Chapter 9
Looking Back and Looking Forward
The scientific study of brass instruments is a research field with a history stretching
back several centuries, and many distinguished physicists, mathematicians and
engineers have contributed to its development. The mathematical basis of our
understanding of the operation of musical wind instruments was established in
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by Marin Mersenne (1635) and Daniel
Bernoulli (1762). In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the great German
physicist Hermann Helmholtz (1877) discussed the nature of the lip valve in brass
instruments, and David James Blaikley (1878), Works Manager for the London
brass instrument manufacturer Boosey & Co., carried out pioneering experiments
on the internal resonances and playing properties of brass instruments. In France,
important experimental and theoretical work on brass instrument acoustics was
published by Henri Bouasse (1929). In the same year, the Acoustical Society of
America was founded; the first volume of its Journal included a brief report of
a scientific study on the sound output of various musical instruments including
trumpet, trombone, french horn and tuba (Sivian et al. 1930, 1931). Since that
time the pace of research on brass instrument acoustics has greatly accelerated; the
present book has tried to give an outline of the major achievements of this work and
an introduction to the current state of knowledge.
There have been two principal motivations for the worldwide research effort in
brass instrument acoustics. One is the intellectual curiosity, shared by musicians
and scientists alike, to understand better the strengths and limitations of the musical
instruments which play such a vital role in our cultural life. The other is the desire
of scientists to be able to offer useful advice and guidance to instrument makers,
performers, teachers and composers based on solid experimental evidence and tested
computational techniques for simulation and synthesis.
This final chapter offers a brief glimpse of two areas in which acoustical understanding and scientific techniques have recently found practical applications in the
design, construction and playing of brass instruments. Section 9.1 describes some
studies which have aided projects aimed at constructing playable reproductions
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
M. Campbell et al., The Science of Brass Instruments, Modern Acoustics and Signal
Processing, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55686-0_9
401
Looking Back and Looking Forward
The scientific study of brass instruments is a research field with a history stretching
back several centuries, and many distinguished physicists, mathematicians and
engineers have contributed to its development. The mathematical basis of our
understanding of the operation of musical wind instruments was established in
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by Marin Mersenne (1635) and Daniel
Bernoulli (1762). In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the great German
physicist Hermann Helmholtz (1877) discussed the nature of the lip valve in brass
instruments, and David James Blaikley (1878), Works Manager for the London
brass instrument manufacturer Boosey & Co., carried out pioneering experiments
on the internal resonances and playing properties of brass instruments. In France,
important experimental and theoretical work on brass instrument acoustics was
published by Henri Bouasse (1929). In the same year, the Acoustical Society of
America was founded; the first volume of its Journal included a brief report of
a scientific study on the sound output of various musical instruments including
trumpet, trombone, french horn and tuba (Sivian et al. 1930, 1931). Since that
time the pace of research on brass instrument acoustics has greatly accelerated; the
present book has tried to give an outline of the major achievements of this work and
an introduction to the current state of knowledge.
There have been two principal motivations for the worldwide research effort in
brass instrument acoustics. One is the intellectual curiosity, shared by musicians
and scientists alike, to understand better the strengths and limitations of the musical
instruments which play such a vital role in our cultural life. The other is the desire
of scientists to be able to offer useful advice and guidance to instrument makers,
performers, teachers and composers based on solid experimental evidence and tested
computational techniques for simulation and synthesis.
This final chapter offers a brief glimpse of two areas in which acoustical understanding and scientific techniques have recently found practical applications in the
design, construction and playing of brass instruments. Section 9.1 describes some
studies which have aided projects aimed at constructing playable reproductions
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
M. Campbell et al., The Science of Brass Instruments, Modern Acoustics and Signal
Processing, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55686-0_9
401