The good old days

It is generally conceded that the use of brass musical instruments has greatly increased in this country during the last ten years. Few persons, however, have any accurate idea of the appalling progress which this terrible vice has made. There is probably not a village in the whole country without its habitual and shameless player on the cornet, while the number of those who are addicted to brass instruments, either openly and to an extent which they call "moderate," or secretly and to a ruinous excess, is estimated by trustworthy statisticians to amount to fully 3 per cent of our entire adult population. In comparison with these figures the prevalence of drunkenness becomes insignificant and opium-eating hardly deserves notice.
Brass Instrument Habit, NYT 7/28/1880 on New York Times site or Scribd

Another worthy read: American Brass Band, NYT 8/25/1880 on NYT site or Scribd

Musician and his instrument pt.3

Boris de Schloezer saw technology as distancing the performer from the musical product. "All those splendid mechanisms, like Theremin’s or Martenot’s apparatus, ...are in a sense negligible, since they are not animated by the thought and will of man ... The development we have seen in the last twenty-five years ... consists in gradually replacing the direct relation between performer and auditor ... by an indirect and somewhat remote relation." (de Schloezer, 1931:3) Although he foresaw the eventual widespread impact of electrical technology on music, de Schloezer also dismissed its ability to contribute to music as an art: "Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as mechanical music ... [M]usic is, and always will be, essentially spiritual ... The ‘mechanization of music’ actually means the increase in the number of intermediaries between producer of music and listener." (de Schloezer, 1931:3)

This view was the exact opposite of Theremin’s, who saw electrical apparatus tapping more directly into the performer’s thoughts and intentions. Clearly, Theremin and de Schloezer were operating under different assumptions. De Schloezer held the view that music and its "humanity" lay in the direct, physical relationship between the player and the sound-producing device. The closer and more immediate the relationship, the better the instrument to express humanity. "Perfection for a musical device means ‘being human’", he claimed. The ideal instrument was, therefore, the human voice- an instrument inherently expressive of the human condition. He did, however, name a second best: "[B]owed instruments are incontestably the finest ... because they are in intimate contact with the human body and respond to its slightest impulses." (de Schloezer, 1931:4) Theremin also saw the ideal instrument as one sensitive to the performer’s actions, but didn’t see the technology as an "intermediary" or distancing apparatus, but a means to remove the physical restrictions of the very interfaces de Schloezer saw as in "intimate contact with the human body". Interestingly, both authors saw the voice as the ultimate expressive instrument, but came to completely opposite conclusions about technology’s ability to emulate its expressiveness. As I hope to demonstrate later, I think that six decades of development have shown that both men were essentially correct in their assessment of the potential and pitfalls of electronic interfaces.
http://www.yorku.ca/beckwith/Rashleigh.html

The Cambridge Companion to Brass Instruments

I am reading The Cambridge Companion to Brass Instruments. I doubt I will read everything, so instead of a full review I'll just make a few points.
It's a collection of essays by different authors on brass-related topics. A majority deals with academic music, with subjects like instrument history (sackbut, keyed trumpets, ophicleide, Baroque/Classical horn etc.), repertoire, brass pedagogy; also several essays on the topics outside of academic music. Of what I read, the essay I liked the least was the one on jazz. Best ones were essays on the rise and fall of cornetto and "Vernacular Brass Traditions".

Cornett(o) is a fascinating instrument; looks much like a recorder with a trumpet mouthpiece. It first rose to prominence in the early 16th century, together with the early trombone (AKA sackbut), and developed in tandem with it; a good amount of music was played by the cornetto/sackbut consorts, and both instruments went into a steep decline after about 200 years of prominence. However, sackbut had a rebirth and second flowering as a trombone we all know and love (or hate), and cornetto disappeared without a trace. The mystery, of course, is - why? Cornetto is claimed to be a difficult instrument, but trombone is, perhaps, even worse. It should also be not that difficult to make; there's a master in UK doing semi-pro level resin replicas for ~$200, so I am sure they could crank out some cheap ones in China...

The other article I liked is about brass bands and "vernacular" brass music around the world - which I much appreciate. The following passage I found particularly interesting:

In Jakarta, bands retaining the name by which Portuguese colonists called them — Tanjidor — play what Ernst Heins has described as "Jakarta-Chinese, and Sundanese gamelan music. .. on the instruments of the European brass band," the effect of which is a "dazzling heterophony, which defies any rule and regulation of European musical theory" This case is a particularly vivid example of a phenomenon that has become widespread in the twentieth century. Any western brass player uninformed of such practices who listens to one of these non-western brass bands could be forgiven for mistaking the sound it makes for a cacophony. In fact the players in such bands are exercising a different set of values. They may be playing western brass instruments, but the musical culture that shapes their terms of reference derives from their own indigenous roots.

A big ethno-music boom is happening nowadays; there is a multitude of small labels that seek out, unearth, or record music in rural Eastern Europe, Nigeria, Colombia, Senegal, Turkey, Thailand, and basically anywhere else, yet it seems that tanjidor is virtually unknown. Most links that turn up on Google are in Malay. There are a few scattered mentions in scholarly ethnomusicological research, but even there the 1975 article by Ernst Heins appears to be the only serious treatment of tanjidor. And the recording evidence is even more scant: I think the disc below is the only thing available. I am yet to hear it, and I really want to.

Musician and his instrument, pt.2

Derek Bailey speaking on the same topic as Glenn Gould in Improvisation, Its Nature and Practice in Music - great book, BTW (long quote behind the jump)

There seem to be two main attitudes to the instrument among improvisors. One is that an instrument is man’s best friend, both a tool and a helper; a collaborator. The other attitude is that an instrument is unnecessary, at worst a liability, intruding between the player and his music.

Crispian Steele-Perkins - Trumpet

A great little book from the leading British exponent of HIP. About half of it is on trumpet history, with chapters on natural trumpet, slide trumpet, keyed bugle, cornetto, valve development etc.etc. - everything but vuvuzela. Great reading for a gear buff. The author performs on them all and even restores and makes replicas of historical instruments.

In chapter 15, "Detailed Preparations", he describes the process of recording Haydn and Hummel trumpet concertos on the keyed trumpet: six months of constant gear tweaking and technique polishing to achieve modern precision and evenness of tone across the register on a baroque instrument. Reading it made me question the whole "authentic performance" concept. I very much doubt that back in 1800s Weidinger or any other contemporary would go through all this trouble; rather, a true authentic performance would have the sour notes, funky intonation, warts and all - especially since there were no microphones to pick up the fine nuances of tone and no recordings for repeated close listening.

Another interesting point:
...the author is anxious to encourage aspiring recitalists to master the techniques of various members of the trumpet family and to alternate between them both in practice and performance so that their audience may enjoy a varied repertoire from different historical periods, and may also appreciate the spectacle as much as the different sounds experienced. (pg.123)

This runs contrary to a lot of folk wisdom I come across - see, for instance, a discussion on hornplayer.net about horn chops ruined by doubling on trombone or trumpet or this entry on the Horn Matters blog. I like playing different instruments and was a little worried about "ruining the embouchure". It definitely feels funny switching from baritone to trumpet directly... I guess the word on the long-term effects of doubling is still out.