Introduction by Dr. Clifford Bevan
Cartoon by Cliff Bevan
KERSHAW COLLECTION VIRTUAL MUSEUM OF INSTRUMENTS
In his Cambridge Encyclopedia of Brass Instruments article on ‘Collections of Instruments’ Arnold Myers comments ‘there has been a tendency for collectors to amass greater numbers of small instruments such as cornets rather than larger instruments such as tubas’. This is an error which the present collection signally avoids: it would be possible to organise several complete bands of brass instruments from those assembled here. Emphasising this, the collection has been arranged in the order of a band score, or the brass staves of an orchestral score, from cornets and horns down to various types of tuba. A section devoted to the seminal maker Adolphe Sax follows the same pattern.
But what is the purpose of a collection of brass instruments?
We should rather ask, ‘What are the purposes?’ A collection will impinge on various viewers in various ways. For a non-musician, a member of the general public, the mere visual impact can be considerable, particularly as here there are such intriguing rarities as the double-bell euphonium, helicon, quinticlave, bass Sudrophone and Russian bassoon
A more musically-informed viewer may himself play a brass instrument and will be interested to see precursers of those played by himself and his colleagues. Here, for instance, is a contralto saxhorn, the link between the keyed quinticlave (also represented here) and present-day Eb horn; and a serpent, father to the ophicleides (also in the collection) and grandfather to the tuba (of which here there are several examples).
A visitor with a deeper interest in the history and functioning of brass instruments will find examples here of various stages in the development of the modern brasses, with approaches to mechanisms typical of makers in various European countries, and wraps (the ways in which the tubing is arranged) characteristic of different cultures.
What is the purpose of a brass instrument?
The incorporation of brass instruments into orchestras and military bands was retarded because of their inability to play all the notes expected by composers and performers, those pitches capable of being produced by keyboard, string and woodwind instruments. Only the sounds of horn calls were possible from natural horns and trumpets, although from the mid-15th century the slide mechanism of the trombone it to participate in town bands and the compositions of Venetians like the Gabrielis. But even for for Bach and Handel in the 18th century, the only notes available from the trumpet were restricted to the high clarino register, available only to expert players.
Where the sound is initiated by a vibrating reed or a stream of air across the sharp edge of an orifice (in woodwind instruments), tone-holes in the side of the tubing, sometimes covered by keys, provided a viable method of changing pitch from the earliest times. This was less successful for brasses owing to the differences in acoustical response when the sound is initiated by the player’s own vibrating lips. However, the system was adopted with some degree of success, notably in the cornett (rather like a recorder but with a cup-mouthpiece) and later the keyed trumpet. The earliest concertos for trumpet to hold places in the present-day repertoire (by Haydn and Hummel) were both composed for the keyed trumpet developed by the virtuoso Anton Weidinger c. 1793.
A significant step in making notes in the lowest register available to a cup-mouthpiece instrument had already been achieved in the serpent. This appeared in France about 1590 and was still in use in some parts of Europe in the early 20th century, although its inherently unstable pitches meant that it was not generally capable of the degree of accuracy needed in the symphonic orchestras developing during the 19th century. The serpent in this collection is by an unidentified maker, typical of these instruments. (In his Encylopédie notionnaire of 1761 Garsault commented: ‘the serpent is made by carpenters’). Towards the end of the 18th century its distinctive double-S shape was superseded by one of an extensive range of bassoon-shaped upright serpents, represented here by a Russian bassoon, basse d’harmonie (‘band bass’), ophimonocleide and serpent à droite.
Upright serpents, or bass horns, contained some metal sections, and indeed were sometimes totally made of metal, forming a link with the ophicleide, a brass instrument here represented in examples by three different French makers. The ophicleide’s clarity of tone and potential virtuosity led to its widespread adoption in both bands and orchestras, and it was regarded as the viable bass brass instrument until the end of the 19th century in many countries.
However, in a situation analogous to that of canals and railways, during a century marked by an unparallelled outpouring of inventions , a mere 14 years after the appearance of the ophicleide in France an instrument appeared in Prussia that marked possibly the most significant step forward for brass. Perhaps more than in the case of any other instrumental family, the development of the brasses relied upon improvements in techniques of metal-working. The aim was always to provide more notes, and in particular more reliable notes, because (as remains the case today) the skills of the player are essential to the musical value of a brass instrument. (Even a cat can produce notes from a piano, but hand it a euphonium . . .)
With this in mind, craftsmen, often working alongside musicians (and sometimes musicians themselves), had sought for centuries to improve the versatility and usefulness of the brasses. Accepting that the provision of tone-holes capable of selective shortening of the air-column in the tubing to raise the pitch of a brass instrument was not totally viable, a mechanism which would selectively lower its pitch could perhaps provide those important missing notes. Serious attempts began to be made towards the end of the 18th century, and around 1813 the first valve appeared, developed by horn-player Heinrich Stölzel. It enabled him to play a complete chromatic scale, superseding the previous method of obtaining a greater number of pitches from the horn by varying the position of the hand providing support for the instrument inside the bell terminating the tubing.
Throughout the 19th century much effort (and considerable litigation) was spent in improvements to the valve. The so-called Stölzel valve remained in use on some instruments, notably cheaper cornets, until the end of the century, but its principle of a piston travelling inside a cylinder was adopted by many inventors. While horns, trumpets and cornets were modified with relative ease, the difficulty of applying such a valve to much deeper instruments lay in the need to control the passage of air through the much wider-diameter tubing needed to produce the lowest notes, those equivalent to the string double bass. In 1835 the Prussian bandmaster Wilhelm Wieprecht, working with the instrument-maker Johann Moritz, finally devised an efficient wide-bore valve which they named Berliner Pumpenventil, or Berlin Valve. Four years later, French maker Ētienne Périnet made improvements to the Stölzel valve, and the Perinet Valve is still the most-used in piston-valved instruments.
In the meantime, horn-player Josef Kail and Viennese maker Joseph Riedl chose a different principle for their Rad-Maschine or Drehventil, which, rather than sliding through a cylinder positioned at right-angles to the instrument’s tubing, rotated within a cylinder lying in the same plane. The rotary-valve is still favoured in many countries, particularly Germany and Austria, and is often chosen for tubas. As can be seen by comparing here the tubas by Alexander and Ahlberg & Ohlsson with the adjacent instruments by Gautrot and Higham, the location of each type of valve on the instrument dictates the direction in which the bell points: the rotary will cause the bell to point left and the piston dictates a right-facing bell, unless the valve-cluster should be mounted horizontally on the front of the instrument rather than vertically in its usual top-facing position. (The Cavalry Tuba here is an example of this.)
What’s in a name?
The greatest range of instruments from any one inventor shown here is that from Adolphe Sax, a Belgian instrument-maker working in Paris. Prolific, litigious and several times bankrupt, his instruments are notable for their high quality.
While he is best-known for his saxophones, brass players consider his saxhorn family to be the most important—an entire matching series from highest to lowest (a system he was later to apply to the saxophones). As was frequently (and often correctly) claimed by his competitors, he was not remarkable for the originality of his designs, but he was the first to realise that it is the tubing-profile of a brass instrument that is crucial in deciding its actual tone-quality. In a British brass band all the instruments except cornets and trombones are in fact saxhorns. The present collection also includes a saxotromba, representing a less successful family, differing from the saxhorns in its narrower bore and slightly tilted bell, but favoured by cavalry bands as it avoided the risk of being hit by the horse’s head.
Unlike Sax, some of the makers represented in this collection are quite obscure: Joseph Wallis of London, Nic.-Firmin-Michaud and Oscar Beaubeouf of Paris, Christian Reisser of Ulm, Ahlbert & Ohlsson of Stockholm and F. Van Cauwelaert of Brussels, demonstrating the widespread locations of brass instrument-making.
With the increasing need for commercial success, it became common for inventors to incorporate their name into their invention, and there are several examples here. While Sax has already received mention, in this collection are also examples by Giuseppe Pelitti of Milan (Pelittone), Forveille (forename unknown) of Paris (Serpent Forveille) and François Sudre, also of Paris (Sudrophone ).
Other instruments were named according to their function:
Armee-Posaune, with valves and a side-facing bell, developed by Václav Červený of Bohemia. It was marketed as being particularly suitable for marching bands.
Ballad Horn, a type of tenor cor (also represented in this collection), which was designed as an easier substitute for the french horn, with the generator of its harmonic series about an octave higher and valves operated by the fingers of the right hand.
Barlow Tuba so-named because its particular characteristics had been perfectedby Harry Barlow, tubist at various times with the Hallé Orchestra, BBC Symphony, at Covent Garden and invited to play for the Wagner Festival at Bayreuth.
Bombardon, tuba made by Manchester maker Joseph Higham and marketed under this name often found printed on 19th century brass band tuba parts. Originally used for a particularly large bass ophicleide, it is derived from bombard, a wide-mouthed medieval cannon.
Cavalry Tuba, probably designed by the London firm of Boosey, with piston-valves mounted horizontally on the front rather than the normal British position of vertically higher on the instrument, in order to make the bell face left, bringing symmetry to bands on the march.
Double-bell euphonium, popular in the United States between the late-19th- and mid-20th centuries. Its extra bell, controlled by a fourth valve, allowed the player to choose between euphonium and valve trombone timbres (tone-qualities).
Kaiser instruments, another Červený invention, featuring a very wide bore leading to an unusually full tone.
Navy Model tuba, made by the American firm of York, all of whose instruments were favoured by the Band of the United States Navy.
The petit tuba française (‘small French tuba’) was the result of the widespread use of the ophicleide in French orchestras. The ophicleide had also been common in British orchestras, leading for a short period to the use of a euphonium for parts designated ‘Tuba’. However, the ophicleide’s influence in France led to small tubas actually pitched a tone higher than the euphonium being widely used until the 1950s.
The trombone puzzle
But what of the trombone, referred to above in connection with its ability to produce different pitches by means of a slide centuries before the valve was invented? Here you will find an arrangement of (mainly) slide trombones owned by the noted performer Susan Addison, almost frightening in its pattern of slender tubes pointing outwards like a gigantic horizontal model of the Zimbelstern, the ‘cymbal star’ that used to rotate above baroque organs in Germany. And yet in the Kershaw collection all the trombones have valves, not slides!
Valve-trombones are found in pictures of 19th-century British bands formed in schools and orphanages, valved for the simple reason that it was felt short arms would not be able to cope with extended slide positions. They were also present in early Salvation Army bands. In France for many years the slide-trombone was considered too difficult for most musicians to master, until the virtuoso slide-trombone player Antoine-Guillaume Dieppo appeared and taught the trombone class at the Paris Conservatoire.
As late as 1895 Lavignac gave the trombone à pistons equal placing with the trombone à coulisse in his encyclopedic La Musique et les Musiciens. Giuseppe Verdi preferred a contrabass valve trombone in his opera orchestra because he abhored the non-matching timbres of the traditional low brass section of three trombones and tuba, and valve-trombones are still present in bands in Mediterranean countries. Possibly their final flourish occurred in the 1970s in response to the manic demands of bebop—until jazz virtuosi J. J. Johnson and Kai Winding showed that a slide could be manipulated as quickly as valves.
God Save the Queen (Victoria)!
Queen Victoria reigned over the UK and much of the known (and unknown) world from 1837 until her death in 1901. She was born in 1819, the year after the first known brass instrument valve patent was granted (in Prussia for Stölzel and Bluhmel). The latest stage in the many subsequent developments of the valve was reached in 1897: the double principle devised for compensating french horns in Bb/F by Gumpert and Kruspe in Germany. This was four years before Victoria died.
The significance of her lifetime is reflected in the present collection, where all but five (all tubas) on display were made during that crucial and prolific period in the development of the brass. And here also the widespread public awareness of brass instruments at the time is demonstrated through the printed ephemera on display, indicating a range of attitudes from admiration to ridicule.
There is a tribute to the Queen in a final element of the Kershaw Collection. While a few other brass instrument collections allow their contents to fulfil their original purpose—that of actually being played—there is here a unique coalition between sight and sound. Andrew Kershaw, himself a professional brass player, has joined with colleagues to form Queen Victoria’s Consort, where many of the instruments can be heard in expert performance, thus providing final justification for their conservation, description and display.
-----
Dr Clifford Bevan, BMus, PhD, FLCM, LRAM, ARCM
But what is the purpose of a collection of brass instruments?
We should rather ask, ‘What are the purposes?’ A collection will impinge on various viewers in various ways. For a non-musician, a member of the general public, the mere visual impact can be considerable, particularly as here there are such intriguing rarities as the double-bell euphonium, helicon, quinticlave, bass Sudrophone and Russian bassoon
A more musically-informed viewer may himself play a brass instrument and will be interested to see precursers of those played by himself and his colleagues. Here, for instance, is a contralto saxhorn, the link between the keyed quinticlave (also represented here) and present-day Eb horn; and a serpent, father to the ophicleides (also in the collection) and grandfather to the tuba (of which here there are several examples).
A visitor with a deeper interest in the history and functioning of brass instruments will find examples here of various stages in the development of the modern brasses, with approaches to mechanisms typical of makers in various European countries, and wraps (the ways in which the tubing is arranged) characteristic of different cultures.
What is the purpose of a brass instrument?
The incorporation of brass instruments into orchestras and military bands was retarded because of their inability to play all the notes expected by composers and performers, those pitches capable of being produced by keyboard, string and woodwind instruments. Only the sounds of horn calls were possible from natural horns and trumpets, although from the mid-15th century the slide mechanism of the trombone it to participate in town bands and the compositions of Venetians like the Gabrielis. But even for for Bach and Handel in the 18th century, the only notes available from the trumpet were restricted to the high clarino register, available only to expert players.
Where the sound is initiated by a vibrating reed or a stream of air across the sharp edge of an orifice (in woodwind instruments), tone-holes in the side of the tubing, sometimes covered by keys, provided a viable method of changing pitch from the earliest times. This was less successful for brasses owing to the differences in acoustical response when the sound is initiated by the player’s own vibrating lips. However, the system was adopted with some degree of success, notably in the cornett (rather like a recorder but with a cup-mouthpiece) and later the keyed trumpet. The earliest concertos for trumpet to hold places in the present-day repertoire (by Haydn and Hummel) were both composed for the keyed trumpet developed by the virtuoso Anton Weidinger c. 1793.
A significant step in making notes in the lowest register available to a cup-mouthpiece instrument had already been achieved in the serpent. This appeared in France about 1590 and was still in use in some parts of Europe in the early 20th century, although its inherently unstable pitches meant that it was not generally capable of the degree of accuracy needed in the symphonic orchestras developing during the 19th century. The serpent in this collection is by an unidentified maker, typical of these instruments. (In his Encylopédie notionnaire of 1761 Garsault commented: ‘the serpent is made by carpenters’). Towards the end of the 18th century its distinctive double-S shape was superseded by one of an extensive range of bassoon-shaped upright serpents, represented here by a Russian bassoon, basse d’harmonie (‘band bass’), ophimonocleide and serpent à droite.
Upright serpents, or bass horns, contained some metal sections, and indeed were sometimes totally made of metal, forming a link with the ophicleide, a brass instrument here represented in examples by three different French makers. The ophicleide’s clarity of tone and potential virtuosity led to its widespread adoption in both bands and orchestras, and it was regarded as the viable bass brass instrument until the end of the 19th century in many countries.
However, in a situation analogous to that of canals and railways, during a century marked by an unparallelled outpouring of inventions , a mere 14 years after the appearance of the ophicleide in France an instrument appeared in Prussia that marked possibly the most significant step forward for brass. Perhaps more than in the case of any other instrumental family, the development of the brasses relied upon improvements in techniques of metal-working. The aim was always to provide more notes, and in particular more reliable notes, because (as remains the case today) the skills of the player are essential to the musical value of a brass instrument. (Even a cat can produce notes from a piano, but hand it a euphonium . . .)
With this in mind, craftsmen, often working alongside musicians (and sometimes musicians themselves), had sought for centuries to improve the versatility and usefulness of the brasses. Accepting that the provision of tone-holes capable of selective shortening of the air-column in the tubing to raise the pitch of a brass instrument was not totally viable, a mechanism which would selectively lower its pitch could perhaps provide those important missing notes. Serious attempts began to be made towards the end of the 18th century, and around 1813 the first valve appeared, developed by horn-player Heinrich Stölzel. It enabled him to play a complete chromatic scale, superseding the previous method of obtaining a greater number of pitches from the horn by varying the position of the hand providing support for the instrument inside the bell terminating the tubing.
Throughout the 19th century much effort (and considerable litigation) was spent in improvements to the valve. The so-called Stölzel valve remained in use on some instruments, notably cheaper cornets, until the end of the century, but its principle of a piston travelling inside a cylinder was adopted by many inventors. While horns, trumpets and cornets were modified with relative ease, the difficulty of applying such a valve to much deeper instruments lay in the need to control the passage of air through the much wider-diameter tubing needed to produce the lowest notes, those equivalent to the string double bass. In 1835 the Prussian bandmaster Wilhelm Wieprecht, working with the instrument-maker Johann Moritz, finally devised an efficient wide-bore valve which they named Berliner Pumpenventil, or Berlin Valve. Four years later, French maker Ētienne Périnet made improvements to the Stölzel valve, and the Perinet Valve is still the most-used in piston-valved instruments.
In the meantime, horn-player Josef Kail and Viennese maker Joseph Riedl chose a different principle for their Rad-Maschine or Drehventil, which, rather than sliding through a cylinder positioned at right-angles to the instrument’s tubing, rotated within a cylinder lying in the same plane. The rotary-valve is still favoured in many countries, particularly Germany and Austria, and is often chosen for tubas. As can be seen by comparing here the tubas by Alexander and Ahlberg & Ohlsson with the adjacent instruments by Gautrot and Higham, the location of each type of valve on the instrument dictates the direction in which the bell points: the rotary will cause the bell to point left and the piston dictates a right-facing bell, unless the valve-cluster should be mounted horizontally on the front of the instrument rather than vertically in its usual top-facing position. (The Cavalry Tuba here is an example of this.)
What’s in a name?
The greatest range of instruments from any one inventor shown here is that from Adolphe Sax, a Belgian instrument-maker working in Paris. Prolific, litigious and several times bankrupt, his instruments are notable for their high quality.
While he is best-known for his saxophones, brass players consider his saxhorn family to be the most important—an entire matching series from highest to lowest (a system he was later to apply to the saxophones). As was frequently (and often correctly) claimed by his competitors, he was not remarkable for the originality of his designs, but he was the first to realise that it is the tubing-profile of a brass instrument that is crucial in deciding its actual tone-quality. In a British brass band all the instruments except cornets and trombones are in fact saxhorns. The present collection also includes a saxotromba, representing a less successful family, differing from the saxhorns in its narrower bore and slightly tilted bell, but favoured by cavalry bands as it avoided the risk of being hit by the horse’s head.
Unlike Sax, some of the makers represented in this collection are quite obscure: Joseph Wallis of London, Nic.-Firmin-Michaud and Oscar Beaubeouf of Paris, Christian Reisser of Ulm, Ahlbert & Ohlsson of Stockholm and F. Van Cauwelaert of Brussels, demonstrating the widespread locations of brass instrument-making.
With the increasing need for commercial success, it became common for inventors to incorporate their name into their invention, and there are several examples here. While Sax has already received mention, in this collection are also examples by Giuseppe Pelitti of Milan (Pelittone), Forveille (forename unknown) of Paris (Serpent Forveille) and François Sudre, also of Paris (Sudrophone ).
Other instruments were named according to their function:
Armee-Posaune, with valves and a side-facing bell, developed by Václav Červený of Bohemia. It was marketed as being particularly suitable for marching bands.
Ballad Horn, a type of tenor cor (also represented in this collection), which was designed as an easier substitute for the french horn, with the generator of its harmonic series about an octave higher and valves operated by the fingers of the right hand.
Barlow Tuba so-named because its particular characteristics had been perfectedby Harry Barlow, tubist at various times with the Hallé Orchestra, BBC Symphony, at Covent Garden and invited to play for the Wagner Festival at Bayreuth.
Bombardon, tuba made by Manchester maker Joseph Higham and marketed under this name often found printed on 19th century brass band tuba parts. Originally used for a particularly large bass ophicleide, it is derived from bombard, a wide-mouthed medieval cannon.
Cavalry Tuba, probably designed by the London firm of Boosey, with piston-valves mounted horizontally on the front rather than the normal British position of vertically higher on the instrument, in order to make the bell face left, bringing symmetry to bands on the march.
Double-bell euphonium, popular in the United States between the late-19th- and mid-20th centuries. Its extra bell, controlled by a fourth valve, allowed the player to choose between euphonium and valve trombone timbres (tone-qualities).
Kaiser instruments, another Červený invention, featuring a very wide bore leading to an unusually full tone.
Navy Model tuba, made by the American firm of York, all of whose instruments were favoured by the Band of the United States Navy.
The petit tuba française (‘small French tuba’) was the result of the widespread use of the ophicleide in French orchestras. The ophicleide had also been common in British orchestras, leading for a short period to the use of a euphonium for parts designated ‘Tuba’. However, the ophicleide’s influence in France led to small tubas actually pitched a tone higher than the euphonium being widely used until the 1950s.
The trombone puzzle
But what of the trombone, referred to above in connection with its ability to produce different pitches by means of a slide centuries before the valve was invented? Here you will find an arrangement of (mainly) slide trombones owned by the noted performer Susan Addison, almost frightening in its pattern of slender tubes pointing outwards like a gigantic horizontal model of the Zimbelstern, the ‘cymbal star’ that used to rotate above baroque organs in Germany. And yet in the Kershaw collection all the trombones have valves, not slides!
Valve-trombones are found in pictures of 19th-century British bands formed in schools and orphanages, valved for the simple reason that it was felt short arms would not be able to cope with extended slide positions. They were also present in early Salvation Army bands. In France for many years the slide-trombone was considered too difficult for most musicians to master, until the virtuoso slide-trombone player Antoine-Guillaume Dieppo appeared and taught the trombone class at the Paris Conservatoire.
As late as 1895 Lavignac gave the trombone à pistons equal placing with the trombone à coulisse in his encyclopedic La Musique et les Musiciens. Giuseppe Verdi preferred a contrabass valve trombone in his opera orchestra because he abhored the non-matching timbres of the traditional low brass section of three trombones and tuba, and valve-trombones are still present in bands in Mediterranean countries. Possibly their final flourish occurred in the 1970s in response to the manic demands of bebop—until jazz virtuosi J. J. Johnson and Kai Winding showed that a slide could be manipulated as quickly as valves.
God Save the Queen (Victoria)!
Queen Victoria reigned over the UK and much of the known (and unknown) world from 1837 until her death in 1901. She was born in 1819, the year after the first known brass instrument valve patent was granted (in Prussia for Stölzel and Bluhmel). The latest stage in the many subsequent developments of the valve was reached in 1897: the double principle devised for compensating french horns in Bb/F by Gumpert and Kruspe in Germany. This was four years before Victoria died.
The significance of her lifetime is reflected in the present collection, where all but five (all tubas) on display were made during that crucial and prolific period in the development of the brass. And here also the widespread public awareness of brass instruments at the time is demonstrated through the printed ephemera on display, indicating a range of attitudes from admiration to ridicule.
There is a tribute to the Queen in a final element of the Kershaw Collection. While a few other brass instrument collections allow their contents to fulfil their original purpose—that of actually being played—there is here a unique coalition between sight and sound. Andrew Kershaw, himself a professional brass player, has joined with colleagues to form Queen Victoria’s Consort, where many of the instruments can be heard in expert performance, thus providing final justification for their conservation, description and display.
-----
Dr Clifford Bevan, BMus, PhD, FLCM, LRAM, ARCM