The music of wind instruments in western Europe

Through the Renaissance

The diversity of wind instruments and their musical use in postantiquity is reflected in medieval literature and art. From this evidence, it can be inferred that wind instruments were grouped according to volume of tone—that is, as either loud or soft (haut or bas). Loud winds—trumpets, shawms, and bagpipes—accompanied outdoor processions and dancing; trumpets also were taken into church to play the sustained lower parts of primarily vocal motets and masses. Soft wind instruments, such as the recorder, the transverse flute, the cornett, and the portative organ, were mostly played indoors and, together with bowed and plucked strings, likely performed instrumental arrangements of songs and motets.

During the Renaissance, wind instruments were grouped into unmixed consorts whose homogeneous sound derived from the texture of contemporaneous vocal ensembles. (A typical wind consort of the early 16th century comprised three sizes of the same instrument type, usually an alto, two tenors, and a bass. A century later, some winds were made in as many as eight sizes, which, however, were grouped into two different ensembles, one at four-foot and the other at eight-foot pitch.) In addition to polyphonic dance music, those consorts performed arrangements of secular songs such as those published in 1533 by Pierre Attaingnant, which bear designations as appropriate for either transverse flutes or recorders. The preference for unmixed consorts was so strong by the late 16th century that, even at large musical events involving many musicians, different groups played whole pieces or portions of them in alternation rather than at the same time.

The Baroque period

At certain centres, particularly Venice, it was the practice in the late 16th century to combine and contrast an instrumental consort (mainly winds) with voices in a type of religious composition called the sacred concerto. In the Sacrae symphoniae (1597 and 1615) of Giovanni Gabrieli, for example, an ensemble of three cornetts, two trombones, and tenor violin accompanies solo voices, alternates with and accompanies one or two choirs, or performs alone. Gabrieli adopted a similar approach in his instrumental music. His Sonata pian’ e forte (1597), the first musical composition for which instrumentation is specified, employs two ensembles of equal size—three trombones and cornett; and three trombones and a viola da braccio (early violin)—sometimes playing together, sometimes separately.

Large ensembles of singers and instrumentalists also were divided into forces of different size. In some sacred concerti of the early Baroque, a large group of supplementary instrumentalists, who doubled the choral parts, was contrasted with instrumental soloists, or concertino (violinists or virtuoso cornettists), who played in dialogue with the vocal soloists. This disposition of instruments, in conjunction with the antiphony (alternating singing by two choirs) perfected by Gabrieli, gave rise to the concerto grosso. Some concerti grossi, notably those of Arcangelo Corelli, employ a solo group made up of two soprano-range instruments and bass, a combination known as trio sonata texture that had wide currency in the Baroque era. (While Corelli’s trio sonatas were written for strings, a bassoon might virtually double the bass line, and the repertoire as a whole contains works written for wind instruments in one or both of the upper parts.) By the late Baroque, concerti grossi had in effect become concerti for solo instruments. J.S. Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos, Nos. 1, 2, 4 and 5 (pre-1721), which involve extended virtuoso passages for winds, are outstanding examples of this transition.

Before the mid-16th century, instrumentation depended less on tone quality or the composer’s preference than on which instruments were available. Winds and strings were largely interchangeable. After that time, however, some wind instruments began to establish their autonomy. In the Florentine intermedi (staged musico-dramatic presentations generally based on pastoral or mythological themes), particular winds were associated with particular characters or situations, such as trombones with the netherworld. Many associations established in the intermedi were later retained in 17th-century opera, oratorio, and ballet. As members of the violin family displaced winds as the preferred instruments of Baroque ensembles (both inside and outside the theatre), the theatrical uses of winds became more pronounced and composers increasingly sensitive to their extramusical associations. Also characteristic of Baroque opera and oratorio was the obbligato (essential but subordinate) use of winds in a manner stylistically analogous to writing for solo voice.