Trevor Herbert

The Cultural Study of Music : A Critical Introduction

What is the relationship between music and culture? The first edition of The Cultural Study of Music: A Critical Introduction explored this question with groundbreaking rigor and breadth. Now this second edition refines that original analysis while examining the ways the field has developed in the years since the book’s initial publication. Including contributions from scholars of music, cultural studies, anthropology, sociology, and psychology, this anthology provides a comprehensive introduction to the study of music and culture. It includes both pioneering theoretical essays and exhaustively researched case studies on particular issues in world musics. For the second edition, the original essays have been revised and nine new chapters have been added, covering themes such as race, religion, geography, technology, and the politics of music. With an even broader scope and a larger roster of world-renowned contributors, The Cultural Study of Music is certain to remain a canonical text in the field of cultural musicology.

The Cambridge Companion to Brass Instruments

This Companion covers many diverse aspects of brass instruments and in such detail. It provides an overview of the history of brass instruments, and their technical and musical development. Although the greatest part of the volume is devoted to the western art music tradition, with chapters covering topics from the medieval to the contemporary periods, there are important contributions on the ancient world, non-western music, vernacular and popular traditions and the rise of jazz. Despite the breadth of its narrative, the book is rich in detail, with an extensive glossary and bibliography. The editors are two of the most respected names in the world of brass performance and scholarship, and the list of contributors includes the names of many of the worlds most prestigious scholars and performers on brass instruments.

Music & the British Military in the Long Nineteenth Century

Although military music was among the most widespread forms of music making during the nineteenth-century, it has been almost totally overlooked by music historians. Music & the British Military in the Long Nineteenth Century however, shows that military bands reached far beyond the official ceremonial duties they are often primarily associated with and had a significant impact on wider spheres of musical and cultural life. Beginning with a discussion of the place of the military in civilian and social life, authors Trevor Herbert and Helen Barlow plot the story of military music from its sponsorship by military officers to its role as an expression of imperial force, which it took on by the end of the nineteenth century. Herbert and Barlow organize their study around three themes: the use of military status to extend musical patronage by the officer class; the influence of the military on the civilian music establishments; and an incremental movement towards central control of military music making by governments throughout the world. In so doing, they show that military music impacted everything from the configuration of the music profession in the major metropolitan centers, to the development of wind instruments throughout the century, to the emergence of organized amateur music making. A much needed addition to the scholarship on nineteenth century music, Music & the British Military in the Long Nineteenth Century is an essential reference for music, cultural and military historians, the social history of music and nineteenth century studies.

The repertory of a Victorian provincial brass band

Considerable time and print has been expended in attempting to define and date the first British brass band. This controversy should take a subordinate place to the more interesting questions that can be applied to the topic of brass bands when, unambiguously, they do exist as a fairly widespread activity and can reasonably be regarded as the active embryo of the standard ensembles which eventually formed the brass band ‘movement’.

Instruments of the Cyfarthfa Band

The musical instruments in the museum at Cyfarthfa Castle, South Wales, are evidence of the vital role played by the Cyfarthfa Band (1840-ca. 1912) in the evolution of British brass bands. It was particularly notable for its private patronage and its unique tendency to avoid instruments by English makers.

Sousa, the Band and the ‘American Century’

PATRICK Sarsfield Gilmore may be one of the lesser-known figures in music history at least outside the USA and devotees of the military band. He emigrated to America from Ireland in October 1849 at the age of 20, got a job in a Boston music store and worked as a cornet player in and around various East Coast towns before becoming a band conductor and, to an extent, a composer. (His most enduring work is the song ‘When Johnny Comes Marching Home’, published as a freestanding piece with his words to an adapted tune under the pseudonym Louis Lambert.) From 1864 he staged spectacular musical events reminiscent of Jullien’s ‘monster concerts’ but on a yet grander scale. In so doing, he did much to create a popular concert audience in his adopted country, but his greatest achievement was as a band conductor. He elevated the military-style band, its standards, repertoire and reception, so that it became unambiguously the most popular type of large-scale instrumental ensemble in North America. He was greatly inspired by the best European bands, including the Grenadier Guards, which had visited America under Dan Godfrey in 1872 on Gilmore’s invitation. British bands, largely because of their legacy as the private ensembles of the officer class, were inclined to play a good proportion of transcriptions of classical music, whereas, up to that time, their American counterparts devoted most of their programmes to quadrilles, quicksteps and other light diversions. In 1873 Gilmore became the conductor of the Band of the Twenty-Second Regiment of New York City, recruiting many of the best players in the country and thus forming one of the earliest large-scale, really virtuoso ensembles in America. This was the vehicle for his greatest achievements, and from the 1880s it was matched by just one other, that of the United States Marine Band (The President’s Own) under its dynamic young conductor, John Philip Sousa. It is not clear whether Sousa and Gilmore ever met, but their endeavours were linked by fate and by the New York impresario David Blakely. Blakely had a remarkable antenna for the popular taste and was a consummate businessman. He made a good profit running Gilmore’s tours and realized that there were yet more opportunities to be exploited. He travelled to Europe in search of a star name that might glitter as brightly as that of Gilmore but, despite his untiring efforts and unerringly accurate eye for talent, he found no one. On

The History of the Trombone

This book, the first in the American Wind Band series, is a comprehensive account of the development of the trombone, from its initial form as a 14th-century Medieval trumpet to its alterations in the 15th century; from its marginalized use in a particular Renaissance ensemble to its acceptance in various kinds of artistic and popular music in the 19th and 20th centuries. The book is fully illustrated with more than 80 images and includes an appendix of transcriptions of selected primary source documents with translations and a comprehensive bibliography.

Sondheim's technique

This article is primarily made up of an edited transcript of an interview which Stephen Sondheim gave in 1985 for a BBC/Open University television programme. In it the composer discusses his compositional processes and the relationship between text (lyrics) and music. He also discusses issues relating to performance practice of his work, in particular idioms (musical theatres, opera houses) inasmuch as they influence his compositional method. The idiom of performances are further dealt with in respect of the nature of audiences. The examples that Sondheim draws on are “The Ballad of Sweeney Todd” from Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1979) and “Send in the Clowns” from A Little Night Music (1973). A note on the editing of the transcript My questions are precised but retain their original sense. I have edited out obvious superfluities in Sondheims responses and the order of the various sections of the interview have been modestly rearranged, but not to the extent that they alter the origina...