Saturday, September 25, 2010

Other Horns


The mention of Carol Hulbert’s mellophone in my last blog entry made me think of a topic that has always intrigued me.

It’s always been interesting to me how the instrumentation in the modern jazz band came into being. Of particular interest is why certain wind instruments have “made the cut” and others have not.

In Ken Burns’ jazz series on PBS, there’s an excellent presentation of how the early “jazz orchestra” was formed. In turns out that, during the reconstruction era after the Civil War, when the carpet baggers were in charge, that many freed slaves were given the opportunity to become educated. This included music education. As a result, many skilled instrumentalists were produced. In addition to western classical music, brass band (or wind band) music was popular.

For a good read on 19th century brass bands, I found the following article on the Lipscomb University website: The Nineteenth-Century American Wind Band.

As you can see from the photos in the article, in addition to the instruments we’re familiar with (trombone, trumpet, etc.), there were many other instruments in the band: mellophones, alto horns, sax horns, and so on.

Sadly, after the reconstruction period ended, the black population of the south was forced back into subservience. The education and the artistic flowering it produced became stifled. However, as a result, music took a new direction. One that led to what we now know as jazz.

While in the north, the era of John Philip Sousa and uniformed bands performing in big white gazebos on Sunday afternoons came into vogue, the discarded black bandsmen of the south found another outlet known as ragtime.

Early ragtime music was a hybrid of brass band music and early blues (or work songs). The chief figure of ragtime was Scott Joplin.

Even though ragtime bands were smaller-sized, the instrumentation still included many of the horns from the brass band era. It really wasn’t until Dixieland music emerged, and bands became smaller still, that the main four wind instruments (clarinet, trumpet, trombone, and tuba) rose to prominence and the others faded away. Eventually the tuba was replaced by the string bass and the clarinet, though not replaced, was superseded by the saxophone.

But what of these other horns? Jazz is such an open musical form it seems odd that it wouldn't welcome other instruments with other timbres into the mix.

To some degree this has happened.

In the early 1960s, big band leader Stan Kenton incorporated a “mellophonium” section into his band. A mellophonium is really just a mellophone with its bell straightened out. However, the softness of the mellophoniums tended to get buried by the other instruments and the experiment didn’t last.

In the 1970s, Chuck Mangione made a splash with the flugelhorn. Though tuned like a Bb trumpet, the flugel has a larger conical bore that produces a darker (or fatter) more mellow sound. It’s easy to listen to and can be very romantic sounding. Some other flugelhorn notables are: Art Farmer, Kenny Wheeler, Johnny Coles, and Hugh Masekela.

Then there was Maynard Ferguson and his superbone, a trombone that incorporated both slide and valves. Maynard would also take solos on the baritone horn or euphonium. I think I recall that he even tried using the French horn for solos.

Another fun brass instrument is the flumpet, developed David Monette (see: www.monette.net). The flumpet is a cross between a flugelhorn and a trumpet (hence the name), capable of the fat sound of a flugel, but also able to get an edge, giving it more versatility. The idea being that players won’t have to switch back and forth between horns.

Here’s a cool video of Dave Matthews Band trumpet player, Rashawn Ross, trying out a flumpet.



But, despite the various forays that have been made, the main wind instruments remain: sax, trumpet, and trombone. Perhaps it’s just natural that things get distilled over time. However, I can’t help hoping that the sounds of these wind instruments may reemerge, adding back forgotten colors into the jazz sound palette.

Steve Ackley
Let's Play Jazz

1 comment:

  1. Your post was my education for the day! This week, while painting chickens, I also learned that egg color is determined by the chicken's ear lobe color. Now I realize this is rather random thinking, but hey, learning is like that! Thanks Steve, most interesting.

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