Euphonium: A Potential Overtaken by Events? – Clifford Bevan
Euphonium: A Potential Overtaken by Events? By Clifford Bevan If you haven’t heard the name Ebenezer Prout before, you might guess that he is a…
Author: Clifford Bevan
Rethinking the Serpent’s Origins – Clifford Bevan
Rethinking the Serpent’s Origins By Clifford Bevan Music dictionaries define “Serpent” along these lines: “Bass lip-reed instrument in the form of an S made from…
HISTORICAL INSTRUMENT COLUMN: Looking at the Past: Why Play Historical Brass?
Of course you would expect the Historical Instruments column to look at the past, but the past stretches from the moment that you’ve read the…
HISTORICAL INSTRUMENTS: Looking at the Past II: “God Save Us from the Ancient Serpent”
Historical Performance Standards: Low Brass Was Berlioz unique in having “modern” standards? That he was not a lone voice is demonstrated in many of the…
HISTORICAL INSTRUMENTS: LOOKING AT THE PAST III: “Travelling into the Past”
The ophicleide was still in use in some orchestras as late as the end of the nineteenth century, little more than a hundred years ago…
HISTORICAL INSTRUMENTS: The Case of the Mysterious F: A Detective Story by Clifford Bevan
The most recent discussion in the Historical Instruments Column of the English F tuba was in 2008. The context was an investigation into Vaughan Williams’s…
HISTORICAL INSTRUMENT COLUMN: Part 1: “A true contrabass wind instrument”
Inventions: Need or Greed? Though not generally accepted as being so important as “No Freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or be disseised of his…
HISTORICAL INSTRUMENT COLUMN: Inventions: Need or Greed? Part 2: “The right method of chanting and singing”
Following eleven years spent contesting legal cases, Adolphe Sax, bankrupted three times, died aged eighty in 1894. One of the Parisian instrument makers who had…
HISTORICAL INSTRUMENTS: Forty Years On (Clifford Bevan)
Forty years on, growing older and older, Shorter in wind, as in memory long. Feeble of foot, and rheumatic of shoulder, What will it…
HISTORICAL INSTRUMENTS: French Serpent Notation
Part 1: Pourquoi?1 SIDEBAR Editor’s Note: As an editor of the Historical Instruments section since 1992, I have sought to include pieces of interest for…