Complete articles index

Mathez, Jean-Pierre

Editorial

One magazine disappeared as another opened its pages, turning economic necessity into a rare act of editorial solidarity that reshaped the brass press.

Mathez, Jean-Pierre

W. A. Mozart and the Trumpet...

A forgotten anecdote places one of music's greatest figures in startling conflict with the trumpet, raising unexpected questions about fear, sound and musical sensibility.

Damm, Peter

Ornaments in 18th-century Horn Concertos?

Performance once depended as much on informed invention as on written notes, and early horn concertos still carry that forgotten freedom in plain sight.

Laplace, Michel

The Trumpet and the Cornet in Jazz and Popular Music

Before Louis Armstrong became the defining figure, jazz already carried competing traditions of tone, style and technique shaped by cornet players across New Orleans and beyond.

Aitken, Thomas

The Brass Sections of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

An international brass section takes shape in post-war New Zealand, where orchestral careers mingle with touring bands, immigration and some remarkably unconventional detours.

Agrell, Jeffrey

Jazz and the Horn

Getting started

For the classically trained horn player, jazz replaces the security of the printed page with listening, swing and improvisation—and a different kind of discipline.

Usov, Yuri

Sergey Nikolaevich Yeryomin (1903-1975)

The Distinguished Soviet Trumpeter and Teacher

Between Soviet military bands, the Bolshoi and the Moscow Conservatory, Yeryomin helped shape a trumpet tradition in which virtuosity remained a means, not an end.

Mathez, Jean-Pierre

Editorial

Mass media, record-industry economics and the return of cornet virtuosity collide in a sharp warning about fashion, manipulation and musical independence.

Weston, Stephen J.

The untimely demise of the ophicleide

Once central to French orchestras, the ophicleide lost its place to the tuba—a disappearance shaped as much by institutions and repertoire as by sound.

Mathez, Jean-Pierre

Brass Players in Rome

Behind Rome’s musical prestige, RAI brass players describe shrinking salaries, insecure orchestral careers and the compromises required simply to remain musicians.

Aitken, Thomas

At the Sign of the Serpent

All sorts of old, rare and unusual musical instruments bought and sold by Tony Bingham

Behind a Hampstead shopfront, Tony Bingham’s trade in ophicleides, natural horns and cornets kept rare instruments circulating between collectors and players.

Damm, Peter

Ornaments in 18th-century Horn Concertos?

Essential ornaments

Natural horn technique left little room for excess: Peter Damm sets 18th-century ornamentation against the practical limits of range, style and notation.

Laplace, Michel

The Trumpet and the Cornet in Jazz and Popular Music

The “Classical” Period 1927-1945 — The Golden Age of the Trumpet

Between Armstrong’s rise and bebop’s arrival, the trumpet became jazz’s dominant voice, reshaping technique, orchestras, sound, mutes and virtuosity.

Stevens, Thomas

The Trumpet in the USA

Diverse makers

As trumpet makers rethink their standard instruments, Monette, Malone and Blackburn bring leadpipe design into a new dialogue between players and workshops.

Mathez, Jean-Pierre

Editorial

Music teaching depends on more than routine: in 1984, Jean-Pierre Mathez argues that living contact with artists keeps transmission open to new generations.

Mathez, Jean-Pierre

Guy Touvron

Spotlight

Before international fame, Guy Touvron’s path ran through village bands, Maurice André’s class, competitions and a stubborn refusal to behave like a star.

Sluchin, Benny

11th International Congress on Acoustics

At the 1983 Paris acoustics congress, brass research moved between factory consistency, vibrating bells, mutes and the elusive mechanics of multiphonics.

Höltzel, Michael

Round the Horn

Hamburg 1982

A 1982 Hamburg exhibition brought 150 horns out of collections and into players’ hands, collapsing centuries of hunting, signalling and concert traditions into one room.

Blümel, Christian · Radeke, Gerd

Conversation with Ludwig Güttler

Between Bach, historical instruments and modern virtuosity, Ludwig Güttler argues for a trumpet tradition shaped by declamation, research and a refusal of musical purism.

Davidson, Louis

Tonguing

A tiny shift in tongue movement changes speed, endurance and clarity, turning articulation from a mechanical attack into one of the trumpet player’s subtlest tools.

Damm, Peter

Ornaments in 18th-century Horn Concertos?

Deliberate divisions

Improvisation, articulation and ornament were once inseparable: Peter Damm recovers an 18th-century horn practice later narrowed by increasingly precise notation.

Laplace, Michel

The Trumpet and the Cornet in Jazz and Popular Music

The pluralism of the so-called “modern” forms (1945 to the present)

Bebop, Miles Davis and the rise of the flugelhorn mark a postwar jazz landscape in which trumpet playing splintered into competing sounds and ideals.

Mathez, Jean-Pierre

Editorial

Between disciplined practice and creative folly, musicianship emerges where scales and systems give way to imagination, instinct and the unsettling freedom to think.

Trichet, Pierre

On the Sackbut or Harmonic Trumpet

From Pierre Trichet’s Traité des Instruments de Musique (c. 1640)

A seventeenth-century description of the sackbut captures its moving slide, chromatic freedom and bass role at a moment when the instrument was still being defined.

Laplace, Michel

Harry James (1916-1983)

Young Man With A Horn

Harry James stood between jazz virtuosity and popular showmanship, turning the trumpet into a mass-audience voice without losing the respect of classical players.

Perl, Benjamin

Brass in the Operas of Berlioz

Berlioz turned a changing brass section into a dramatic force, using horns, trombones, cornets and saxhorns to shape colour, distance, ceremony and fear.

Hübler, Klaus-K.

The Polyphonic Trombone

A suggested notation system

When trombone slide, overtones, breath and valves become independent musical voices, conventional notation reaches its limits and a new system becomes necessary.

Agrell, Jeffrey

Jazz and the Horn

Thomas Bacon

Classical discipline meets jazz-rock freedom as Thomas Bacon confronts improvisation, stylistic crossover and the physical demands placed on the horn.

Laplace, Michel

The Trumpet and the Cornet in Jazz and Popular Music

The instrument for jazz

Jazz trumpet playing balances equipment, embouchure and articulation, as changing sound ideals reshape mouthpieces, technique and the physical approach to playing.

Damm, Peter

Ornaments in 18th-century Horn Concertos?

Changes and modifications of tempo

Tempo, dynamics and cadenzas expose how much an 18th-century horn concerto once depended on choices that modern notation and instruments can easily obscure.

Mathez, Jean-Pierre

Albert Calvayrac

Portrait

A career nearly abandoned after a disastrous switch from cornet to trumpet became a lesson in self-knowledge, persistence and an unexpected return to music.

Aitken, Thomas

A major chamber music work for brass?

Quintet, by Peter Maxwell Davies

A BBC studio session turns Maxwell Davies’s brass quintet into a test of virtuosity, balance and whether brass could claim a new place in chamber music.

Mathez, Jean-Pierre

Editorial

An international brass congress exposes a deeper tension between global exchange, American influence and the need for musical cultures to preserve their identity.

Trichet, Pierre

On the Cornett and Serpent

From Pierre Trichet’s Traité des Instruments de Musique (c. 1640)

Written around 1640, Pierre Trichet’s Traité des Instruments de Musique preserves a firsthand account of the cornett and serpent in musical life and construction.

Aitken, Thomas

Melvyn Poore

Tuba britannica

A tuba becomes a laboratory for circular breathing, reeds, strange mutes and music theatre as Melvyn Poore pushes beyond the orchestral role assigned to it.

Laplace, Michel

The Trumpet and the Cornet in Jazz and in Popular Music

Breathing

Breathing, Valsalva, mouthpiece position and daily practice collide with received wisdom as trumpet technique is reconsidered from the body outward.

Sluchin, Benny

The Trombone in the Sacred Works of W. A. Mozart

In Mozart’s sacred music, the trombone moved beyond choral reinforcement to striking solo roles that preserve the sound and practice of eighteenth-century Salzburg.

Agrell, Jeffrey

Meir Rimon

Portrait and conversation

Orchestral discipline, solo freedom and an endless appetite for learning shaped Meir Rimon’s horn playing across Israeli, European and American traditions.

Wolf, Werner

A modern corno da caccia

Bach’s highest horn parts expose a divide between historical sound and modern technique, prompting Friedbert Syhre and Ludwig Güttler to rethink the instrument itself.

Mathez, Jean-Pierre

Clément Perrin (1876-1970)

He lived at the turn of the 20th century...

An extraordinary brass life links Belle Époque Algiers, two world wars and Saint-Saëns, with Clément Perrin still performing as solo trumpet at 81.

Holland, Jack

The Pitch Finder

A 1980 attempt to make trumpet intonation mechanical shifts familiar pitch corrections from the embouchure to the fingers, with striking consequences for playing.

Werner, Arno

Johann Ernst Altenburg (1736-1801)

The last representative of the heroic art of the trumpeter and drummer

A trumpeter caught between a fading guild tradition and a changing musical world left a 1795 treatise that became an essential witness to a disappearing art.

Ioannides, Gerassimos

Mantzaros Philharmonic Society

Corfou, Greece

A Corfu musical society founded in 1890 connects European influence, amateur tradition and a trumpet school that trained some 1,200 players.

Mathez, Jean-Pierre

Editorial

A Midsummer Night's Dream

A ghostly Arban returns in 1984 to find virtuosity thriving, instruments transformed and a brass world whose progress leaves its greatest pedagogue strangely displaced.

Hiller, Albert

The trumpet in the north German postal service of the 19th century

For forty years, northern German postilions exchanged the familiar post-horn for trumpets, turning postal signals into an unexpected echo of military practice.

Aitken, Thomas

John Fletcher

Is Big Always Beautiful?

As brass instruments grew larger and louder, John Fletcher saw something being lost: the individual voice, clarity and character that make a player heard.

Mathez, Jean-Pierre

Science in the service of music

Interview with René Périnelli

Where trumpet teaching once relied on intuition, René Périnelli and Jean-Jacques Greffin brought physiology, medical imaging and science into daily practice.

Agrell, Jeffrey

Interview with Thomas Müller

The natural horn is not a retreat into the past: Thomas Müller argues that its demands on sound, technique and awareness can broaden a modern player’s craft.

Laplace, Michel

Maurice Ravel and the new trombone

Dance-band trombonists reshaped orchestral expectations in the 1920s and 30s, leaving their mark on Ravel’s Boléro and a generation of players.

Laplace, Michel

The Trumpet and the Cornet in Jazz and Popular Music

Special jazz techniques

Vibrato, half-valves, growls and shakes lead to a larger argument: jazz transformed trumpet technique, yet its contribution remained strikingly undervalued.

Trichet, Pierre

On hunting horns and other similar instruments

From Pierre Trichet’s Traité des Instruments de Musique (c. 1640)

Hunting horns, buccinae and cornets blur into one another as Trichet links ancient signals, shepherds, hunters and myth to the instruments of his own age.

Agrell, Jeffrey

Jazz and the Horn

Tom Varner

Choosing jazz over the orchestral path, Tom Varner confronts the horn’s stiffness, projection and unlikely place as a front-line improvising voice.

Mathez, Jean-Pierre

Paolo Longinotti (1913-1963)

His career

A virtuoso of Ansermet’s orchestra, piccolo-trumpet pioneer and mentor to Maurice André, Longinotti’s brilliance was matched by a devastating final chapter.

Mathez, Jean-Pierre

Editorial

Colour enters Brass Bulletin as its fiftieth issue approaches, while Jean-Pierre Mathez reflects on continuity, readers and a magazine still evolving.

Laplace, Michel

Edna White

A Woman and a Life in the Service of the Trumpet

At a time when the cornet still ruled, Edna White made the trumpet a solo voice, building a career across concert halls, radio, recordings and new repertoire.

Gorovoj, Sergej

Some ways of improving the development of the lips in brass players

Brass players borrow from sports medicine as Soviet electrical stimulation, acupuncture and massage test new ways to build endurance and restore overworked lips.

Mathez, Jean-Pierre

Special Hungary

Editorial

Hungary’s brass world emerges as a cultural force, where organisation, international exchange and musical ambition turn national vitality into lasting connections.

Mathez, Jean-Pierre

Special Hungary

Barcs 1984

First International Brass Ensemble Competition

A small Hungarian town became a testing ground for brass chamber music, where young ensembles showed how quickly the discipline was coming of age.

Dokschidser, Timofey · Jones, Philip · Mertens, Théo

Special Hungary

International Trumpet Competition, Budapest 1984

Budapest 1984 exposed a striking gap between technical brilliance and musical maturity, while three leading trumpeters challenged what competitions truly reward.

Mathez, Jean-Pierre

Special Hungary

Studying music in Hungary

Music education, secure jobs and modest salaries shaped a Hungarian brass culture where exceptional training coexisted with striking economic realities.

Mathez, Jean-Pierre

Special Hungary

National Hungarian Music Center

In 1980s Budapest, one building brought rehearsal rooms, publishers, record labels, concert organisers and musicians together at the heart of Hungarian musical life.

Varasdy, Frigyes

Special Hungary

Brass Chamber Music in Hungary

Ancient horns, military signals and postwar ensembles meet in a Hungarian brass tradition shaped as much by education and composers as by performers.

Mathez, Jean-Pierre

Special Hungary

The most beautiful instruments of the National and Military Museums

Budapest’s museum collections bring together Roman and Baroque trumpets, ceremonial instruments and military imagery, preserving sounds and symbols across centuries.

Sluchin, Benny

Michel Becquet

Interview

A young Michel Becquet challenges orchestral habits, champions the trombone as a solo voice and reflects on competitions, repertoire, teaching and sound.