The classical period saw the rise of the ‘Harmonie’, a small wind band of up to a dozen instruments. Usually this consisted of a mixture of brass and reeds, such as horns, clarinets, oboes and bassoons: Beethoven’s octet op. 103 (1792) is written for two of each of these (the 1796 op. 71 sextet leaves out the oboes). ...
Bagpipe Somewhere, perhaps in Mesopotamia, about 7,000 years ago, a shepherd may well have looked at a goat skin and some hollow bones and had an idea for a new musical instrument: the bagpipe. In the early Christian era, the instrument spread from the Middle East eastward into India and westward to Europe. By the seventeenth ...
Groups of fresh-faced young men singing catchy tunes have been one of the mainstays of commercial pop since The Beatles. In the last two decades, manufactured boy bands such as New Kids On The Block and Take That have ruled the roost. Although their musical legacy bears no comparison to that of The Fab Four’s, the devotion they inspired ...
When The Grateful Dead started attracting a large fan following on the Bay Area concert scene during the late-1960s, courtesy of free-form jams that showcased the band’s fusion of folk, rock, country and blues, it signalled that rock’n’roll was latching onto a tradition of improvization that had long been prevalent in other forms of Western music. This ...
While in the US and several European countries there is a tradition of mixed wind bands, Britain developed bands made up of brass instruments with saxophone and percussion. The repertory of such ensembles tended to be arrangements of dance music, opera overtures and marches. (Twentieth-century British composers have pioneered original music for brass band.) The brass band developed ...
The term ‘woodwind’ refers collectively to the orchestral instruments whose sound is generated by reeds or by passing air across (as opposed to directly into) a mouthpiece: this covers the flute, oboe, clarinet and bassoon. All woodwind instruments sound different pitches in the same way as brass instruments – using enclosed columns of air, based on the principles ...
The flute most familiar to us from its use in orchestral and solo music is more properly known as a ‘transverse’ or ‘side-blown’ flute. The flute family is distinct from the other woodwind instruments in that it does not use a reed to generate sound. Instead, a stream of air striking the edge of an opening in the side of ...
Transverse flutes worldwide, though they vary cosmetically and in size, have few variations on a common design: a parallel-bored tube with blowing aperture and a row of finger holes on the front (and occasionally a thumb hole). Most are made from locally available tubular materials, particularly bamboo. End-blowing means that, in a bamboo or reed flute, ...
Cut a clean end to a length of bamboo, reed or other tube, place it near the mouth and direct a narrow stream of breath at its edge, and with a little practice, a pitched note can be produced. Blow a little harder and that note will jump to a series of ascending harmonics. It is not ...
In East Asia and South America, some end-blown flutes have a feature that requires a different embouchure from neys and kavals. A ‘U’-shaped notch is cut in the rim on the opposite side to the player. It is bevelled on the inside or the outside of the tube to make a thin edge at which the breath is directed. The ...
Whistles, or duct flutes, have a device to channel the player’s breath, so a narrow air stream hits a sharpened edge, causing the necessary turbulence to vibrate the air column without the player using any special embouchure. Usually this duct is created by inserting a block, known as a fipple, into the end of the ...
The first known examples of the recorder date from the Middle Ages. It became hugely popular in the Renaissance and Baroque periods and then, surpassed by the concert flute, it largely fell out of use in the professional arena. At the beginning of the twentieth century, however, it was redesigned by Arnold Dolmetsch and subsequently enjoyed a ...
Unusually among musical instruments, a specific date has been posited for the invention of the clarinet. Johann Christoph Denner of Nuremberg has been claimed as the man who, in 1700, devised and built the first of these instruments. Like all the best stories, however, the history of the clarinet is shrouded in mystery. The instrument attributed ...
At its simplest, a reed-pipe is made by slicing a flap out of a length of hollow reed or cane near the closed end, so that the cut piece springs slightly outwards, still joined to the rest of the reed at one end. How Reeds Work The reed, including the blocked end and section with the flap ...
The saxophone occupies an unusual position in that it is a bespoke instrument that has barely changed since its creation. Although it does not occupy the position in the orchestra its creator had envisaged, Adolphe Sax’s invention has played a central part in music ever since it burst on to the scene in the 1840s. Sax’s father, Charles, ...
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