Review

Trevor Herbert
The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Brass Instruments:

Arranged by Edited by Trevor Herbert, Arnold Myers, and John Wallace


Cambridge, , United Kingdom
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Date of Publication: 2018
URL: http://www.cambridge.org
Language: English

Hardcover, xxi + 612 pages. ISBN 978-1-107-18000-0.

Primary Genre: Study Material - book

The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Brass Instruments is a thoroughly-researched and exciting addition to brass scholarship, filling a deep lacuna by bringing together extensive coverage of a broad range of topics related to brass instruments within one volume. The more than 600-page volume includes articles by thirty-five contributors, all leading scholars, instrument makers, and performers of brass instruments. The work is thoughtfully organized and includes not only a single and comprehensive A–Z series of general entries but also a guide to using the encyclopedia, an introductory essay by Trevor Herbert, five appendices, and index. No fewer than 103 figures supplement the written work with iconographic evidence, photos, illustrations and diagrams. Perhaps the volume’s most important contribution is the way in which it makes a variety of disciplinary perspectives, information, and approaches conversant.

The general entries section covers four broad categories: “instruments, topics and themes that cast light on the way brass instruments are used in the present and have been in the past, biographical entries, and entries on works of music.” (p.xv) Most impressive, stimulating, and surely useful to the brass enthusiast as well as the brass specialist is this encyclopedia’s range. Picking an arbitrary spot early on, one finds an entry on the Cimbasso, followed by Circular breathing, Civil War bands, Charles Clagget, and Clarino. (pp.105–107)

Trevor Herbert’s introductory essay “Understanding Brass Instruments” is insightful, concise, and well-shaped. (pp.1–6) He guides us through the key issues and narratives of brass instrument history and development including historical instrument design and nomenclature, treatises and tutors, and areas of inquiry—repertoires, performance, and reception. His ability to bring depth and character to a summary text is impressive. He does not shy away from the controversial issues of difference, social class, the revolutionary emergence of jazz, and the changing and more inclusive attitudes toward women brass players.

The appendices will be consulted frequently by users of the book. The selective lists of vernacular horns and trumpets, of makers of brass instruments, and of collections of brass instruments are informative and bring key information together in one location. The list of early didactic and theoretical works relevant to brass instruments will be immensely useful to the brass student and pedagogue alike. The appendix on the ranges of labrosones (includes brass instruments as well as those played similarly but constructed of other materials), organized by chronological period, is remarkable for how easily it offers broad perspectives and generates (perhaps as yet unrealized) narratives on the development of ranges and fixed pitches of instruments. I suspect that many new scholarly narratives and insights will result from the close proximity of these different disciplinary perspectives.

The editors strive to achieve a balance between a focus on instruments and practices intended for use in Western music and one that includes culturally and geographically non-European and non-North American regions by including articles on brass practices and instruments in other countries. The title of the encyclopedia would suggest such broad coverage—there is no qualifying “Western” preceding “Brass Instruments.” Though their approach distinguishes Western-focused topics (encompassing most general entries) from non-Western topics (few entries, and marked as specific and non-Western by their geographical or cultural signifiers), an approach that through its structure tacitly suggests a dominant West versus a marginalized Other, the editors’ acknowledgement of this challenge goes a long way to ameliorating the difficulty.

No review of a reference book would be complete without an examination of the criteria used for the selection of material. Perhaps the most difficult and contentious choices concern those of the biographical entries. The editors have included entries for players who “have caused a major and discernible change or extension to the idiom of the instrument they play” and “for performers, instrument makers, scholars and others who have been important to the development and understanding of brass instruments and their repertoires.” (p.xvi) A list of accomplishments, publications, awards or memberships in orchestras, no doubt impressive, at times could be supported with a sharper articulation of the discernible change for which the players or scholars were chosen (compare the clearly articulated description of the influence of Bruce Dickey on the idiom of cornetto, p.141, with the biographical, impressive, but less precise entry on John Wallace, p.450).

It seems obvious that any one person compiling a list of the people most influential to the development of brass instruments will make different choices than another. Yet it is perhaps equally true that the gender, professional interests, and geographical backgrounds of the editors might play a role in shaping these choices. The revolutionary cultural shift toward the inclusion of women brass players in the final quarter of the twentieth century, so eloquently noted in Herbert’s introduction and in the entry on Gender by Helen Barlow and Herbert, is visible within the representation of women among the authors of the volume (8 of 35), yet does not gain the same traction within the general entries as one might expect—there are few dedicated entries on women (three total) and just one of those outside Britain (Mary Rasmussen, p.334).[1] Many other women should have been included, particularly those who have not only shaped the idiom of their instrument but also actively facilitated (and continue to facilitate) this ongoing cultural shift, such as the interdisciplinary artist, pedagogue, and trombonist, Abbie Conant (Munich Philharmonic, Hochschule für Musik Trossingen), hornist and pedagogue Julie Landsman (Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Juilliard School of Music), the DIVA jazz orchestra, and jazz trumpeter Ingrid Jensen.

[1] Susan Slaughter (principal trumpet, St. Louis Symphony) and Helen Vollam (principal trombone, BBC Symphony Orchestra) are cited as examples of such change in the article on gender. (p.191)