Introduction
From the serpent to the synthesizer, the piano to the piccolo, Western music has a huge range of instruments to draw on. Most of these instruments have a long history, and they have changed continuously — and as they have evolved, music has changed, too. This book tells the story of 50 of these instruments, showing how they have developed and how they have had an effect on Western music, from the Medieval period to today.
Players, instruments, and composers There has always been a complex relationship between musicians and instrument-makers. Craftsmen have been stimulated to make new and better instruments at the request of musicians. Players have honed techniques or found different approaches to playing as they have come across unfamiliar instruments. Composers have found in the latest instruments and the abilities of their players new expressive powers that have encouraged them to write in different and exciting ways.
The story of the violin is a good example. The great violin-makers of early-18th century Cremona, Venice, and other Italian cities made it possible for the talents of a generation of brilliant Italian violinist-composers (such as Corelli and Vivaldi) to blossom, and ultimately for the violin to dominate much of the music of the late Baroque period. Later violin-makers, inspired partly by the dazzling playing of the great virtuosos and partly by the demand for more volume as orchestras grew in size, evolved a modified design to produce a bigger sound. This in turn made possible the spectacular playing of 19th-century virtuosos like Paganini. The louder violin also helped 19th-century composers such as Brahms and Mendelssohn write their outstanding concertos for the instrument. Other instruments with a long history, from the clarinet to the piano, had a similar influence.
Reasons for change Over the centuries, instruments have evolved in many ways and for many reasons. The changes can be linked to developing technology (as with the valves on brass instruments), to player convenience (as with the appearance of the end pin that helps cellists hold their instrument firmly in one place), to great inventors or craftsmen (as with the saxophone), or to the demands of composers (as with the special tuba that Wagner commissioned for his opera orchestra).
A major factor for change was simply musical or cultural fashion. When a prominent musician or patron took up an idea, it caught on widely and the fashion spread. The violin orchestras at the French court in the 17th and 18th centuries showed the huge potential of groups of stringed instruments playing in multi-part harmony. The advocacy of new piano designs by great pianist-composers such as Beethoven was highly influential. And 19th-century improvements to instruments like the harp made them increasingly popular.
The instruments and their families This book concentrates on the classical orchestra, together with a few instruments, such as the piano and the guitar, that sometimes appear in or alongside the orchestra. Each instrument is given a key date, which may be the date of its invention, of a major development, or of the moment when it began to make a major musical impact.
The type of the instrument is specified, according to the system of classification devised in the early-20th century by German scholars Erich Mortiz von Hornbostel and Curt Sachs. Based on how instruments work, it divides the majority of instruments into types — idiophones, membranophones, cordophones, and aerophones. Idiophones produce a sound when the whole body of the instrument vibrates — for example, gongs and chimes. Membranophones are instruments like drums that make a sound when a membrane vibrates. Cordophones, such as violins, guitars, and pianos, produce their sound by means of vibrating strings. In aerophones, the movement of a column of air produces a sound, as is the case in oboes, flutes, horns, and organs.
Another way of classifying instruments is by grouping them into the sections of the orchestra — strings, woodwind, brass, and percussion — and this book gives these groupings too. Again, this system is based on the way in which the instruments work. Brass instruments, for example, are in that group not because of the material they are made of, but because they produce their sound as a result of the vibration of the player's lips.
Instruments and eras All the groups of instruments have a long history, and this book tells their stories against a background of musical history stretching from the Middle Ages to the present. In the process, it uses the standard terms common in musical history to describe the key phases, from Medieval to Modern.
The Medieval period (roughly 500 to 1400) was a vast era in which musical notation evolved and instruments were used to provide entertainment at festivities and to accompany dancing and singing. Vocal music, which featured a lot in church services, developed through many phases, but in particular from simple single-line chants to polyphony — complex music in which different vocal parts intermingled and produced the kinds of harmonies that influenced Western music for much of the rest of its history. Medieval instruments included ancestors of many of those played today. They ranged from plucked strings such as the lute and harp, to bowed instruments like the lyra and fiddle, ancestors of the violin, and from wooden pipes resembling flutes, to the sackbut, forebear of the trombone. The Medieval period also saw the development of the first keyboard instrument, the organ.
In the Renaissance period (in music, usually said to be 1400-1600), music shook off the conventions of medieval church music. The idea of tonality — according to which music is written in a specific key — became central and remained so until the 20th century. At the same time music tended to become more clearly expressive. As well as being a heyday of vocal music, it was also a boom time for instrumental music. Groups of musicians playing together in bands or consorts became common, and the instruments they played developed too. Valveless trumpets, wooden cornets, and sackbuts dominated the brass; bowed stringed instruments, especially viols, were popular; and reed instruments such as shawms, the ancestors of modern woodwinds, were often heard. In addition, the harpsichord established itself at the heart of much instrumental music-making — it would keep this central role through the next period, the Baroque era.
The Baroque era (approximately 1600-1750) produced highly ornate music and established some of the major musical forms, such as the concerto, sonata, and opera. This was the time of major composers such as Monteverdi, Bach, Handel, and Vivaldi. The period saw the establishment of the strings (especially the violins) as the foundation of the orchestra, and the improvement of woodwind instruments such as the flute, oboe, and bassoon, so that orchestras made up of strings plus woodwind became common. The harpsichord kept its place both as a solo instrument and within the orchestra, but in the later part of the period the piano was developed and began to inspire composers to produce increasingly expressive keyboard music.
By the time of the Classical period (c.1750-1820), composers such as Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven were writing symphonies, concertos, and other works for an orchestra with strings, horns, oboes, and bassoons. They often used additional wind instruments such as clarinets, trumpets, and trombones. They began to incorporate further percussion instruments, adding the bass drum, triangle, and cymbals to the orchestra, especially when they wanted to produce exotic musical effects. The Classical composers were also the first to exploit fully the expressive potential of the piano, which developed quickly during this period.
The piano was also a key instrument for the composers of the Romantic era (roughly 1820-1910). During this period, composers sought to extend the power and scope of the orchestra still further. They i
