On Brass

In many ways, the term ‘natural trumpet’ is a bit strange as it doesn’t refer to a trumpet which grows in the soil or is dug up from the ground but just one which has no devices on it such as valves or slides or fingerholes. In general, the term has gained most...

Coins are an important source of information for music archaeologists. They may be small but the skill of the ancient die maker who makes the two dies which contain the impression of the two sides of the coin was amazing. There are hundreds of different images on...

When the great, curved Bronze-Age horns were found in Scandinavia and the Baltic Region, no-one knew how old they were or what they might have been called. This was in the days before C. J. Thomsen developed the idea of the three-age system, calling periods, the Stone...

We can’t say exactly when these two instruments first came to be played together but it certainly didn’t take long after Ktesibios invented the first keyboard instrument. He was a Greek inventor and mathematician who lived in Alexandria, Ptolemaic Egypt. He made all...

One of the highlights of the Bronze-Age brass is the Irish Horns, over one hundred instruments which were found all over Ireland. They’ve been turning up for over a hundred years, popping up out of bogs unexpectedly. None have been dug up in organised excavations so...

Although instruments throughout the Iron-Age world differed, there was considerable similarity both in instrument form and usage. This was not so in the Celto-Iberian cultural area.   Although no actual instruments have survived, the iconography tells a...

Cast Brass Reproductions of the Pompeii Cornua Support-Bar Bosses Despite their name, brass only appeared in brass instruments relatively recently. Throughout the Copper Age, instruments were made from all sorts of metals but principally from copper and precious...

Well, lots of people, really. However, it’s music archaeologists who study all aspects of music in the ancient world. As there have been no direct study courses in music archaeology until very recent times, such scholars who call themselves ‘music archaeologists’ come...

In June 1975, we set off for our Scandinavian/Baltic tour, my wife and I and two sons. The Copenhagen leg of the tour saw me sitting in a side room off the main gallery in the National Musem, with a section of bronze lurs. I could handle them, measure them, etc but...

The earliest brass instruments which have survived from Europe are the sea-shell trumpets which are often referred to as conch-shell trumpets - although I prefer to call them sea-shell trumpets. They are made from the shells of sea snails which can only grow in warm...

The mention of the word Music will likely bring about a series of mental processes in which you relate the context of the word to your own experiences. Thus, it may be jazz which floods your brain, or classical music, folk music, pop or whatever. Thus if the topic...

There’s a couple of answers to this really, depending upon whether you stick to an instrument which had that particular name or whether you mean fingerhole instruments in general. Even today, there are different names used to describe this instrument in the UK and the...

It’s easy to think of ancient brass design as following that of modern instruments but that was simply not the case. Granted, there were instruments which had overall structures very much like modern instruments but there were also many which were somewhat different....

Today there are, in the main, just two brass  instruments in which the air goes round in circles, the French horn and the Sousaphone although others, such as cornets have, in the past, been made in this way. A little earlier,  the cor de chasse (horn of the chase) or...

This is the range of notes played on any brass instrument when no valves, slides or finger-holes are utilised. It’s terrifically important for ancient and historical brass instruments as it effectively controls what can be played on them. As any brass player knows,...

Strangely, the answer is simple, they used their salpinx (that’s what they called their trumpet) for pretty-well everything. From what you read, however, they were principally treated as military instruments. That’s partially true as, for much of the time,...

The bronze lurs are among the most-characteristic instruments from the Late Bronze Age in northern Europe. They were found in Scandinavia and around the Baltic, the largest number have been found in Denmark. Because of the large number found there, Denmark has adopted...

This letter has a unique claim to importance to brass players during the European Iron Age – that’s from about 1000 BCE to, well, a lot later! (possibly for over a thousand years). For quite a lot of this time, two ‘J’-shaped instruments were around, the lituus and...

In 1922, British archaeologist, Howard Carter discovered the tomb of Tutankamun, one of the richest ever found. Among the items recovered were two trumpets which, although of the same basic shape as those seen in Egyptian iconography, were quite different from each...

Brass instruments had been around for a very long time before we see different instruments used together. The earliest iconography shows relatively simple ensembles such as that on the Carchemish reliefs where a simple blowing animal horn is shown alongside a large...

The name cornu (plural cornua) appears in Roman literature, describing their instrument which encircled the player. Such instruments are depicted in Etruscan, Roman and native European iconography. The earliest depictions come from Etruscan sources but no large cornua...

When I started playing the cornet, my two heroes were Louis Armstrong and Eddie Calvert. Louis Armstrong toured Britain in 1956, and I saw an advert in the Derbyshire Times telling about the tour. I scrounged the money (not easy at that time) and eventually amassed...

There’s quite a bit of talk about which is the oldest brass instrument around but, for my money, it terms of continuous tradition, it’s the instruments of the first Australians. Their instrument, which we might refer to as the didgeridoo have many different names...

The term iconography refers to all manner of illustrations and we rely on these to fill in information about instruments when the physical remains are either lacking or fragmentary. Iconography appears in all sorts of forms, as reliefs, as paintings, on coins and even...

The term ‘lituus’ is one applied to a ‘J’-shaped instrument used by the Romans. Its overall form was very similar to an implement used by the augur, an important person who foretold the future from the flights of birds or the entrails of a sacrificed animal. The...

In Scandinavia and the Baltic region, during the late Bronze Age mouthpieces were developed to an astonishing degree. These were seen on the bronze lurs which were probably made between about 1500 BCE and 500 BCE. The mouthpieces were attached permanently to the...