Brass instruments

What it means

Brass instruments are those in which the player’s lips themselves vibrate and thereby excite the air column in the tube. To the family belong trumpet, horn, trombone, tuba, as well as the bugle horns such as flugelhorn, tenor horn and euphonium. The material is not decisive — the alphorn of wood belongs here too by the principle of tone generation, the saxophone of metal, by contrast, does not. A distinction is drawn between cylindrical bores with a bright, radiant sound, as with trumpet and trombone, and conical ones with a softer sound, as with horn and bugle horns.

Musical use

Without additional devices a brass instrument supplies only the notes of a harmonic series. Historically this led to signal instruments and to the high clarino register of the Baroque, in which the natural notes lie close enough together to form melodies. Valves, introduced in the nineteenth century, switch in additional tube lengths and make the instruments chromatic; the trombone achieves the same with the slide. In the orchestra the brass form the layer with the greatest penetrating power, but are equally capable of warm, covered blend, for instance in a horn passage. Mutes of various builds extend the palette of colours.

Performance practice

Everything hangs on air and embouchure. Practise long notes daily, slurs across the natural notes and quiet playing; loudness follows from these of itself, whereas the reverse practice ruins the embouchure. Keep the pressure of the mouthpiece slight and let the breath do the work. In pieces with a high register plan phases of recovery and take the instrument off in doing so. Warm the instrument up before tuning, because the pitch depends strongly on the temperature, and correct afterward with the tuning slide. Keep valves, slides and water keys maintained and empty condensation regularly, or the response becomes unreliable.

Remember that mutes alter the intonation: almost every type of mute pulls the pitch, usually upward, and this must be evened out with the slide or the embouchure. Try this out before the rehearsal and note the deviation. Plan mute changes in time and lay the mutes so that they are reachable noiselessly. In a texture the coordination of articulation is decisive, because tonguing and response sound different between trumpet, horn and trombone. Check the valves and slides regularly.