Tag Archives: musical instruments

A Wisconsin band in the Civil War: 1st Brigade Band of Brodhead

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Members of the Brodhead band, with leader E. O. Kimberly at top left.

When the Civil War started, the two sides suddenly required armies, and army regiments needed bands. I have already written about the 26th North Carolina Regiment Band, which grew out of one of the oldest musical institutions in the country. Brodhead, Wisconsin had existed less than a decade before its band joined the war effort. The 1st Brigade Band, as it eventually became known, got off to a rocky start, but earned an excellent reputation by the end of the war. The rapid growth of towns like Brodhead In the decade before the Civil War, railroads spread across the country, … Continue reading →

Adolphe Sax’s marketing campaign for new brass instruments

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Buy classical music

If people know only one thing about Adolphe Sax, it’s that he invented a lot of new instruments in the nineteenth century. Today, the saxophone is the most successful. That basically amounts to an ophicleide (a forerunner of the tuba with keys instead of valves) fitted with a clarinet reed. His redesign of the trombone with six independent valves, first introduced in 1852, was much more radical than any of the new instruments he invented. I’d like to look at at least part of his marketing campaign for that instrument as an illustration of his business methods. The important journal … Continue reading →

Serpent, ophicleide, bombardon: the tuba’s forerunners

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brass instruments

The tuba is the youngest regular member of the orchestra. Quite a bit of orchestral music is older, and it had to depend on one of three other instruments to provide a bass voice for the brass section. The serpent, ophicleide, and bombardon long ago disappeared from public view, but with the rise of historically informed performance, they have returned to concert halls at least occasionally. Serpent Of all brass instruments before the invention of valves in 1815, only the trombone could play a complete chromatic scale. Trombones were among the major instrument groups during the Renaissance. They were made … Continue reading →

The oddest-looking trombones ever, by Adolphe Sax

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Revue et gazette musicale de Paris, 28 April 1872, detail.

Everyone knows what a trombone looks like. Even modern valve trombones maintain the familiar shape of the slide trombone. In the nineteenth-century, however, when instrument designers competed with each others’ various valve configurations, there seemed no reason to keep their creations looking like a slide trombone. The shape of the bore, not the shape into which the tubing is bent, determines what will sound like a trombone. Adolphe Sax introduced many odd-looking valve trombones, none odder than his six independent valve invention.   The very earliest valves did not work especially well, and it took a while to find the … Continue reading →

Musical predictions for the new year

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No, I’m not going to try to make predictions for musical happenings in 2011. It’s much more fun to look at someone else’s predictions from years past and see how they turned out. I just got back from Christmas vacation, and I confess to hunting for something I could type out quickly. This gem of a prediction appears in the January 1, 1895 issue of The Musical Times. One Arthur E. Grimshaw wrote a letter to the editor in response to a concert review the previous month. It seems that the critic had complained that the loud trombones spoiled an … Continue reading →

My online writings on the trombone

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I started writing online at the same time my latest book was in press. Two pieces of advice given to any beginning writer are first to write what you know, and second to write what a lot of people want to read. Nearly all of my academic writings have to do with the trombone, which, alas, is not what a lot of people want to read about. Fortunately I know about plenty of other things, but here are things (besides posts on this blog) that I have written about the trombone. I wrote a four-part series of articles for Factoidz … Continue reading →

A History of the Trombone: It’s here

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my book

Today is the official publication date of my new book. I’m so excited. My copies came in the mail on Saturday. Trombonists, at least, among my readers here may also be excited at the appearance of a new book on the trombone. Unlike my first book, this one is easy to find. It’s on Scarecrow Press’ website.

Classical music for machines

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The attempt to create music mechanically, without human performance, has a long history, dating back to ancient Egyptians and Asians. Leonardo da Vinci and others in the late Renaissance designed sophisticated instruments. Only in the late eighteenth century did composers–including Handel, C.P.E. Bach, Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven venture to compose music especially for mechanical clocks. Museums hold least some of the original clocks with their music, but to my knowledge no recordings have been made. Most of the time, therefore, the only way we get to hear this music is through a transcription for human performance. Here’s a modern clock … Continue reading →

Second thoughts on the ophicleide

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I wrote earlier about the ophicleide mainly to introduce a humorous poem. I later received a stern reprimand from a friend of mine, who objected to my statement that “it does not have a lot of love or respect now.” He wondered how I could possibly justify the statement and  hoped I would write another article after I learned more about it. That friend, Douglas Yeo, deserves more attention to and respect for his comments to me than almost anyone else I know. He is the bass trombonist of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and also plays other instruments such as … Continue reading →

The buccin: a dragon-headed trombone

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In the early nineteenth century, some  French and Belgian instrument makers manufacturered a fanciful adaptation of the trombone known as the buccin. In place of the standard bell section, it had a widely curving tube  ending with a gaudily painted serpent’s or dragon’s head.  The same makers also put monster’s heads on serpents, serpent bassoons, and other precursors of the ophicleide. Judging from the trombone parts in French music during or after the Revolution, the was played loudly, primarily in the lower register.  As the French used a very small-bore trombone, its sound must have been coarse and at times … Continue reading →