The social and economic changes of the nineteenth century led to an unprecedented development of a wider musical public in the Western world, a cultural ‘democratisation’ that was a factor of significant changes in musical tastes and idioms. This development, and comparable technological and manufacturing advances, produced a series of watersheds in the design, production and distribution of brass instruments. In mid-nineteenth-century Europe, the ascendancy of the military band as a primary symbol of state, and the phenomenon of the working-class amateur, brought brass instruments unprecedented popularity. This chapter will outline how, in this time of change, inventors and manufacturers, pioneer players, composers and the wider musical public interacted. In this context, the beginnings of the evolution of different types of brass ensembles, that happened in fits and starts, will be identified and discussed.

Preceding the introduction of instruments with mechanised means of obtaining chromaticism (keyed and then valved brass instruments), more traditional (natural, hand-stopping and slide) instrumental techniques shaped music for small groups of brass instruments, until sophisticated design and manufacturing procedures made valved instruments dominant.

Trombone ensembles had strong precedence, accompanying the human voice in sacred music, and in instrumental music; Schütz’s Lamentatio Davidis (Fili mi, Absolon) and Tiburtio Massaino’s Canzona for eight trombones (1608) are notable examples. Ludwig van Beethoven wrote Three Equali for four trombones in 1812, as a personal gift to Franz Xaver Glöggl, the kapellmeister of Linz cathedral. The short pieces came to be widely known in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, fundamentally because of their role in the composer’s own funeral in 1827. Alexander McGrattan traces English performances of Seyfried’s Miserere settings of the first and third pieces at the Birmingham Music Festival in 1829, and at the Norwich Festival in 1936. Anton Bruckner composed two equali later, in 1847, but the Beethoven pieces are the only familiar examples of this genre.

In a strive to achieve measures of chromaticism, performance on other brass instruments experienced substantial change, through innovative playing techniques, invention of mechanical devices to alter pitch and the ingenuity of players and composers.

By juxtaposing ‘natural’ instruments (that play solely the notes of the harmonic series), pitched in more than one key, composers could construct amalgamated melodies and harmonies. This has a remarkable precedent.