A quick note here to remind you that brass instruments don’t have to be made of brass, just as woodwind instruments don’t have to be made of wood. The common feature for the instruments that make up the brass section is a cupped mouthpiece, which looks like a small fat chalice. It is plugged into one end of the instrument. When players blow into the mouthpiece, they vibrate their lips across it to produce a sound.
To call the trumpet a lip-vibrated cylindrical bore aerophone, while being technically accurate, would not begin to convey the impressive range of colours that it can produce. This is an instrument that can range from attention-grabbing authority to haunting, elegiac beauty. The modern trumpet is the undisputed leader of the brass section, a full eight feet of coiled tubing, whose every note is produced via just three valves and the ever-changing lipwork (called embouchure) of the player’s mouth.
Trumpets, like many brass instruments, are transposing instruments, which means that the note we hear is different from the pitch indicated in the score. The most common trumpet is in B flat, which means that the note C in the score will sound as B flat.
Many bridegrooms have had the hairs on the back of their necks raised in a mixture of apprehension and relief at the start of a rousing trumpet voluntary. Despite originally being pieces for the organ (which made a feature out of using the trumpet stop), they are very often used at weddings, arranged for trumpet or not, to signal the bride’s arrival and hopefully elegant procession down the aisle.
Uncoil the French horn and you would have eleven feet of brass piping in your hands. Originating in the world of hunting, the horn started to make an appearance in the world of orchestral music in France around the time of Jean-Baptiste Lully, in the seventeenth century. Valves were added in 1827 and composers such as Robert Schumann and Richard Wagner were big fans of this more modern instrument. The effect of the valves was to make it an easier instrument to play, as the performers no longer had to create all of the different notes with their embouchure. Modern French horns are made in five parts: the main body, the mouthpiece, the ‘bell’ (the round part the player sticks his or her hand up), the mouth pipe and the valves. French horns make a wonderful sound: when they are played softly, they can sound pastoral and placid, and when they are loud, they can be menacing and regal.
Somehow, it seems strangely apt that the trombone, an occasionally sliding comic piece of equipment, should be descended from an early English instrument called the ‘shagbolt’ (or sackbut). It is essentially a length of brass tubing whose notes are changed by lengthening the tube with a slide, in a range of seven positions. Mozart used trombones to great effect in his opera Don Giovanni, but their first ever use in a symphony came when Beethoven chose to include them in his Symphony No. 5. They possess a stout and, let’s not deny it, loud sound, useful for its ability to penetrate, but equally at home in a proud, perhaps tragic mode, such as in the Tuba mirum from Mozart’s Requiem.
This benevolent-sounding bass brass instrument comprises that cup-shaped mouthpiece again, along with around 18 feet of coiled tubing and, usually, four valves (there can be anything from three to six). Despite being principally a bass instrument – it can reach nearly an octave lower than the standard bass singing voice – it also possesses an impressive upper register stretching into the high male tenor range. This versatility has made it an extremely useful instrument for composers since its introduction in around 1835. Ralph Vaughan Williams wrote his Tuba Concerto in 1954 for the London Symphony Orchestra’s then principal tuba, Philip Catelinet. It soon became one of the composer’s surprise hits.