The History of Brass Band Music

Grimethorpe Colliery (UK Coal) Band
Conductor: Elgar Howarth
Soloist: Richard Marshall
Doyen Recordings: CD160
Total Playing Time: 79.53

~ Buy with 4barsrest shopping

Following the release of this review, the producers of the CD forwarded 4BR their repsonse. You can read this in full. read...

Unquestionably, the Millennium Dome at Greenwich in London is a truly wonderful architectural structure; a free standing, visually stunning monument to ingenuity and glorious ambition. It is also a structure that sums up all the inherent problems that result when brilliant ambitions meet the realities of institutionalised bureaucracy. It was a great idea ruined by too many meddling fingers.

It may seem a little churlish therefore to use the analogy to compare "The History of Brass Band Music" to the £1 billion tent on the Thames, but after careful consideration, the two projects could well suffer the same fate. The CD is a quite fantastic idea - an unique opportunity to finally produce the definitive compendium of the musical history of our movement, but just like the Dome, the difference between the concept and the reality suffers through too many good intentions gone to waste.

The list of those actively involved in bringing this first CD to print reads like a veritable who's who of the great and good of the banding world - from Elgar Howarth and Bram Gay to Nicholas Childs, Paul Hindmarsh and the Grimethorpe Colliery (UK Coal) Band themselves. The intention is to bring the listener a series of six releases that cover all aspects of our musical history; The Salvation Army Connection, The Early Years (1850 - 1920), The Modern Era (1970 - 2000), Classical Arrangements, New Adventures, and this release subtitled "The Golden Era" (1920 - 1970). The contributors have enthusiastically embraced the idea to such an extent that at least one of them has described as, "will be the bible of brass band music for colleges and universities." Howarth himself is a little less hyperbolic, but in his preface states, "My hope is that the completed set will provide both a comprehensive though inevitably incomplete perspective of approximately 150 years of musical development."

And this is where the problems begin - for a project that has such an ambition, the "History of Brass Band Music" has got off to an immensely flawed start, and one that it may find impossible to rectify.

The major fault line lies not with the CD itself - the playing and the quality of this individual release is excellent, but with the lack of readily transparent joined up thinking to make such an immense undertaking make coherent sense. Why for instance does such as major project start with a release that covers the period 1920 - 1970, and why is it so described as "The Golden Era"? It's as if Winston Churchill started his "History of the English Speaking Peoples" at the end of the First World War and ended it with the England football teams defeat at the Mexico World Cup; it just doesn't make any sense, because no one explains why.

Howarth himself states that the period has been chosen "for convenience sake", whilst there is no further mention to why the 50 years in question merit such a title. Professor Trevor Herbert makes no mention of it in his standard reference book, "The British Brass Band", whilst Arthur Taylor in his "Brass Bands" (the foreword of which is given by Howarth himself) states it as covering the period 1860 – 1900. Other works by Geoffrey and Violet Brand, Alf Hailstone and Taylor again in his "Labour and Love" make no mention of such a musical geological strata.

You get the impression that someone, somewhere has decided that the reason why, is purely financial - these are popular test pieces which hopefully will therefore sell well enough to justify the recording of the less commercial releases in the series. It's a bit like those magazines you see on the television for "The Complete Star Trek Collection" and the like - buy the first in the series with free model of Captain Kirk and build up you collection month by month until you get the whole Star Ship Enterprise and crew (including the characters you either didn't like or didn't know) six years later.

The muddled thinking continues with the sleeve notes. Bram Gay provides entertaining, personal mini portraits of the composers and the test pieces, which are unfortunately completely out of context with the overall aims and objectives of the release. This is certainly not his fault (these are personal accounts and descriptions) and as always he writes with lucidity and wit, but there is the strong feeling that a none too strong editorial hand has been at work to try and temper his contribution to compliment the initial aims of the project. For instance, Cyril Jenkins is dismissed within a sentence with the terse, "Surprisingly little is known of the composer of the test pieces set at the Crystal Palace Championships of 1919 and 1921." That's not surprising when they get the year of his birth wrong (by this account he was 15 years old when he wrote "Coriolanus"), but it is compounded by any lack of insight or explanation about "Life Divine" itself. "A hinge work" states Howarth - indeed, but why?

Given that it is hoped that music colleges, universities and other learned institutions may one day use these recordings as reference works, you wonder how on earth any student will pass any exams by using this release to help them. The playing of Grimethorpe and the direction by Elgar Howarth would gain a First at the best Oxbridge College, but the written thesis would struggle to get a "Desmond" from an old Polytechnic.

The CD presented the opportunity to provide comprehensive notes about each of the five pieces and the composers, as well as give thought and explanation to why each is deemed of such importance - in this form it is a huge opportunity lost. Even some basic research would have found out that Jenkins was born in Swansea on 9th October 1889, whilst the insert to explain the composer thoughts about his inspiration to "Life Divine" can be found in the programme notes to the 1963 British Open Championships (the last time it was used). The same faults are displayed with the other pieces - most notably "Spectrum" the other "hinge" work according to Howarth, which gets all of two cursory paragraphs. The notes bring us nothing that we don't already know about the works – a huge disappointment given what this series is aiming to achieve.

"The History of Brass Band Music" - "The Golden Era" as a stand alone CD a very fine recording. The playing from Grimethorpe is sparkling, whilst the performances are moulded beautifully by Elgar Howarth in a style that reflects yet does not mirror what would we have expected if they were performed in their own historical time frame.

The pity is that for all his vision and great intentions for giving the brass band movement the definitive aural reference collection, his great project may have been fatally undermined by people who could quite
free themselves from the straight jackets imposed by bureaucratic thinking.

W can only hope that some strong directional leadership now takes over this project to deliver a final musical reference work that will stand the test of time. Starting at the beginning and working forward chronologically would make sense, as would programme notes that develop into a comprehensive essay on the works, the composers, and their places in the development of brass band music and the movement as a whole. It can be done - if it doesn't it would a great shame to look back at this box set in the same way most people now look back at the Millennium Dome - a great looking edifice that was never filled with anything that made any sense.

Iwan Fox

Following the release of this review, the producers of the CD forwarded 4BR their repsonse. You can read this in full. read...

~ Buy with 4barsrest shopping

^back to top