Brass Roots by Roy Newsome

Author:Roy Newsome [Newsome, Roy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction, Entertainment, Music, Instruments & Instruction, General Instruments, History
ISBN: 9780429648373
Google: DPSdAQAACAAJ
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2019-06-04T04:00:00+00:00

6 Into the twentieth century – the National Brass Band Championships

Changes in Music

The world of music experienced great change during the last third of the nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth, much of which bypassed the brass band – still adhering to musical styles of the early and middle years of the 1900s. Bands appear to have made virtually no attempt to keep abreast of developments that were taking place in European art music. Even Nationalism and its expression in music seems to have gone largely unnoticed, the only acknowledgement coming in the form of a test piece for the National Championships – a selection entitled A Souvenir of Grieg. This was in 1908, the year following the death of the Norwegian who, along with composers such as Chopin, Glinka, Liszt, Smetana, Sibelius and others, was writing music which emphasized national characteristics.

Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde (first performed in Munich in 1865) heralded the advent of modernism in music, though in the later Die Meistersinger, Wagner temporarily abandoned his experimental stance; extracts from this and from some of his earlier operas were welcomed into brass band repertoire. Though arrangements from Tristan and some of the later operas were occasionally performed, they seem never to have sat comfortably in brass band programmes. Likewise, the later Verdi operas found no regular place on the bandstand, whilst Wagner’s musical descendants – Richard Strauss, Mahler and Bruckner1 – were totally ignored by brass band writers of the time, their complex orchestrations and large-scale forms not appealing to the relatively miniaturist brass band writers.

Impressionism – the art of suggestion rather than statement – first found its outlet in music during the late 1880s. Debussy was to be its leading exponent but this, along with the later Expressionism – manifested in the music of Schoenberg, Webern and Berg – was completely ignored by brass bands. Those who peopled the band world had been reared on diatonic music and shared no inclination for styles designed to appeal to the intellect. Moreover, the intricacies of much new music depended on the more variable textures of the orchestra for its effect

As a result, brass band music, which during the middle years of the nineteenth century had been a reflection of international tastes of the time, had become somewhat anachronistic by the turn of the century, with its persistent pursuit of classical and romantic styles. The gulf was widened further in the 1920s with the arrival of the Neo-Classicism of Stravinsky and the highly individual idioms of Bartok, though their influences are felt in the brass band works of Edward Gregson, the first of which appeared in the late 1960s.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.