WIND BANDS IN TOWNS, COURTS, AND CHURCHES FROM THE MIDDLE AGES TO THE BAROQUE by David M. Guion

[Dept of PMM Artists & things]

In the middle of the fourteenth century, a new musical institution consisting of trumpets and shawms began to take shape. Scholars of Medieval and Renaissance music refer to these as alta bands. This term is never used to describe bands past about the middle of the sixteenth century, and yet descendants of the alta bands thrived until the middle of the seventeenth century and survived in some places well into the nineteenth century. Trombones rather quickly replaced the trumpets.1 Somewhat later, and much less completely, cornetts replaced the shawms. Bandsmen were expected to play other instruments besides cornetts and trombones. In many places, the other instruments eventually replaced them some time during the seventeenth century. Towns such as Bologna and Leipzig, on the other hand, continued to support what at least nominally remained cornett and trombone ensembles well into the eighteenth century.
Alta bands first appeared in towns. By the end of the fourteenth century, they became conspicuous features in the courts of kings and other nobility. By the middle of the sixteenth century, many churches and monasteries also formed bands.
Historical Development of the Alta Band
Before 1400
"Minstrel" has become the most frequent term that modern writers use to designate professional musicians of the Middle Ages with basically secular training and
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education. In the early Middle Ages, most minstrels were homeless itinerants and had no legal rights, a status that can be traced back to Roman times. At least as early as the thirteenth century, the best minstrels began to have the opportunity to settle down, either as part of a noble household or as a town functionary. They began to organize into guilds or confraternities that attempted to set professional and moral standards.2
The towns appear to have taken the lead in terms of developing resident musical ensembles, but at first, the bands were not formed primarily for musical purposes. Every town of any size in the Middle Ages had a multitude of gates and watchtowers, which were needed to protect its citizens from wars, fires, and intrusions by robber barons. Milan, for example, had 16 gates and 120 towers by the end of the thirteenth century.3 During the day, flags and other visual signals provided adequate communication, but at night they were useless. Signals from a horn or other musical instrument were much more suitable. In England, these night watchmen were known as "waits". This term led to certain occupational names such as Wayt(e), Wait(e), Wate, Gait, Wakeman, etc., names attested in York as early as 1272.4 The sounding of instruments was so important to civic well being that in fourteenth-century Paris, it was forbidden at night to anyone but the watchmen except at weddings.5
Bologna regularly hired a group of trumpeters from 1250 onward, but the combination of trumpets and shawms began to develop in the early fourteenth century. Bruges hired such a group as watchmen as early as 1310. Already, the watchmen were regularly responsible for entertainment in addition to their other duties. They performed for civic festivities in 1310, the first year their existence as a group is recorded, and provided entertainment for a banquet in the castle of the Count of Flanders in 1331.6 Of
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course, at such an early date, the trumpets had no slides, and so they could provide little more than a drone.
Although a few cities like Bruges had civic wind ensembles early in the fourteenth century, it was not until about 1370 that large numbers of other cities began to support their own band. It is one thing for a town to hire musicians for special occasions, and quite another for one to have a stable, permanent band on its payroll. Records in Augsburg, for example, show payments to wind players for various festivities and processions from as early as 1368 (the earliest year for which reasonably complete records are available), but the term "pfeifer der stadt", which indicates an official town band, does not appear until 1388. Accounts begin in Nuremberg in 1377 and include occasional payments to wind players until 1384, when they indicate the formation of official "stat Pfeiffern".7
Among English cities, Exeter supported waits from 1362 and York from 1369. Before that, one Rogerius Wayte was identified in records in York as a piper as early as 1363.8 In Italy, Florence supported a group of ten instrumentalists as early as 1369. By 1390, the civic winds were divided into three groups: the piffari was primarily a musical group, while the trombetti and trombadori had more ceremonial and ritualistic functions.9
Sienna and Lucca also established bands in the late fourteenth century.10 More than two dozen German-speaking municipalities hired at least a two-man ensemble, from major cities like Nuremberg and Augsburg to places like Windesheim, which was hardly more than a village.11
The explosive growth of the number of town bands over the last three decades or so of the fourteenth century is related directly to a rapid development in shawm technique
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that started around 1350. Tielman Ehnen von Wolfhagen's Limburg Chronik (ca. 1360) noted the standards for shawm playing had recently increased dramatically :
The manner of shawm playing, which was previously not so good, has been changed and improved. Thus, one who was considered a good player in this area just five or six years ago doesn't amount to a hill of beans now.12
Archival documents indicate that the earliest shawm ensembles consisted of two shawms of different sizes, but that by the 1380s, a contratenor part was added and, with increasing frequency, played by some kind of trumpet. The limited number of pitches available on the field trumpet rendered it increasingly inadequate to keep up with the new capabilities of the shawm. Not coincidently, it is also the 1380s when city and court scribes began to attempt to differentiate between a signaling trumpet and one with a strictly musical function.13
The various ruling families likewise began to change their mode of patronage in the late fourteenth century. Generations of music-loving nobles had given extravagant gifts to itinerant minstrels. King John II of France supported what may have been the largest chapel at any court in Europe, at a time when secular courts were only beginning to patronize the arts significantly. Even before he became king, records indicate that he supported more than a dozen minstrels as the Duke of Normandy.14 When John made his youngest son Philip the Bold Duke of Burgundy in 1364, Philip already had at least four minstrels, as well as a trumpeter, in his household.15 Philip's band apparently did not include slide trumpets, but the record of his payment to a menestrel de trompette in the entourage of a visiting bishop in 1386 is one of the earliest references to the new
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instrument. The splendor of Burgundian court life caught the attention and imagination of other courts all over Western Europe. Many of the most important developments in music over the course of the fifteenth century can be traced to its influence.
There were no church bands until the sixteenth century. Except for the organ, musical instruments were not used in church at all, with only sporadic exceptions. Writing in about 1270, Egidius of Zamora wrote that the church used only the organ in chants, proses, sequences, and hymns. Other instruments had been thrown out because of abuse by minstrels. He also noted that stirring people to praise God was one function of the trumpet.16 This passages implies that at least a few Spanish churches known to Egidius had experimented with including other instruments besides the organ in worship services (probably including but not necessarily limited to the trumpet) but that the character or behavior of the minstrels that played them was found offensive.
Another introduction of instruments into church services began in the late fourteenth century under the influence of the courts. Pirro has noted are references to instrumental participation during a double princely wedding in Cambrai (1385) and payments to the vocalists and instrumentalists of the chapel of King Charles III of Navarre (1396).17 Philippe de Mezières, a counselor to French King Charles VI, recommended the use of the trumpet during the Elevation of the Host. The context of this comment deserves attention. It comes in a warning to not to spend too much money on frivolities, possibly in contrast to the King’s uncle, the Duke of Burgundy. It is therefore more of a concession than a recommendation to do anything particularly innovative.18
Fifteenth Century
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Over the course of the fifteenth century, wind bands passed from an innovative ensemble to a traditional one. Three was the preferred minimum number, but some smaller towns and courts never had a budget for more than two. Some wealthy towns had as many as five in their band. A duo was most often a shawm and a bombard, less frequently a shawm and a trombone, playing discant and tenor respectively. The standard trio, as described by Tinctoris, consists of a shawm playing discant, a bombard playing tenor, and a trombone playing contratenor.19 Significantly, however, he says that the trombone "often" plays the contratenor. Archival and iconographic evidence shows that an alternative grouping of a shawm and two bombards was sometimes used.
Again, it is important to note that Tinctoris associates the trombone especially, although not exclusively, with the lowest contratenor part. A contratenor part in fifteenth-century counterpoint could be either higher or lower than the tenor. Although a three-part texture predominated in early fifteenth-century polyphony, four-part music became more and more common as the century progressed. It had both a high and a low contratenor. A four-member alta band of shawm on discant, a bombard on the tenor, another bombard on the high contratenor, and a trombone on the low contratenor would be consistent with Tinctoris's description.
Alternatively, a four-member group could have consisted of two shawms, one bombard, and trombone. Given that an alta band was not infrequently required to play all night and that the discant player was expected to provide elaborate ornamentation, having an extra shawmist for an essentially three-part texture has obvious practical benefits. In fact, the Burgundian court band consisted of five players according to archival records, but iconographic evidence from the same court rarely shows more than three.20
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The fifth member of a five-part group was usually another trombonist. Occasionally, records indicate a six-part band, with the last added part being another bombard, but such a large band was rare until the sixteenth century.21 The size of the various bands occasionally increased or decreased. Some towns abolished their bands, but then reinstated them later. These fluctuations in support for bands have nothing to do with changing taste, but rather reflect reactions to changing economic and political conditions.22 The willingness and ability of courts to maintain musical establishments likewise fluctuated, especially among the houses of the lesser nobility, which sometimes disappeared from view after periods of prominence.23
There were a number of other important town bands, including Antwerp, Bruges in Flanders, Bologna. Most of the towns that started to support bands in the fourteenth century continued to do so in the fifteenth century, often increasing the number of musicians they kept on their payroll. Other towns established bands for the first time some time during the fifteenth century, including Constance, Regensburg, and Zürich in German-speaking areas, and Norwich, London, and Chester in England.24
The beginnings of musical literacy among wind instrument players can be traced back to the middle of the fifteenth century. The experience of the Schubinger family is especially well documented. Ulrich Schubinger the elder gained an appointment to the town band in Augsburg in 1457. Eventually, judging from the amount of taxes he paid, he became one of the town’s wealthiest citizens. He left the town band briefly to serve in the court of the Duke of Austria in Innsbruck, but spent the last fifteen years of his life back in Augsburg. Three of his sons, Michel, Augustein, and Ulrich the younger all became widely known and respected wind virtuosos. There is an account of Augustein playing
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cornett along with the singers at a celebration of the Mass in 1501, probably the earliest documented occurrence of a named wind player’s participation in the liturgy. Other records indicate that he also played lute. These two accomplishments indicate that he could read music. It appears most likely that he and his brothers learned that skill from their father.25
Where the towns pioneered the development of wind bands in the fourteenth century, the courts took the lead in the fifteenth century. The Burgundian court under Philip the Good and Charles the Bold enjoyed a sacred music establishment that was second to none, an alta band with few if any rivals, and a good group of soft minstrels, in which the dukes seem to have taken less interest. It was also a major center for the development of the basse danse, the leading court dance of the fifteenth century. The basse danse seems to have achieved its greatest vogue in Burgundy and spread from there to other courts. The accompaniment of this and other dances was one of the most important duties of the loud band.
The contratenor parts in a small number of sacred works by composers in the Burgundian orbit are labeled “trumpet” or something similar.26 On the surface the rubrics appear to mean that a slide trumpet should play the contratenor part while singers perform the others, which would make these pieces the earliest music to combine voices and wind instruments, the earliest church music to include instruments, and the earliest music to specify that a particular instrument should play a particular part. Most scholars reject this idea on a number of grounds.27 No one seems to have any better explanation for the rubric, however. If these are actual slide trumpet parts, it is one Burgundian innovation that did not catch on. Only the lesser composers tried it. The more prominent
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and influential Burgundian composers did not follow, and neither did anyone else for more than a century.
Several notable courts were modeled after the Burgundian example. Maximilian, later Holy Roman Emperor, married the daughter and only child of the last Burgundian duke, Charles the Bold, shortly after the duke was killed in battle. His father, Emperor Frederick III, had a pretty good musical household, including a wind band, but Maximilian must have felt and appeared uneducated, unsophisticated, and inexperienced when he first encountered the Burgundian court. He appears to have sought to imitate the powerful and popular Charles, taking up his patronage of the arts with special enthusiasm. Nominally, the Burgundian musical establishment belonged to his wife, and after her untimely death, to their son Philip the Fair. But it was Maximilian who became responsible for maintaining its quality until Philip came of age and assumed control of it in 1494. This experience shaped the structure of Maximilian’s own musical household once he became emperor in 1493.
Maximilian was excessively concerned with how he would be remembered. To present himself to posterity in the best possible light, he commissioned several biographical works.28 The best known of these is The Triumph of Maximilian, which, among other things, depicts 84 instrumentalists among its famous woodcuts. Although Maximilian's court could not have been nearly as sumptuous as the Triumph and the other autobiographical works suggest, separating truth from fiction has been difficult. Exaggeration and embellishment aside, however, the Triumph clearly shows the importance of the wind band at the Imperial court and in Maximilian’s imagination of it.
Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castille, secretly married in 1469 before
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they ascended their respective thrones, started their reigns without a firm grip on power. Projecting an image of splendor was therefore a very important task, and they chose to model their courts after the Burgundian court, although Isabella’s pious nature caused the two courts to be less exuberant and more austere.
Ferdinand, as heir to the Aragonese throne, established his first musical household in 1462. It included a three-piece wind band. Not much detailed information is available about his musical forces until 1478, when he appointed a five-piece band. In the early 1490s, his band had six or seven members. After 1496, the minimum size of the band was eight except for the years 1502-1504, when it was "only" seven. When Isabella died in 1504, Ferdinand added three members of her wind band to his own, temporarily giving him as many as eleven players, although the number dropped back to eight or nine after 1506. Isabella's alta band had eight players in 1492, although from 1498 until her death she usually had only six. At Ferdinand's death in 1516, all of the members of his loud band continued in royal service under Charles I (later Holy Roman Emperor Charles V).29
Burgundian influence also extended to the Italian peninsula. In 1426, Philip the Good of Burgundy commissioned the manufacture of twelve wind instruments as a gift to Niccolò III d'Este, ruler of Ferrara.30 The first four instruments mentioned were evidently slide trumpets, and it appears that no one in Ferrara knew how to play them. This date seems to be the earliest record of the presence of a slide instrument any place in Italy. The word “trombone” originated in Ferrara to describe it. In 1428, Niccolò succeeded in recruiting a Burgundian minstrel to play it, one of the few minstrels ever to leave the service of the dukes of Burgundy to work for another court. The new instrument, its name, and the ensemble of which it was a part, quickly spread throughout northern Italy.
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Tinctoris, whose description of the alta band was cited earlier, worked in Naples as tutor to the daughter of King Ferrante. The presence of such a band there may also show Burgundian influence. In 1442, Alfonso V of Aragon conquered Naples and moved his court there from Barcelona. Ferrante was his illegitimate son. Before ascending to the Aragonese throne, Alfonso established a musical household in 1413. It included a trompeta dels ministrirs, which term is cognate with trompete des ménéstrels, the early Burgundian term for slide trumpet.31 The Burgundian court was not the first to have such an instrument, but it was certainly its most conspicuous home. Alfonso appears not to have been a genuine music lover, but he certainly wanted to project a splendid image and appears to have been well aware of Burgundy’s reputation and influence.
Sixteenth Century
Bands in towns and courts continued to function throughout the sixteenth century much as they had before. There are several noteworthy developments, however. As noted, the most important bands in the sixteenth century were larger than earlier bands. Earlier bandsmen had relied entirely on their ability to memorize and improvise on the many standard tunes they were expected to play. But if musical literacy among bandsmen was rare at the dawn of the sixteenth century, it was common and expected by about the second quarter of the century.
This ability in turn had several consequences. Churches quickly began to hire the newly literate bandsmen to augment their choirs. Courts began to integrate them with their singers and players of soft instruments to produce courtly entertainments of unprecedented sophistication and extravagance.
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In these new roles, a significant number of players of loud instruments began to earn worldwide fame as virtuoso performers, ensemble leaders, and even composers of both sacred and secular music. By the end of the century, there was a new form of strictly instrumental music, the canzona, although oddly enough, it was developed by organists and violinists; composers who played wind instruments for the most part confined their efforts to vocal music. Even at their most exalted, the wind bands did not have as high a social status as other ensembles. And so those wind players fortunate enough to gain fame and leadership positions sought to keep their wind-playing activities in the background.
Church bands
The fifteenth century saw the increasing practice of kings and other rulers, most conspicuously Francis I of France, insisting on their musical establishment accompanying them everywhere, even to church. On important state occasions, the king’s loud minstrels would participate in worship services—if not during the liturgy itself, then at least to play fanfares to announce the king’s entrance into the church. When Francis met England's Henry VIII at the Field of Cloth of Gold in 1520, the two royal alta bands did participate in the celebration of the mass; the French minstrels even played during the Credo of the liturgy itself.32 As noted earlier, there were also parts of the service with no text, such as the Elevation of the Host, in which musical instruments occasionally participated in the king’s presence even as early as the late fourteenth century.
Eventually, it seemed good to use instruments for special services even when the king was not present. Once that practice became accepted, instruments were hired for
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more ordinary services, both Mass and Vespers. When instruments first began to participate routinely in the liturgy (as opposed to the practices mentioned in the previous paragraph), they functioned much as the organ had already for several generations: the choir would sing a verse in plainchant and the organ would play a paraphrase of the chant for the next verse. As early as the late fifteenth century, it also began to substitute for the choir for certain parts of the Proper.33 There is no reason to suppose that a wind ensemble would have been used any differently.
At some point in the sixteenth century, however, the organ and wind instruments began to accompany the choir rather than alternate with it. An organ book compiled for Santa Maria Maggiore in Bergamo in about 1550 may be among the earliest that could be used as a set of organ (or band) accompaniments for chant as opposed to settings for alternation.34 In churches that first used wind ensembles in worship after they adopted the practice of organ accompaniment, the ensemble probably accompanied the choir from the start. At Vespers, in addition to whatever they did with the choir, the instruments performed canzonas or similar pieces as a substitute for the antiphons that followed the Magnificat or the Psalms.35
At first, churches that used instruments hired the town band or the local court band intermittently for special occasions. By the mid 1510s, the cathedral of Seville was hiring musicians on a fairly regular basis. In 1526, the chapter decided that it would be preferable to hire its own band. This earliest known cathedral band in Europe consisted of three shawms and two trombones.36 It is not clear how long this arrangement lasted. A new cathedral band was formed in Seville in 1553 after several years of hiring freelancers. This band comprised six players: three shawms and three trombones.37
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Books of music were purchased for the minstrels of the Seville cathedral in 1560, and 1580. It was at the request of the minstrels that a book of masses by Guerrero was acquired in 1572. In 1587, the church purchased a book of motets by Victoria with instructions that it be given directly to the choir and not to the minstrels. It appears to have been standard practice--not only in Seville, but elsewhere, for the wind band to receive all new music first, select and copy music for its own use, and then send the original to the singers. The resulting anthology would not only get heavy use by the minstrels, it could also be copied and sold to other bands. Apparently, the books purchased especially for the minstrels were anthologies that had been selected and copied by and for the minstrels at another cathedral.38
The Toledo cathedral signed three instrumental virtuosos (two shawms and a trombone) to twenty-year contracts in 1531, with the instruction that each should choose an assistant. This group of six musicians, along with two organists, were forbidden to perform anywhere else except at cathedral functions. Their attendance was required at nearly every service except during penitential seasons.39
Other Spanish cathedrals that hired wind bands included Jaén (1540), Léon (1544--there was no town band there, so it was necessary to train monks to play the various instruments), Sigüenza (1554), Córdoba (1563), Granada (1563, although attempts had been made to establish a permanent band there as early as 1543), Palencia (1567), Salamanca (by 1570), and Huesca (1570), and others. Some parish churches also had bands; the Valdemoro church owned about a dozen instruments, including a trombone. Most of these bands had four or five players. Valencia's grew to eight players by 1580. The archives in Sigüenza never specify instrumentation. It appears, however that the
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bands were built around the standard instrumentation of shawms and trombones, with each player also able to play other instruments of the same range.40
Although more than a dozen Spanish churches had their own bands by the end of the sixteenth century, Barcelona's cathedral was not among them, yet upon the death of Philip II in 1598, the archives state that minstrels did not play upon the arrival of the city council. That a scribe took the effort to mention and explain the silence of the band suggests that fanfares were the usual practice at the cathedral, even though it was clearly either the court band or freelance musicians who would have had to play them.41 (Barcelona had no town band, either.)
Santa Maria Maggiore in Bergamo appears to be the first Italian church (in 1527) to hire an instrumentalist other than organist, although the significance of the single archival reference is not at all clear. Until more archival research is completed at more Italian towns and courts, it will be impossible to be certain how normal and representative Bergamo was. The first appearance of wind instruments in the records of other churches is considerably later: Capella Giulia in Rome (1546), San Petronio in Bologna (1560), Modena (1562), Padua (1565), and Mantua (1588).42 These dates may indicate a change in performance practice (instruments participating in services for the first time) or merely bookkeeping (churches hiring their own musicians rather than relying on freelance musicians or having performance in church part of the ordinary duties of a town or court band). A document from Cremona suggests that some churches may have tried to obtain the services of the town band for free even late in the century. In 1596, the band demanded payment for their participation. Cathedral authorities grudgingly gave them five scudi to divide and commanded them not to petition for
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payment again.43
The center best known to modern readers is undoubtedly San Marco in Venice, although it appears that Venitian music was not especially appreciated elsewhere in Italy.44 (It was, of course, an enormous influence on such German musicians as Praetorius and Schütz.) The procurators hired cornettist Girolamo Dalla Casa in 1568 to form a wind band. Dalla Casa's band marks the first time San Marco hired its own instrumentalists, but certainly not the first time that instrumentalists had performed there. Even after this permanent band was established, freelance musicians were regularly hired at San Marco until 1614.45
The impetus for forming this band seems to have been the return of Andrea Gabrieli from Munich, where he had worked under Orlando di Lasso. At first, there could have been no more than three or four wind players, paid out of Dalla Cassa's pocket. Cornettist Giovanni Bassano was hired directly by the procurators in 1576, relieving some financial pressure from Dalla Cassa. Thus began a major expansion of the band at San Marco. By 1582, the treasurer had the authority to pay for musicians as needed without getting permission from the procurators. The full time staff now included six players, who were augmented by twenty or more others for special occasions. The presence of the band (as well as the two organists) was expected only for festivals, not for the daily celebration of the Mass, but Venice did not observe the Roman rite, and there were many more festivals there than in other places.46
Under Dalla Casa, the primary function of the instrumental ensemble appears to have been to reinforce the voices or, if necessary, substitute for an absent singer, but it also presented instrumental concerts. In addition to the traditional motets, the ensemble
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could draw on a considerable body of canzonas, ricercares, and other kinds of pieces that Venetian publishers issued with increasing frequency. When Dalla Casa died in 1601, Bassano succeeded him. During the service of these two leaders, the nucleus of the ensemble consisted of cornetts and trombones, but stringed instruments were not absent and must have grown in importance. Upon Bassano's death in 1617, he was succeeded as concert master by violinist Francesco Bonfante, who kept the position until 1661.
In Giovanni Gabrieli's work the Venetian polychoral style reached its pinnacle of compositional virtuosity and emotional range. From his earliest instrumental music, he began to write melodies with an instrumental rather than vocal idiom. Their range and tessitura would be unreasonably difficult for even the best singers, but lie very well for cornettists and trombonists. His later works demand not only agility, but virtuosity from his instrumentalists.47
In Germany, the imperial court provided the impetus for the participation of instruments in the liturgy. The example of Augustein Schubinger, employed by Maximilian and traveling in the entourage of Philip the Fair in the first years of the sixteenth century, has been noted earlier. Instrumental participation in the Mass spread rapidly throughout Germany, but not without opposition. Beginning as early as 1516, Erasmus complained bitterly about both what he considered the disagreeable sound of instruments competing with voices for attention and what seemed like an indefensible expense. Because he complained so vehemently and frequently about it, it is clear that instrumental ensembles were playing in German churches not only for special services, but had become an ordinary practice in at least some of the larger and wealthier ones.48
Following the Reformation, followers of Jean Calvin and Ulrich Zwingli
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abandoned the use of all instruments, including the organ in their services. The musical practice of Lutheran churches, on the other hand, hardly differed from that of the Catholic churches throughout the sixteenth century. Many of them maintained wind bands. In the early seventeenth-century, Heinrich Schütz and his contemporaries began to develop a distinctly Lutheran approach to church music. Up until the Thirty Years War made it economically impossible, much of this music made extensive use of often very large wind bands.
Courtly extravaganzas
The beginnings of the courtly extravaganza predate the sixteenth century. When Constantinople fell to the Turks in 1453, Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy was outraged. He tried to interest the rest of Europe in a new crusade, which he attempted to launch at the so-called Feast of the Pheasant.49 His minstrels, who had long been in evidence at previous banquets were also kept very busy during this most lavish and extravagant feast. The Dukes of Burgundy exemplify the kind of rulers who used their wind bands to display their wealth and military power and thus make a powerful impression on allies and adversaries. There were plenty of others who did not actually have much wealth or military power, but still used a wind band as part of their attempt to project the impression that they did.
The Medici of Florence were in a different position. Their wealth was based on commerce. Unlike most other financiers, they desired to exercise real power rather than work behind the scenes. Republican Florence imposed spoliatory laws to keep any one family from obtaining too much wealth and exercising too much power, so the Medici attempted to take over ruling the city. They were eventually installed as hereditary dukes
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by order of the Emperor Charles V. In order to achieve and maintain that success, they needed to project an image of power and legitimacy on an international stage without benefit of a strong military heritage. A new kind of theatrical music was one of their means of doing so.50
Comedy as a theatrical genre disappeared with the collapse of the Roman Empire, but an interest in old Roman comedies developed in Italy in the last half of the fifteenth century. Soon, modern poets were writing their own new comedies. Musical interludes known as intermedii occurred between the acts. By the end of the sixteenth century, these had grown to fully staged dramas with their own plots. While the Medici were not the only Italian rulers to exploit comedies with intermedii for political purposes, their productions are the best known and most extravagant. The music is still extant for two of these spectacles.51 Enough information survives for several others to make it possible to reconstruct the changing role of musical instruments over the course of the sixteenth century.
At first, instruments were deployed in consorts, that is, unmixed families of instruments, including the traditional wind band of cornetts and trombones as well as consorts of flutes, viols, etc. As the century progressed, organizers of these events began to ignore traditional distinctions between families of instruments and combine individual instruments in novel ways. In the intermedii, members of the cornett and trombone band might be joined with voices, flutes, and viols. Or the cornetts and trombones might take part in combinations that did not include each other. By the end of the century, large ensembles of mixed instruments became common at important courtly functions.
Not everyone appreciated the sound that resulted. Most wind instruments,
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keyboard instruments, and fretted stringed instruments were tuned according to different tuning systems and could not be made to sound in tune with each other without considerable effort.52
Canzonas
The term “canzona” originally referred to instrumental arrangements of French and Flemish chansons (polyphonic partsongs). It is found in both Italian and German sources as early as 1520. 531 By the end of the century, it also referred to original instrumental compositions in the style of a chanson. Although there were canzonas for solo keyboard and lute, the earliest original canzonas were for instrumental ensemble. They began to appear in the 1570s. The earliest seems to be a piece called "La bella: canzone di sonar", which concludes Nicolo Vicentino's fifth book of madrigals (1572). The earliest collection of original ensemble canzonas, Florentino Maschera's Libro primo de canzoni da sonare,appeared in 1582 and proved popular enough to justify a reprint in 1584. Given the traditional importance of the wind band, and the fact that bandsmen had been arranging and distributing arrangements of vocal music for generations, it would be tempting to suppose that the first canzonas were published by and for bandsmen. Maschera, however, was a violinist. Nearly all of the other composers of canzonas were organists.
Because canzonas were primarily composed by church musicians, it seems reasonable to suppose that they were originally intended primarily, if not exclusively, as church music. In fact, by the time Maschera's collection appeared, Venetian publishers
1
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had been issuing collections of sacred music that mention the use of instruments for decades. The full title of the earliest of these, a collection of motets by Gombert published in 1539, proclaims that the music is suitable for performance with or by lyris and tibijs, that is, stringed or wind instruments.54 After about 1562, similar collections appeared frequently.
In 1597, Giovanni Gabrieli’s Sacrae symphoniae became the first printed collection in which instruments were specified to play certain lines. In this collection, most of the instruments are cornetts and trombones, wind band instruments, with the addition of a few stringed instruments. Possibly because so few wind instrumentalists composed instrumental music, however, the violin family soon emerged as the dominant instruments in canzonas as in other instrumental ensemble music. The term “sonata” also supplanted the term “canzona” as the most important designation for such pieces. After 1630, composers rarely specified wind instrumental parts in their sonatas and similar music.
Duties of Bands
As the bands evolved, so did their duties. Professional musicians of the Middle Ages also routinely performed a variety of non-musical tasks. They could be poets, chamber valets, diplomats, or spies at the higher end of the social scale; jugglers, acrobats, or bear wardens at the lower; and watchmen or clock tenders somewhere in the middle.
By the middle of the fifteenth century, the alta band was entrenched in towns and courts all over Europe. The last half of the century saw a tremendous growth in its
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maturity and sophistication. It also saw some increase in the size of some of the bands. Although the three-piece band remained standard, four-piece bands became more numerous, and even larger bands could be found not only in the major courts, but in a few towns such as Nuremburg, Bern, and Cologne.
Bands continued to be important symbolically, quite apart from their musical significance. Visually, as well as sonically, they showed off the splendor and prestige of the court or town they worked for. Much of the visual impact came from their ornate livery, exquisitely tailored and made from the most expensive of fabrics. In the 1490s, in order to protect this visual distinction, many jurisdictions began to pass sumptuary laws, forbidding ordinary citizens from wearing or purchasing the kinds of fabric worn by the nobility--or used for the bandsmen's livery.55
Whenever a ruler paid a state visit to a town, the town paid for a welcoming ceremony, in which both the town and court bands took part. Bruges, frequently visited by the dukes of Burgundy and other dignitaries, took pride in how well it staged such ceremonies and regularly sent spies to rival towns.56 These ceremonies and other state occasions were often commemorated in elaborate festival books. Visits of French King Henry II to Lyon in 1548 and Rouen in 1550, English Queen Elizabeth I's entry into London for her coronation in 1559, and a triumphal entry into Antwerp in 1582 by Duke Francis of Brabant, Anjou, and Berry are but a few of these occasions where the participation of wind bands is well documented both in prose and picture.57
Bands also lent splendor to the aristocracy in towns. Whenever the civic leaders left the palace on official business, the trumpets and the wind band were required to go with them and play music suitable to the occasion and to the dignity of the nobility. By
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the end of the sixteenth century in Bologna, there were 78 ordinary occasions each year when the band was required to go out, including the annual lecture of the city's leading judge at the university. The musicians also had to be prepared to go out on an unscheduled basis whenever they were required. The investiture of a new papal legate and the visits of kings, cardinals, and other similarly exalted dignitaries were met with the most luxurious ceremony, including a procession led by the band and banquets for which the band provided entertainment. The band's presence was also considered crucial for the success and dignity of the horse races that occurred several times a year.58
Watch duty continued to be an important function of loud bands in the fifteenth century. By that time, crude signals from the watchmen were no longer satisfactory. The mounting of the guard had become a public spectacle, and the watchmen were expected to provide music for that and other occasions. In Malines, guards were expected to have both good eyesight and musical ability.59 Enough applicants with the desired attributes greeted every vacancy that towns had to institute a system of juried examinations to select new personnel.60 Keeping a good band was likewise a matter of urgent concern. Bruges, for example, required members of its band to swear an oath not to accept employment from a court or another town for a specified length of time.61
Because the town bands descended from watchmen who signaled from towers, much of their music-making took place from raised areas such as church belfries, the city gates, and balconies on the town hall or in the ballroom. The major occasion for public music making in Bruges was the May Fair, which began on May 3 with the procession of the Holy Blood and continued for two and a half weeks, with a procession nearly every day. On three specified days during the fair, no taxes were charged for buying or selling.
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Needless to say, the town square was especially busy on these days. Minstrels entertained the crowd from the belfry of the town hall. Expenses for the procession peaked around 1390-1410. Thereafter, emphasis gradually shifted to music for listening. The town band began to provide regular public concerts in addition to its participation in the May Fair.
There was, of course, little or no music composed especially for a wind band until the first canzonas were written in the sixteenth century. Before that time, the bands played a variety of dance music and vocal music from popular secular songs to motets. In other words, the instrumental repertoire was the same as the singers' repertoire: any music that was well known and well liked. In the days before bandsmen were musically literate, they would have learned new songs by rote and committed them to memory. In fact, even after they learned to read music, iconographic evidence indicates that they usually performed from memory, with the likely exception of playing in church services. It appears that in the early years they learned a tune and improvised the counterpoint, although they may well also have learned and memorized an entire written composition.62 The ability to extemporize embellishments was highly prized among the general population (and greatly despised among some elements of the nobility and musical scholars). Several books on how to improvise ornaments appeared during the sixteenth century.
As noted earlier, Bruges had its own band much earlier than most towns, but the practice of daily performances by the town band from a raised area eventually spread throughout Europe. It persisted throughout most of the eighteenth century in Bologna and even longer in German towns such as Leipzig.
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Equally important, however, were street-level activities, such as the processions that made up such an important part of middle-class life in towns from at least as early as the middle of the thirteenth-century, throughout the fifteenth century and beyond. Processions could have political significance, such as a welcome to a visiting king, or religious significance, such as the patronal feast of a large church. Bowles describes many civic processions. The most elaborate of all occasions for processions, Corpus Christi, is itself the subject of a separate article.63
In Antwerp, processions were held for all of the usual religious and civic occasions. Several were annual events that included the town's entire ecclesiastical community, its confraternities and guilds, its government, and the town band. One such was held at least from 1324 on Trinity Sunday. Antwerp's Corpus Christi procession was established by 1398. It remained a lavish occasion until 1544, when a town ordinance decreed that it should be converted to a purely devotional procession. The even more splendid procession of Our Lady continued to be conducted with its original lavishness at least as late as 1567.64
By the end of the sixteenth century, the workload was so heavy that a single ensemble could not handle all of it. In Venice and elsewhere, the town added apprentices or other unpaid supernumeraries to its salaried band, which was itself larger than it had been in the beginning. These musicians seldom if ever performed as a single ensemble, however. Instead, they were divided into two identical groups, each of which had a full schedule.
The Decline of the Wind Band Movement
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The wind band as it was known and practiced in the Middle Ages and Renaissance began to decline during the seventeenth century, although important vestiges remained throughout the eighteenth century. There are a number of reasons for the decline of wind bands, including the rise of the string orchestra and the various political, military, and economic disruptions of the century.
Opera was the greatest and most influential innovation of the early seventeenth century. The operatic orchestra, as innovative in its own right as any other aspect of opera, consisted entirely of members of the violin family, with the occasional use of a wind instrument for isolated pieces. Monteverdi's use of a wind band in Orfeo (1607) is exceptional and, comparing operas with the traditional intermedii, old fashioned. Rose contends that Venetian opera used a larger and more varied instrumental ensemble than most musicological literature suggests and that, as late as 1640 it more or less improvised its parts.65 But even so, once any kind of standardization began to take place, the orchestras consisted almost exclusively of violins and continuo, with only the occasional inclusion of a wind instrument on some numbers.
Operatic styles and techniques soon invaded church music. As noted earlier, the first two leaders of the band at San Marco were wind players, but in 1617, leadership of the instrumental ensemble passed to a violinist. Slowly but inexorably, the strings became more important than the winds, first in Italian churches and eventually elsewhere as well.
An outbreak of plague in northern Italy in 1630, the Thirty Years War (1618-1648), which was mostly fought on German soil, and the English civil war of the 1640s all disrupted musical life in those countries. In all cases, once health, peace, and a strong
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economy returned, wind instruments occupied a less important role in music than they had before.
It is France, however, that made the first deliberate and decisive break with the past. From the late fifteenth century, the musical establishment at the French royal court had been divided into the Chapel (for religious music), the Chamber (for secular entertainment), and the Stable (for ceremonial music). The Stable always included a traditional wind band (so traditional, in fact, that it appears that shawms rather than cornetts were used until the reign of Louis XIV), but French towns and churches do not seem to have participated in the wind band tradition at all. While it can simply be assumed that the Stable had a heavy schedule of duties, after the death of Francis I it is difficult to find mention of it in descriptions of the life of the court or even at many of the important state occasions where the Chapel and the Chamber are so prominently described.
The court that Louis XIV established at Versailles was completely different in structure, function, and intent than earlier French royal courts. Among other changes, he reorganized the Stable. By no later than 1670, the older band of shawms and trombones was replaced by a band of oboes and bassoons. The French court had tremendous influence all over Europe, culturally as well as politically and diplomatically. A new French-style oboe band was established at Stuttgart in 1680. Twenty years later, nearly every other German-speaking court as well as the English court had replaced the traditional wind band of cornetts and trombones with the new oboe band. Horns were added to this group early in the eighteenth century, beginning in Bohemia. By the middle of the eighteenth century, the clarinet joined the ensemble, sometimes as a companion to
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the oboe and sometimes as its replacement. So while the rise of the string orchestra in Italy marginalized wind instruments, the rise of the oboe band in France determined which wind instruments would first become the core elements of a symphony orchestra.66
When the English court adopted the new oboe band late in the seventeenth century, English towns and churches quickly abandoned cornetts and trombones. The situation was different in Italian- and German-speaking areas, where there was no centralized court to which towns looked for a model.
While most Italian courts largely abandoned traditional wind bands early in the seventeenth century, the papal court in Rome continued to maintain one into the nineteenth century. Buonani noted its existence in 1722.67 At least three other towns maintained wind bands into the eighteenth century: Naples, Venice, and Bologna.68
Orphanages in both Naples and Venice were renowned training grounds for musicians in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In Naples, the orphans provided music for outdoor festivals and church services, the same kinds of events for which the town band played. Neapolitan archives suffered a devastating loss in the Second World War, so it will never be possible to describe musical life there in as much detail as many other cities. It is clear, however, that the orphanages were still training students on wind band instruments as late as 1746.69
San Marco in Venice had a fairly large band until a hiring freeze was imposed in 1690. By the time the freeze was lifted more than 20 years later, there was no longer any interest in reconstituting the wind band. Most of the newly hired musicians were string players. The last veteran of the wind band in Venice died in 1732.
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In Bologna, there is a long period during which personnel records at San Petronio, the town's leading church, list the musical staff only by name and not by function. In 1614, the last year before the gap, the church supported a wind band. When fuller record keeping resumed in 1658, there were two trombones on the church payroll, but no longer any cornetts. Some time in that interval, there ceased to be an identifiable wind band, and the trombones were incorporated into the church's orchestra.
The town band, on the other hand, nominally continued as a cornett and trombone ensemble until 1779. As late as 1628, the town council seems to have chosen new bandsmen only on the basis of their ability to play cornett or trombone, not having any discernable interest in whatever other musical skills they had. Gradually, however, the ability to play other instruments took on greater importance. By the middle of the eighteenth century, few bandsmen, if any, were not acknowledged experts on at least one other instrument. The town council decided to replace the cornetts and trombones with a French-style oboe band in 1779, and no changes in personnel were required as a result. The town band was abolished in 1797 along with all of the other traditional aristocratic privileges as a consequence of Napoleon's conquest of the Papal States.
Many German towns and churches also continued to maintain traditional wind bands. Leipzig's band is the best known. Leipzig established its town band later than most German towns, in 1479. In 1599, a balcony was added to the tower of the newly renovated town hall, and the band began to play brief concerts, called Abblasen, from there twice a day--once at 10:00 in the morning when the traditional noon break began and again in the evening.
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At the end of the Thirty Years War, Leipzig's band consisted of four senior members, the Stadtpfeifer and a group of three journeymen, the Kunstgeiger. Membership was by audition, usually with the result that new members were accepted as Kunstgeiger and eventually promoted to Stadtpfeifer. Because the trombones and cornetts were associated with important ceremonial functions, and violins with dancing and entertainment, the Stadtpfeifer, as senior members of the group, played the more prestigious wind instruments. The Kunstgeiger played only stringed instruments in public unless they were substituting for a Stadtpfeifer. (It is only within the narrow world of the bandsmen that wind instruments had more prestige than stringed instruments. In musical culture as a whole, the reverse was as true in Leipzig as it was everywhere else in the world.)
According to the statutes of the musicians' guild, these seven men held a legal monopoly not only regarding the daily concerts and other civic ceremonies, but also in providing music for the largest weddings, funerals, and other private events. This monopoly did not prevent other musicians from attempting to cut into the town musicians' livelihood. A significant amount of the primary source material about Leipzig's band (and other German bands) consists of court documents relating to lawsuits involving the town musicians.70 Some cases were the bandsmen's suits against these interlopers, who regardless of their skills and qualifications, were dismissed as Bierfiedler. The Stadtpfeifer also used the courts to maintain their privileges against the Kunstgeiger. But the town musicians were just as often defendants in suits brought by the trumpeter's guild, which objected if town musicians dared to play timpani or if they played their trombones in imitation of trumpet style.71
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The Kantor of Thomaskirche in Leipzig was also the director of all musical activities in town, and therefore the band's immediate supervisor. The town band, supplemented by whatever amateurs and students were available, constituted the church orchestra. Leipzig was home to a number of collegia musica. Bandsmen participated in many of the performances of some of these groups.72
Standards of performance apparently began to deteriorate some time after the beginning of the eighteenth century for a number of reasons. For one thing, town musicians were expected to play too many different instruments. As a footnote in the German edition of Burney's travel diary noted:
The variety of instruments with which an apprentice Kunstpfeiffer is plagued keeps many a musical genius from achieving real excellence on one. When we know that in many parts of Germany the town musicians have the exclusive right of all public music-making, we have found one of the factors which prevent music in Germany, in spite of German abilities, from being everywhere as good as it might be.73
Another problem was that members of the town band enjoyed a lifetime appointment along with their legal privileges, but no pension. They were allowed to send a substitute and receive half the pay for the job, but even that privilege may have seemed a hardship. Therefore, they often kept working long after they were not capable of playing well any more. As diplomatically as possible, Bach wrote to the town council in 1730 that
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Discretion forbids me to speak of their quality and musical knowledge, but it should be mentioned that some of them are emeriti and others are not in as good exercitio as they should be.74
It also appears that the town bandsmen were so intent on heading off competition from outside instrumentalists, who played flute, oboe, bassoon, and horn among wind instruments, that they neglected to maintain their skill on trombone and cornett, which no one else played. And certainly the instruments were not well maintained. Kuhnau, Bach's predecessor in Leipzig, complained in 1704 that the trombones were in such poor condition that they were almost useless. Did the daily Abblasen and occasional cantata performances sound so bad that the bandsmen were no longer welcome to play these instruments in other settings? Such would appear to be the case.
By 1803, two guild members had died and not been replaced. Most of the surviving members were very old and the band no longer functioned well. The city council did not want to give up its musical establishment and control over music in city churches, so they reorganized the band, eliminating any expectation that members would play stringed instruments. A Kunstgeiger named Gottlob Anton Ignatius Maurer was recognized as the most proficient musician. He was designated the leader (Stadtmusicus) and charged with the responsibility of recruiting and training students. As the others died, they were not replaced on the town payroll. Instead, their salary was paid to Maurer, who was responsible for paying the musicians he recruited. Because all of other remaining bandsmen were better at playing wind than stringed instruments, they were henceforth all called Stadtpfeifer. Competent string players were recruited from the Gewandhaus Orchestra, to the immediate improvement of church music.75
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As late as 1828, the Leipzig band still played the ancient Abblasen from the tower three days a week and reported to the Kantor of Thomaskirche to supply music for the city's churches. They also still had a legal monopoly to provide all music for weddings, funerals, balls, and other similar occasions. Leipzig was not unique. Similar monopolies were claimed by town musicians in Hamburg, Speyer, Munich, and probably elsewhere.76 Of the Abblasen, Holmes wrote,
The echo of the first blast of instruments from the flag-stone pavement across the wide market-place soon brings together a musical crowd for half an hour’s enjoyment. The music, after a full overture or two, always concludes with a simple chorale, which, softly breathed from four trombones, produces one of the most delicate combinations I ever heard; and though a great part of the audience vanishes at its commencement, it “fit audience finds, though few.”77
When Maurer died in 1813, the Leipzig city council hired Wilhelm Lebrecht Barth, who seems to have been a good musician, but not a leader that inspired confidence or loyalty. There began to be suggestions that his position should be eliminated. In 1833, when Barth had thirteen musicians in his group, nine of them declared to the city council that they were not being paid enough or given adequate leadership and that they had asked renowned trombone virtuoso Carl Traugott Queisser to be their leader. When the legal wrangling ended some three years later, Barth still had the title of Stadtmusikus, but Queisser was acknowledged as de facto leader of the city's music. He continued in that capacity to everyone's satisfaction until his death in 1846. At that time, Barth still maintained his title, but Queisser's work was continued by flutist Samuel Friedrich August Gebler.78
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At about the same time, one Julius Robert Lopitz decided to defy the monopoly of the city musicians. He supplied musicians for weddings, etc. and ignored the fines that were levied against him. When Barth died in 1849, the council did not appoint a successor. Nevertheless, the guild still continued to battle for its existence (and members still continued to battle with each other) until 1862, when the Saxon national government passed new industrial legislation that effectively pounded the last nail into its coffin.79 Thus ended a particular structure of municipal music that could trace its roots back to the early fourteenth century.
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ENDNOTES
1 The term “trombone” was first applied to what we would now call a slide trumpet. See David M. Guion, "On the Trail of the Medieval Slide Trumpet." Brass Bulletin no. 109 (2000): pp. 90-97; 110 (2000): pp. 46-54.
2 Walter Salmen, "The Social Status of Professional Musicians in the Middle Ages." in The Social Status of the Professional Musician from the Middle Ages to the 19th Century, ed. Walter Salmen (New York: Pendragon, 1983), pp. 25, 27.
3 Edmund A. Bowles, "Tower Musicians in the Middle Ages," Brass Quarterly, 5 (1962): p. 91.
4 Joseph Bridge, "Town Waits and Their Tunes," Procedings of the Musical Association 54 (1927-28): p. 63; Lyndesay G. Langwill, "The Waites: A Short Historical Study," Hinrichsen's Musical Yearbook 7 (1953): p. 171.
5 Bowles, "Tower Music", pp. 92-94.
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6 Reinhard Strohm, Music in Late Medieval Bruges (Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1985), pp. 75-76.
7 Keith Polk, German Instrumental Music of the Late Middle Ages: Players, Patrons, and Performance Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 110.
8 Langwill, "Waites", pp. 171, 181.
9 Keith Polk, "Civic Patronage and Instrumental Ensembles in Renaissance Florence." Augsburger Jahrbuch für Musikwissenschaft, 3 (1986):, p. 53.
10 Bowles, Tower Music, p. 97; Luigi Nerici, Storia della musica in Lucca (Lucca: Gristi, 1879; repr. Bologna: Forni, 1969), p. 183.
11 Polk, German Instrumental Music, p. 109.
12 Keith Polk, "Instrumental Music in the Urban Centers of Renaissance Germany," Early Music History 7 (1987): p. 164.
13 Polk, German Instrumental Music, p. 60.
14 Craig Wright, Music at the Court of Burgundy, 1364-1419: A Documentary History (Henryville, Penn.: Institute of Medieval Music, 1979), pp. 12, 18.
15 Ibid., p. 25.
16 Kenneth Kreitner, "Minstrels in Spanish Churches, 1400-1600," Early Music, 20 (1992): p. 542.
17 Andre Pirro, "Remarques sur l'execution musicale, de la fin du 14e siècle au milieu du 15e siècle," International Musicological Society Congress Report, Liège 1930 (Burnham: Plainsong & Medieval Music Society, 1931), p. 56.
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18 Philippe de Mezières, Le songe du vieil pelerin, ed. G. W. Coopland, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), vol. 2, pp. 26-7, 243.
19 Anthony Baines, "Fifteenth-century Instruments in Tinctoris's De Inventione et Usu Musicae," Galpin Society Journal 3 (1950): pp. 20-21.
20 Polk,German Instrumental Music p. 81.
21 Keith Polk, "Ensemble Music in Flanders--1450-1550," Journal of Band Research 11 (Spring 1975): p. 18.
22 Ibid., pp. 13-14; Polk, "Ensemble Performance in Dufay's Time," in Papers Read at the Dufay Quincentenary Conference, Brooklyn College, December 6-7, 1974, pp. 61-75, ed. Allan W. Atlas (Brooklyn: Dept. of Music, Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, 1976), pp. 64-65.
23 Polk, German Instrumental Music, p. 104.
24 Ibid., p. 109; Langwill, p. 181.
25 See Keith Polk, “Augustein Schubinger and the Zinck: Innovation in Performance Practice,” Historic Brass Society Journal 1 (1989): pp. 83-92, and "The Schubingers of Augsburg: Innovation in Renaissance Instrumental Music." in Quaestiones in musica: Festschrift für Franz Krautworst zum 65. Geburtstag. ed. Friedhelm Brusniak and Horst Leuchtmann, pp. 495-503. Tutzing: Schneider, 1989.
26 These are described in Vivian Safowitz, “Trumpet Music and Trumpet Style in the Early Renaissance,” (M.M. Thesis, University of Illinois, 1965), pp. 112-140 and Heinrich Besseler, "Die Entstehung der Posaune," Acta musicologica 22 (1950): pp. 24 ff.
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27 See, for example, Don L. Smithers, The Music and History of the Baroque Trumpet before 1721. 2nd. ed. (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1988), pp. 43-49.
28 see Louise Cuyler, "Music in Biographies of Emperor Maximilian," in Aspects of Medieval and Renaissance Music ed. Jan LaRue (New York: Norton, 1966): pp. 111-21.
29 Tess Knighton, Music and Musicians at the Court of Fernando of Aragon, 1474-1516 (Ph. D. dissertation: University of Cambridge, 1983), vol. 1 pp. 200-01, 204; vol. 2 pp. 79-100.
30 Jeanne Marix, Histoire de la musique et des musiciens de la cour de Bourgogne sous le règne de Philippe le Bon (1420-1467) (Strasbourg: Heitz, 1939), p. 105.
31 Anglès, Higinio. "La musica en la corte real de Aragón y de Nápoles durante el neinado de Alfonso en Magnànimo,", Hygini Anglés: scripta musicologica ed. Joseph Lopéz-Calo, 3 vols. (Rome: Edizione de Storia e Letteratura, 1975-76), p. 970; "Alfonso V d'Aragona mecenate della musica ed il suo ménestral Jean Boisard,", Ibid., p. 766.
32 Craig Wright, Music and Ceremony at Notre Dame of Paris, 500-1550. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989, pp. 227, 230; Trevor Herbert, The Trombone in Britain before 1800. (Ph.D. dissertation: Open University, 1984), pp. 361-69.
33 Stephen Bonta, "The Uses of Sonata da Chiesa," Journal of the American Musicological Society 22 (1969): p. 83.
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34 Towne, Gary. Gaspar de Albertis and Music at Santa Maria Maggiore in Bergamo in the Sixteenth Century. 2 vols. (Ph. D. dissertation: University of California, Santa Barbara, 1985), pp. 233-35.
35 Bonta, p. 80.
36 Kreitner, p. 536.
37 Robert Stevenson, Spanish Cathedral Music in the Golden Age (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1961), p. 144.
38 Douglas Kirk, Churching the Shawms in Renaissance Spain: "Lerma, Archivo de San Pedro Ms. Mus.1" (Ph.D. dissertation: McGill University, 1993), pp. 6-7.
39 Stevenson, pp. 32, 144.
40 Kirk pp. 8-23.
41 Kreitner, op. cit., p. 537, Kenneth Kreitner, Music and Civic Ceremony in Late Fifteenth-Century Barcelona (Ph.D. dissertation: Duke University, 1990), p. 160.
42 Frank A. D'Accone, "The Performance of Sacred Music in Italy during Josquin's Time, c. 1475-1525". In Josquin des Prez ed. Edward E. Lowinsky, p. 616. (London: Oxford University Press, 1976).
43 Carl Gustav Anthon, Music and Musicians in Northern Italy during the Sixteenth Century (Ph. D. dissertation: Harvard University, 1943), p. 244.
44 Egon Kenton, Life and Works of Giovanni Gabrieli. (n.p.: American Institute of Musicology, 1967), p 101.
45 Eleanor Selfridge-Field, Venetian Instrumental Music from Gabrieli to Vivaldi. 3rd rev. ed. (New York: Dover, 1994), p. 15.
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46 Denis Arnold, Giovanni Gabrieli and the Music of the Venitian High Renaissance. (London: Oxford University Press, 1979), pp. 7, 19-21, 35, 128, 137-38.
47 Ibid., p. 136.
48 Leslie Korrick, “Instrumental Music in the Early 16th-Century Mass: New Evidence.” Early Music 18 (1990): pp. 360, 364.
49 For a description of this extravaganza, see Edmund A. Bowles, "Instruments at the Court of Burgundy (1363-1467)," Galpin Society Journal 6 (1953): pp. 41-43 (but see also Wright, Music at the Court of Burgundy, p. 25, n. 22 for an enumeration of Bowles's errors); for a general overview of music at banquets, see Edmund A. Bowles, "Musical Instruments at the Medieval Banquet," Revue Belge de Musicologie 12 (1958): pp. 41-51.
50 See Anthony M. Cummings, The Politicized Muse: Music for the Medici Festivals, 1512-1537. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992).
51 These are also available in modern editions: Andrew C. Minor and Bonner Mitchell, ed. A Renaissance Entertainment: Festivities for the Marriage of Cosimo I, Duke of Florence in 1539 (Columbia, Mo.: University of Missouri Press, 1968) and D. P. Walker, ed. Les fêtes du mariage de Ferdinand de Médicis et de Christine de Lorraine, Florence 1589: Musique des Intermèdes de "La Pellegrina" (Paris: Centre Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique, 1963).
52 See David M. Guion, “Theories of Tuning and Ensemble Practice in Italian Dramatic Music of the Early Baroque, or, Oh Where, Oh Where Have the Wind Instruments Gone?” Historic Brass Society Journal 12 (2000): pp. 230-243.
53 William S. Newman, The Sonata in the Baroque Era. 3d ed.(New York: Norton, 1972), p. 20.
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54 Stephen Bonta, "The Use of Instruments in Sacred Music in Italy, 1560-1700," Early Music 18 (1990): p. 521.
55 See for example Knighton, pp. 46, 49.
56 Strohm, p. 79-80.
57 Edmund A. Bowles, Musical Ensembles in Festival Books, 1500-1800: An Iconographical & Documentary Survey. (Ann Arbor, Mich.: UMI Research Press, 1988), passim.
58 Osvaldo Gambassi, Il Concerto Palatino della signoria di Bologna: cinque secoli di vita musical a corte (1250-1797) (Florence: Olschki, 1989), pp. 34-36, 58-62.
59 Bowles, "Tower Music", p. 94.
60 See for example Carlo Vitali, "L'esame di assunzione di un musico palatino a Bologna nella prima metà del '600." Il Carrobbio 4 (1978): 417-34.
61 Bowles, "Tower Music", p. 93.
62 For a fuller discussion of composed and improvised polyphony, see Polk, German Instrumental Music, chapters 6-7.
63 see Edmund A. Bowles, "Musical Instruments in Civic Processions during the Middle Ages," Acta musicologica 33 (1961): pp. 147-61; "Musical Instruments in the Medieval Corpus Christi Procession," Journal of the American Musicological Society 17 (1964): pp. 251-60.
64 Kristine K. Forney, "Music, Ritual and Patronage at the Church of Our Lady, Antwerp." Early Music History 7 (1987): pp. 26-27.
65 Gloria Rose, “Agazzari and the Improvising Orchestra”, Journal of the American Musicological Society 18 (1965): pp. 382-93.
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66 David Whitwell. The History and Literature of the Wind Band and Wind Ensemble. vol. 3. The Baroque Wind Band and Wind Ensemble (Northridge, Cal.: Winds, 1983.), pp. 4-11.
67 Filippo Buonani. Gabinetto armonico (Rome: Giorgio Placho, 1722), p. 50; English translation in David M. Guion, The Trombone: Its History and Music, 1697-1811 (New York: Gordon and Breach, 1988), pp. 32-33.
68 For a more detailed account of these bands, see David M. Guion, "The Missing Link: The Trombone in Italy in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries," Early Music 34 (2006): pp. 225-32.
69 Denis Arnold, "Instruments and Instrumental Teaching in the Early Italian Conservatories," Galpin Society Journal 18 (1965), pp. 74, 80.
70 Anneliese Downs, “The Tower Music of a Seventeenth-Century Stadtpfeifer: Johann Pezel's Hora Decima and Fünff-stimmigte blasende Music”. Brass Quarterly 7 (1963): pp. 4-5.
71 Smithers op. cit., pp. 114-16.
72 Don L. Smithers "Bach, Reiche and the Leipzig Collegia Musica" Historic Brass Society Journal 2 (1990): pp. 5-7.
73 Die Mannichfaltigkeit der Instrumente, womit sich die Lehrlinge bey einem Kunstpfeiffer plagen lassen müssen, hält ein manches sehr musikalisches Genie zurück, etwas Vortrefliches auf einem Instrumente zu leisten. Wenn man nun weiß, daß an vielen Orten Deutschlands die Stadtmusikanten zu allen öffentlichen Musiken ein ausschliessendes Privilegium haben: so hat man Eins
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von den Hindernissen gefunden, warum die Musik in Deutschland, bey aller Fähigkeit der Deutschen, nicht überall so gut ist, als sie es seyn könnte.
Carl Burney's der Musik Doctors Tagebuch seiner Musikalischen Reisen v. 3 (Hamburg: Bode, 1773, facs ed., 3 vols. in one, Kassel: Bärenrenter, 1959), p. 119; Charles Burney, An Eighteenth-Century Musical Tour in Central Europe and the Netherlands; Being Dr. Charles Burney's Account of His Musical Experiences, ed. Percy Scholes (London: Oxford University Press, 1959), p. 184, n. 3.
74 Von deren Qualitäten und musicalischen Wissenschafften aber etwas nach der Wahrheit zu erwehnen, verbietet mir die Bescheidenheit. Jedoch ist zu consideriren, daß Sie theils emeriti, theils auch in keinem solchen exercitio sind, wie es wohl seyn sollte. Quoted and translated in Mary Rasmussen, "Gottfried Reiche and His Vier und zwanzig Neue Quatricinia (Leipzig 1696)" Brass Quarterly 4 (1960): p. 5.
75 Gunter Hempel, "Das Ende der Leipziger Ratsmusic im 19. Jahrhundert," Archiv für Musikwissenschaft 15 (1958): pp. 189-90.
76 Ibid., p. 191; Otthmar Schreiber, Orchester und Orchesterpraxis in Deutschland zwischen 1780 und 1850 (Berlin: Junker und Dünnhaupt, 1938), pp. 25-26.
77 Edward Holmes, A Ramble among the Musicians of Germany. (London: Hunt and Clarke, 1828. repr. New York: Da Capo, 1969), p. 256
78 Hempel, pp. 192-94.
79 Ibid., p. 196.
David M. Guion is Music Cataloger at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro and author of The Trombone: Its History and Music, 1697-1811. His writings
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on musical subjects have appeared in the American Music, Brass Bulletin, Early Music, Historic Brass Society Bulletin, ITA Journal, Journal of Band Research, Journal of Musicological Research, and Online Trombone Journal, among others