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Re: Enjoying Contests (long)

Hi everyone..... I'm a relatively new subscriber to the list - bad cornet
player, wasting my degree drinking with Cameron and Alastair - and have
been "lurking" for some time, but now I've got something to say in
relation to the brass band "evolution" metaphor:

Really there are two issues I want to pick up...
1)  Does the fact that the modern brass band has survived much better than
any other format of brass ensemble really mean that it is MUSICALLY the
best possible combination of brass instruments?  Could it perhaps
(the horror, the horror) be merely a reasonably well-balanced ensemble
which has reached its superior status for other social and economic
reasons - for example, although I have no first hand knowledge of colliery
or mill bands, it would seem reasonable to suppose that the size of the
band might have depended on the number of people willing to play, and the
number of instruments which they could afford.  It might not have happened
this way, but it's easy to see how it could have done.   Similarly, much
of the band repertoire (ie. for park bandstand gigs) has been determined
in the past by commercial considerations - no-one would argue that the
Floral Dance was artistically better than Phillip Wilby's latest, just
that it's easier to listen to and liked and recognised by more people.  It
might be considered elitist to draw a distinction between "art" and
"popular" music, but if we abandon that differentiation entirely we would
have to assume that the music in the charts is "the best" at a great cost
to such "minority" artists as Bach, Beethoven etc. 

2) Does the fact that the brass band is accepted to be the "evolutionarily
superior" or even "best" option of the brass ensembles which have so far
been attempted make it wrong for composers and/or bands to continue
experimenting?  Not every combination of instrumentation has been tried
yet, and there might be one which works better.  This would not in any way
threaten the stability of the current lineup if it actually is the best,
so what's the harm in trying?

Sorry all that took so long..... I don't know enough about French horns to
have an opinion on whether they'd work in a band, but thought that the
discussion had raised some interesting points about how we think of band
instrumentation in general.
Bye now,
Howard

PS:  Did anyone point out that orchestras have changed continually for
their entire history, and that most modern composers pick and choose
whatever instruments they want?  I can't remember.


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