The Complexities of Early Instrumentation: Winds and Brass

When a professional orchestra today plays an eighteenth-century work with parts for wind and brass instruments, nothing seems amiss. Yet writers in the eighteenth century and beyond indicate that many notes in these scores could not be played in tune by these instruments; certain notes could be produced only with difficulty or not at all. The present work concentrates on the time period least explored in modern writings - the years before Hector Berlioz's "Grand traite d'instrumentation et ...