
W. Russo: Jazz Composition and Orchestration (Chicago, 1968/R)
D. Baker: Arranging and Composing for the Small Ensemble (Chicago, 1970/R)
W. Russo: Workbook for Composing for the Jazz Orchestra (Chicago, 1978)
G. Martin, ed.: Making Music: the Guide to Writing, Performing & Recording (New York, 1983)
A.M. Dauer: Tradition afrikanischer Blasorchester und Entstehung des Jazz (Graz, 1985)
O. Curth: ‘Untersuchungen zu Big Band Arrangements von Thad Jones für das Thad Jones–Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra’, Jazzforschung, xxii (1990), 53–117
M. Michaels and J. Braider: The Billboard Book of Rock Arranging (New York, 1990)
N. York, ed.: The Rock File: Making it in the Music Business (Oxford, 1991)
M. Bayton: Frock Rock: Women Making Popular Music (Oxford, 1999)
For further bibliography see Military music and Signal (i).
