Brass band. An ensemble made up entirely of brass instruments, or in which brass
instruments are prominent. The term is used loosely, partly because of common practice and
also because the meaning of the word ‘band’ has evolved in meaning since the eighteenth
century.
Many nomenclatures can describe combinations of brass instruments in ensemble so it is
wrong to routinely describe any collection of brass instruments as a ‘brass band’. For
example, a group playing Tibetan prayer trumpets as part of a religious ritual is
misrepresented and even derided if referred to as a brass band. Similarly ‘brass ensembles’
are different to brass bands because they are an off-shoot of the romantic orchestra: an
ensemble of orchestral brass instruments in which the performance idioms that have
developed in the mainstream orchestral and solo repertoire prevail.
The differences between the various groupings can, therefore, be explained by comparisons
of musical identities, but cultural and historic factors are equally important. For this reason
different types of brass band are described separately in this book. Some writers have seen
brass bands as a late manifestation of the civic ensembles that flourished in the renaissance
and early baroque periods, especially the Italian piffari, Stadtpfeifer in German speaking
countries and waits in Britain. While a tenuous link can be made with some brass bands
because of the roles of these earlier groups it is neither helpful nor realistic to see them as
sequential components in a single and continuous historical process. ‘Brass bands’ should
properly be understood as a product of two developments that occurred in the nineteenth
century: the large-scale production and distribution of brass instruments and a broader set of
social, cultural and economic developments that resulted in working class people having the
opportunity to own and play them.
In the eighteenth century the word ‘band’ was used in English to describe orchestras, for
example those used in operas and oratorios. From the late eighteenth century the word
‘orchestra’ was used for this purpose and ‘band’ was used more often for groups attached to
the military – ‘regimental band’, ‘military band of music’ and so on. By the mid-nineteenth
century ‘band’ was being used with various prefixes to describe an extraordinarily wide range
of different instrumental combinations. The thread that seems to have been common to each,
and it is a thread that has endured, was that they were associated with the lighter and more
popular side of the cultural spectrum.
One of the most common features of brass bands is that they are almost always amateur. It is
also common for them to be closely associated with a locality or institution, such as a place of
work. This local or community association often stimulates a sense of representation, so
brass bands often occupy an important place in community rituals such as secular and sacred
festivals and events associated with workers’ or political representations. There are many
different instrumentations used in ‘brass bands’ and performance styles are equally various.
Some brass bands, despite their amateur status can demonstrate stunning levels of virtuosity
and sophistication, while others are considerably more relaxed and see the efficient
enactment of a limited set of functions within their close-knit community as both the
beginning and end of their musical ambitions. (see also British brass band, Latino styles,
Military band, New Orleans brass bands, Salvation Army brass bands, South America,
Japan, Africa, India, Australasia, China, Nordic countries)
Boonzajer Flaes (1999), Reily and Brucher (2013), Herbert and Wallace (1997)
Trevor Herbert
References
Reily, S.A. and Brucher, K. (eds), Brass Bands of the World: Militarism, Colonial
Legacies, and Local Music Making. Farnham: Ashgate, 2013.
Boonzayer Flaes, R., Brass Unbound: Secret children of the colonial brass band.
Amsterdam: Royal Tropical Institute, 1999.
Herbert, T. and Wallace, J. (eds.), Cambridge companion to brass instruments. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1997.