An alta cappella or alta musica (Italian), haute musique (French) or just alta was a kind of town wind band found throughout continental Europe from the thirteenth to the eighteenth centuries, which typically consisted of shawms and slide trumpets or sackbuts. Waits is the British equivalent. These were not found anywhere outside of Europe. [1] [2]
Alta musique in general refers to the "loud music" of instruments like shawms, sackbuts, trumpets, and drums, in contrast to basse musique, the "soft music" of recorders, viols, fiddles, harps, psalteries, and the like. [3] These ensembles first appeared in Europe in the thirteenth century, taken from the ceremonial loud bands of the Arab World, consisting of small shawms, nakers, and other percussion, together with pairs of straight trumpets functioning as something of a cross between drone and percussion. In Europe, these instruments were sometimes augmented by bagpipes and pipe and tabor. [4]
By the fifteenth century, these bands had come mainly to consist of three musicians, two playing shawms and the other a slide trumpet or (later) sackbut, but in the sixteenth century the size gradually increased and the instrumentation became more varied. [3] After about 1500 in Germany, the alta developed into the kind of band that came to be known as Stadtpfeifer (town pipers). [5]
Many English cities in the 1500s had town waits, as did rich individuals and institutions. In 1571, London ordered its waits to play "upon their instruments upon the turret at the Royal Exchange every Sunday and holiday toward the evening" (with winter break, between September and late March, excepted). These may have been London's first regularly scheduled public concerts. [6]
Present-day descendants of this tradition are the Catalan cobla bands, who play music for sardana dancers, and which feature a modern version of the shawm with melodies traditionally played by the tenor member of the family. [3] In addition, in the same Catalonia, specially in Tarragona area, the use of a shorten shawm called "gralla" is used for the human tower "castells" and "cercavila ", an event that takes place in the streets, always festive parade, which involved a variety of elements and Town Hall representatives, including musical (grallers), audio (fireworks) and visual type (giants, dwarfs, costumes, representations of animals or mythological beings or invented, etc.).
There is one surviving composition from the late-fifteenth or early sixteenth century actually titled Alta. It is an untexted piece for three (presumably instrumental) voices by F[rancisco?] de la Torre, in the Spanish manuscript Cancionero de Palacio (E-Mp 2–1–5), and is assumed to be a typical example of the improvisatory style of this ensemble. It sets the popular basse danse tenor La Spagna in long notes with a contratenor in more or less note-against-note motion and a highly decorated fast-moving upper part. [3] Similar cantus-firmus settings from this period, mostly in three parts and in improvisatory style, may also be associated with these bands. Examples include pieces found in MS Trent 87,5 such as Auxce bon youre, Tandernaken, and the setting of the basse danse melody, Je suy povere de leesse. [7] During the sixteenth century, cantus firmus settings gave way to other kind of dances, sometimes improvised and sometimes composed. Music in four parts had become a normal texture by the early sixteenth century, and the bands accordingly increased in size. [3]
Renaissance music is traditionally understood to cover European music of the 15th and 16th centuries, later than the Renaissance era as it is understood in other disciplines. Rather than starting from the early 14th-century ars nova, the Trecento music was treated by musicology as a coda to Medieval music and the new era dated from the rise of triadic harmony and the spread of the contenance angloise style from Britain to the Burgundian School. A convenient watershed for its end is the adoption of basso continuo at the beginning of the Baroque period.
A sackbut is an early form of the trombone used during the Renaissance and Baroque eras. A sackbut has the characteristic telescopic slide of a trombone, used to vary the length of the tube to change pitch, but is distinct from later trombones by its smaller, more cylindrically-proportioned bore, and its less-flared bell. Unlike the earlier slide trumpet from which it evolved, the sackbut possesses a U-shaped slide with two parallel sliding tubes, rather than just one.
The trombone is a musical instrument in the brass family. As with all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player's vibrating lips cause the air column inside the instrument to vibrate. Nearly all trombones use a telescoping slide mechanism to alter the pitch instead of the valves used by other brass instruments. The valve trombone is an exception, using three valves similar to those on a trumpet, and the superbone has valves and a slide.
The trumpet is a brass instrument commonly used in classical and jazz ensembles. The trumpet group ranges from the piccolo trumpet—with the highest register in the brass family—to the bass trumpet, pitched one octave below the standard B♭ or C trumpet.
The cornett, cornetto, or zink is an early wind instrument that dates from the Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque periods, popular from 1500 to 1650.
The shawm is a conical bore, double-reed woodwind instrument made in Europe from the 12th century to the present day. It achieved its peak of popularity during the medieval and Renaissance periods, after which it was gradually eclipsed by the oboe family of descendant instruments in classical music. It is likely to have come to Western Europe from the Eastern Mediterranean around the time of the Crusades. Double-reed instruments similar to the shawm were long present in Southern Europe and the East, for instance the ancient Greek, and later Byzantine, aulos, the Persian sorna, and the Armenian duduk.
The dulcian is a Renaissance woodwind instrument, with a double reed and a folded conical bore. Equivalent terms include English: curtal, German: Dulzian, French: douçaine, Dutch: dulciaan, Italian: dulciana, Spanish: bajón, and Portuguese: baixão.
A multi-instrumentalist is a musician who plays two or more musical instruments at a professional level of proficiency.
The basse danse, or "low dance", was a popular court dance in the 15th and early 16th centuries, especially at the Burgundian court. The word basse describes the nature of the dance, in which partners move quietly and gracefully in a slow gliding or walking motion without leaving the floor, while in livelier dances both feet left the floor in jumps or leaps. The basse danse was a precursor of the pavane as a dignified processional dance. The term may apply to the dance or the music alone.
During the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558–1603), English art and high culture reached a pinnacle known as the height of the English Renaissance. Elizabethan music experienced a shift in popularity from sacred to secular music and the rise of instrumental music. Professional musicians were employed by the Church of England, the nobility, and the rising middle-class.
From medieval times up to the early 19th century, every British town and city of any note had a band of waites. Their duties varied from time to time and place to place, but included playing their instruments through the town at night, waking the townsfolk on dark winter mornings by playing under their windows, welcoming Royal visitors by playing at the town gates, and leading the Mayor's procession on civic occasions. These musical bands were often attired in colourful liveries and in some cases wore silver chains.
Clarion is a name for a high-pitched trumpet used in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. It is also a name for a 4' organ reed stop that produces a high-pitched or clarion-like sound on a pipe organ in the clarion trumpet's range of notes.
The Battle Pavane is an instrumental piece by Tielman Susato which he published in 1551 in alderhande Danserye, a collection of Renaissance dance music.
In the years centering on 1600 in Europe, several distinct shifts emerged in ways of thinking about the purposes, writing and performance of music. Partly these changes were revolutionary, deliberately instigated by a group of intellectuals in Florence known as the Florentine Camerata, and partly they were evolutionary, in that precursors of the new Baroque style can be found far back in the Renaissance, and the changes merely built on extant forms and practices. The transitions emanated from the cultural centers of Northern Italy, then spread to Rome, France, Germany, and Spain, and lastly reached England . In terms of instrumental music, shifts in four discrete areas can be observed: idiomatic writing, texture, instrument use, and orchestration.
The slide trumpet is an early type of trumpet fitted with a movable section of telescopic tubing, similar to the slide of a trombone. Eventually, the slide trumpet evolved into the sackbut, which evolved into the modern-day trombone. The key difference between these two instruments is that the slide trumpet possesses only a single slide joint, rather than the two joints in the U-shaped slide of the sackbut or trombone. There are several types of slide trumpet of different places and eras.
The Concerto Palatino was a wind ensemble and important civic institution in Bologna associated with San Petronio. The band performed morning and evening concerts in the city.
Tower music is a musical performance from the top of a tower. It can also designate the music composed for or played in such a performance.
The Three Equals for four trombones, WoO 30, are three short equals for trombones by Ludwig van Beethoven.
William Dongois is a French brass player with a focus on the cornett.
In the hall it was haute musique, itself divided between musica alta for wind bands and basse musique for soft instruments accompanied by voices.
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