If Brass Bands were so....

[winston]

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[Chuck(G)]

I'm a fairly frequent visitor to the Library of Congress online "Music for the Nation" collection which covers both the pre-Civil war period and 1870-1885:

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/mussmhtml/mussmhome.html

Check out some of the scores of band music from the 1870-1885 period. Most use fairly standard brass band instrumentation for the period; some substitute an Eb clarinet or piccolo for the Eb soprano cornet, probably for the obvious reason that the little soprano is tiring to play.

Now, have a look at the only Sousa band score in the collection: "Sound Off" from 1885. Very different; there are still the cornets, but also Eb, and 1st, 2nd and 3rd Bb clarinet,1st and 2nd trombones, bassoon, 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th alto horns, tenor and baritone horn, oboe and piccolo. In other words, but for saxophones, pretty much a modern symphonic band. I can find no other march with similar instrumentation in the collection (admittedly I haven't looked at all 238 scores), but I wonder if Sousa was very much part of the evolution toward a sit-down indoor concert band.

Just a thought...

[Tom Holtz]

Gilmore's band was one of the first to include woodwinds in its' instrumentation. Back around the Civil War years, Gilmore began using a piccolo or clarinet here and there for a bit of color, and later expanded the woodwinds to section quantities. His band was the main group on the scene in the 1860's.

The director of the Marine Band at that time was Francis Scala. He brought woodwinds to the Marine Band about the same time Gilmore was adding them to his band. Some French and Italian military band scores of the day, to which Scala modeled much of his own arranging, would have section woodwinds along the lines of Solo Clarinet, Repiano Clarinet, 2nd Clarinet, 3rd Clarinet, etc.

Gilmore, Scala, and the bandleaders of the Civil War era were at the forefront of developing the instrumentation we know today as the concert band. Scala in particular was a key figure in Marine Band history by not only bringing woodwinds into the fold, but building and developing the large concert band that Sousa would take over in 1880. Sousa took the Marine Band to such heights that Scala usually gets left out of the conversation.

As to conical vs. cylindrical, it's common for Sousa's compositions and arrangements to have cornet and trumpet parts, and often with separate parts for baritone and euphonium. I don't know that we prefer cylindrical over conical so much as American tradition leans toward concert band over brass band. Sousa's bands, Marine and civilian, were such a big deal for so long that we're sort of hardwired that way. It's taken this long to get enough distance from the Sousa era for brass bands to make their comeback in the U.S.

[windshieldbug]

the evolution toward a sit-down indoor concert band

My thoughts are projection based. I wonder about the 40's style jazz band and it's impact on American music. One can find LOTS of conical soloists pre-war, cornet and others, but as radio and TV and jazz bands come into vogue, less and less small concert settings in the U.S.. And certainly orchestral brass had very little to do with anything, even coincidentally.

[Chuck(G)]

It's interesting that around the turn of the century, the opinion among many musical commentators was that except for specialized orchestral works, the trumpet would be almost completely displaced by the cornet.

[Ace]

Re Chuck's post above, try this link for Herbert L. Clarke's letter to Eldon Benge.

http://abel.hive.no/trumpet/tpin/clarke-letter.html

[Rick Denney]

Why didn't a stronger (Brass Band) conical migration continue to America and would be more reflected in brass literature and brass choir instrumentation as many of us know and have played?

I don't know how far back the brass band tradition in the UK extends. But the purpose of the brass band is quite different than the concert band developed by Gilmore, Sousa, and others. The latter were looking for symphonic qualities, including something like the tonal variety found in a symphony orchestra. The reason is that they were marketing their music to broad audiences and they wanted ensembles that could play transcriptions of orchestral works convincingly as part of their programs. Their objective was to provide an orchestral sound that was louder, more portable, and more effective outdoors (since most of the towns on the tour schedule did not have concert halls) than a symphony orchestra.

I suspect that the brass band tradition served more in the role of community and company bands right from the start--a tool for building esprit de corps among the locals rather than a directly commercial enterprise. School, and therefore community bands in America seemed to have been influenced by the professional touring bands around the turn of the last century.

Rick "just speculating" Denney

[windshieldbug]

School, and therefore community bands in America seemed to have been influenced by the professional touring bands around the turn of the last century

That may be a point; Is the 'professional touring band' part of the British Brass Tradition at all?