Brass Instruments

Brass instruments all operate on the same basic principle. They are metal tubes with a cup-shaped mouthpiece into which the player vibrates his or her lips. The metal tube acts as an amplifier and adds harmonic resonance to the vibration, and a note is formed. A full symphony orchestra usually includes about 105 players, playing anything between 18 and 25 instruments. Of these, the brass section typically numbers 14 or 15: four trumpets, five or six french horns, four trombones, and a tuba. This is the basic brass of the orchestra.


Trumpet and B-Flat Cornet

The very earliest trumpets were made from conch shells or animal horns. Bronze trumpets were excavated from the tomb of Tutankhamun, where they had lain silent for more than three thousand years. The brilliant, blazing tone of the trumpet is ideal for fanfares. For thousands of years it has inspired people to battle and struck fear into the hearts of their enemies. For many of those thousands of years, the trumpet was a simple tube, and its range was limited. Changes in pitch were made by adjusting the lips and breath. During late-medieval times, the tube was bent, curved, and looped to make the instrument more manageable. In the seventeenth century, the baroque trumpet evolved as a looped instrument, like the post horn, and holes were bored into the tube. This enables the player to produce more pitches by uncovering the holes and thereby shortening the solid tube, then covering holes to lengthen it. Henry Purcell (1659-1691), Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767), and Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) composed the first substantial music for trumpet and ensemble. Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) wrote fanfares for the trumpet in the third movement of his Symphony No. 9.

Between 1820 and 1850, the trumpet was revolutionized by the introduction of valves and gradually evolved into the modern three-valve instrument. By pressing the valves either singly or in various combinations to shorten or lengthen the tube, and by adjusting of the lips and breath, the modern trumpet is capable of the full chromatic scale and covers about three octaves. The earliest music for the valve trumpet includes the operas William Tell by Gioacchino Rossini (1792-1868) and Rienzi and Lohengrin by Richard Wagner (1813-1883). With its stability of pitch, its agility, and its tonal variety that ranges from the strident to the richly mellow, the modern trumpet leads the brass section as an integral part of the texture of the modern orchestra. But the trumpet also shines as a solo instrument. Maurice André (b. 1933) and Wynton Marsalis (b. 1961) are good examples of successful modern-day trumpet soloists. Today the trumpet plays a major part in jazz, too. Louis Armstrong (1901-1971), Miles Davis (1926-1991), and Clifford Brown (1930-1956) revolutionized the trumpet as a jazz solo instrument.

The B-flat cornet was invented around 1830. Smaller and pitched higher than the trumpet, the cornet is so nimble that many nineteenth century composers, especially in France, began to orchestrate for cornet rather than trumpet. But technical improvements in the trumpet enabled it to achieve ascendancy over its relative. Most trumpeters double on cornet and use the instrument when a score demands agility in the upper registers.

French Horn

The French horn is a tube of about 12 feet in length, coiled into a circular shape and flaring into a wide bell. Like the trumpet, it has three valves, but on the French horn they are mounted laterally as levers in the center of the coil. The valves are usually manipulated with the fingers of the left hand, while the right hand is placed in the bell, enabling subtle variations of tone and changes in pitch. The French horn has a wide range of tone, varying from sweet and mellow to ferocious and braying-a reminder of its early history as a hunting horn.

The small hunting horn developed during the 1650s into a larger and more versatile instrument, and entered the orchestra around 1700. This instrument came with a set of "crooks" of various lengths which enabled the player to play in a variety of keys. The player kept these crooks close when playing and changed them when changing keys. Like the trumpet, the French horn was fitted with valves in the first part of the nineteenth century, making it much easier to play and allowing for a chromatic scale.

The modern French horn is actually made up of two parallel tubes coiled together, and is really two instruments in one: one makes it an F horn, and the other, smaller coil makes it a B-flat horn. This makes it easier for the player to transpose from one key to another. The French horn also has a fourth valve (called the "trigger") which is used to switch between the two sides of the instrument.

The French horn has a large and varied orchestral and chamber repertoire. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Horn Concertos No. 2 and No. 3 display the instrument's wide range of moods, from humorous to melancholy. Ludwig van Beethoven and Johannes Brahms both wrote fine sonatas for French horn. The Blue Danube waltz by Johann Strauss (1825-1899) is a favorite that features the French horn. In Beethoven's Symphony No. 7 and Richard Wagner's Ride of the Valkyrie, the French horns are featured along with other brass instruments. French horn virtuosos include Barry Tuckwell (b. 1931), Alan Civil (1928-1989; featured on the Beatles' For No One), and Arkady Shilkloper (b. 1956).

Trombone

The trombone is the tenor voice of the brass section. It is basically a nine-foot tube of brass curved into an elongated S-shape, with a small bell which flares horizontally at the end of the top section. It has a U-shaped slide that is folded to overlap in the center, and when this is pulled in and out (usually with the right hand, while the left hand supports the instrument), the tube is shortened or lengthened, and the pitch is raised or lowered. The modern trombone is a direct descendant of the medieval sackbut, which also had a slide and resembled the modern instrument in many basic respects. The sackbut however was made out of thicker metal and had a very small bell, which together gave it a very soft, mellow tone. The brass instrument developed in the late seventeenth century and throughout the eighteenth century was largely used in military and town brass bands. One of the earliest compositions featuring the trombone was Mozart's opera, Don Giovanni (1787), where the instrument is used to intense and sinister dramatic effect. Beethoven also explored the dramatic potential of the trombone in his Fifth Symphony.

Nineteenth- and twentieth-century orchestral music uses the trombone for tonal color, filling out the texture of the orchestra, and for colorful, grand, or dramatic moods in the opera orchestra. In jazz and other popular forms the trombone has become a lyrical solo instrument. The movements of the player give the trombone a natural tendency to swing; it is capable of producing easy and relaxed glissandos and a variety of tone in these styles. Kid Ory (1886-1973) was an early pioneer of virtuoso trombone technique, and J.J. Johnson (1924-2001) developed a powerful bebop style of the 1940s and 1950s. Albert Mangelsdorff (b. 1928) and Steve Swell (b. 1954) have taken the instrument into new areas, exploring multiphonics (playing more than one note at a time) and a range of other new timbres.

Tuba, Euphonium, Baritone, and Sousaphone

Tuba is the general name for the newest additions to the orchestral brass-the instrument was patented in Germany in 1835. Tubas are the largest and deepest brass instruments in the orchestra. Structurally they are very large bugles with three or four valves. They are played upright, with the bell pointing upward and the mouthpiece jutting out at the side beneath the bell. Tubas form the bass voices of the brass section.

The euphonium has cone-shaped tubing and a nine-inch bell. It is an upright brass instrument that has tubing as long as that of a trombone. It is a standard low-brass instrument in most concert bands. The baritone horn is like a euphonium in that its tube is also as long as that of a trombone, but it has a cylinder-shaped tube and the bell points to the front. The Concerto for Tuba by Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) is a standard solo for tuba and orchestra.

Orchestral tubas are heavy instruments, and they are hard to hold and play while marching outside for any distance. Since the big bell points upward, it was given the name "raincatcher" when played outdoors. John Philip Sousa (1854-1932), American composer, bandleader, and patriot, solved the problem in the 1890s by inventing a bass brass instrument that wraps around the body with the bell pointing to the front. Fiberglass tubing was developed to make the instrument lighter. The Sousaphone is a well-loved feature of the marching-band landscape.