vi
Preface
been revived for ‘period instrument’ performance; the commonly used modern
instruments are presented alongside successful models of previous generations. This
material is complementary to the published works on brass instrument history such
as Brass Instruments: Their History and Development (Baines 1976), articles in
The Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments (Libin 2014) and The Cambridge
Encyclopedia of Brass instruments (Herbert et al. 2019) and the many articles in the
Historic Brass Society Journal. A comprehensive bibliography provides references
for readers wishing to pursue particular topics in more depth.
The term ‘Labrosone’ was introduced by the organologist Anthony Baines (1976,
p. 40) and is used for all instruments in which sound is generated by the application
of the player’s lips to the instrument and blowing in such a way that the lips vibrate
and admit an intermittent or fluctuating stream of air into the instrument. The terms
‘lip reed’ and ‘brass instrument’ are commonly used, although as discussed in
Chap. 3 the action of the player’s lip differs somewhat from that of the reeds in
woodwind and free-reed instruments, and although brass is the most commonly
used material, many labrosones are made of other materials. All practically used
labrosones are instruments of tubular construction, and the behaviour of the air
column is intrinsic to their operation. One can postulate other instruments being
excited in the same way, such as a cavity supporting a Helmholtz resonance
vibration mode, but non-tubular air/lip-excited instruments do not seem to have been
developed.
Within the broad field of labrosones, some are what may be called ‘European’
brass instruments made for musical purposes. These include instruments made in
the European tradition on other continents, but not purely signalling instruments
or instruments of folk traditions that have not been to some extent integrated into
the mainstream of art music. The properties of European brass instruments made
for musical purposes are that the instrument is designed to play a range of notes,
typically over one to four octaves; the instrument is designed to allow notes to
be played, which are intended to be ‘in tune’ with the prevailing conventional
framework of pitch standards and temperament; and that the instrument is normally
assigned a nominal pitch (Myers 1994), i.e. is in a key such as B .
By analogy with woodwind instruments, a term that is not normally used in
describing whistles and folk flutes and reed pipes, the instruments satisfying these
criteria may be termed ‘brasswinds’. Brasswinds include all the brass instruments
used in orchestras and bands playing from written music, with the addition of
instruments only occasionally so used, but built with this possibility, e.g. bugles
in B , and alphorns in G . The instruments of the Russian horn band, each designed
to play a single note, can be considered as a group to meet the criteria.
This book aims to explain the science underlying the behaviour of brasswinds.
There will be inevitably some of the many hundreds of kinds of brasswinds past
and present with some degree of established identity which we will not mention;
however, the types most commonly used in music making since the period of the
Renaissance will be treated. Although many of the experimental and theoretical
studies that are described were carried out for the specific case of the trombone, the
basic scientific principles that have emerged from these studies are applicable with
Preface
been revived for ‘period instrument’ performance; the commonly used modern
instruments are presented alongside successful models of previous generations. This
material is complementary to the published works on brass instrument history such
as Brass Instruments: Their History and Development (Baines 1976), articles in
The Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments (Libin 2014) and The Cambridge
Encyclopedia of Brass instruments (Herbert et al. 2019) and the many articles in the
Historic Brass Society Journal. A comprehensive bibliography provides references
for readers wishing to pursue particular topics in more depth.
The term ‘Labrosone’ was introduced by the organologist Anthony Baines (1976,
p. 40) and is used for all instruments in which sound is generated by the application
of the player’s lips to the instrument and blowing in such a way that the lips vibrate
and admit an intermittent or fluctuating stream of air into the instrument. The terms
‘lip reed’ and ‘brass instrument’ are commonly used, although as discussed in
Chap. 3 the action of the player’s lip differs somewhat from that of the reeds in
woodwind and free-reed instruments, and although brass is the most commonly
used material, many labrosones are made of other materials. All practically used
labrosones are instruments of tubular construction, and the behaviour of the air
column is intrinsic to their operation. One can postulate other instruments being
excited in the same way, such as a cavity supporting a Helmholtz resonance
vibration mode, but non-tubular air/lip-excited instruments do not seem to have been
developed.
Within the broad field of labrosones, some are what may be called ‘European’
brass instruments made for musical purposes. These include instruments made in
the European tradition on other continents, but not purely signalling instruments
or instruments of folk traditions that have not been to some extent integrated into
the mainstream of art music. The properties of European brass instruments made
for musical purposes are that the instrument is designed to play a range of notes,
typically over one to four octaves; the instrument is designed to allow notes to
be played, which are intended to be ‘in tune’ with the prevailing conventional
framework of pitch standards and temperament; and that the instrument is normally
assigned a nominal pitch (Myers 1994), i.e. is in a key such as B .
By analogy with woodwind instruments, a term that is not normally used in
describing whistles and folk flutes and reed pipes, the instruments satisfying these
criteria may be termed ‘brasswinds’. Brasswinds include all the brass instruments
used in orchestras and bands playing from written music, with the addition of
instruments only occasionally so used, but built with this possibility, e.g. bugles
in B , and alphorns in G . The instruments of the Russian horn band, each designed
to play a single note, can be considered as a group to meet the criteria.
This book aims to explain the science underlying the behaviour of brasswinds.
There will be inevitably some of the many hundreds of kinds of brasswinds past
and present with some degree of established identity which we will not mention;
however, the types most commonly used in music making since the period of the
Renaissance will be treated. Although many of the experimental and theoretical
studies that are described were carried out for the specific case of the trombone, the
basic scientific principles that have emerged from these studies are applicable with