The History of Brass Band Music - The Early Years (1850 - 1920)

Grimethorpe Colliery (UK Coal) band
Conductor: Elgar Howarth
Soloist: Richard Marshall
Doyen Recordings: CD162
Total Playing Time: 79.53

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This glorious CD from Elgar Howarth and Grimethorpe Colliery (UK Coal) Band forms the third part of the ambitious series of six releases, that will eventually complete an anthology that Howarth hopes will become the standard academic research collection of the history of the movements musical output.

It is a project that will take time to complete, but following on from the initial ‘The Golden Era' which was followed by ‘The Salvation Army Connection', it is building into becoming our movement's equivalent of Jeremy Isaac's indispensable ‘World at War' series.

It must be remembered that mistakes were made with the initial ‘The Golden Era' production. The written text that accompanied that first release was way below what should have been expected and its poor research and presentation took the shine off what contained top quality performances from the band and the soloist Richard Marshall.

That was rectified in full with the second CD, ‘The Salvation Army Connection' which proved to be a superbly crafted release in all aspects. That CD invigorated the appetite, and Elgar Howarth has more than satisfied out musical taste buds, with this the third in the series. 

If anything, the production values are even higher than the last offering, with the playing of the band reeking of class and the direction from the rostrum bringing an immense amount of musical understanding to the chosen repertoire coupled with an innate sense of historical perspective to the performances themselves.

That is further enhanced by wonderful technical work from Producer Paul Hindmarsh and his experienced team in the lively acoustic of Morley Town Hall, whilst the accompanying written text by Roy Newsome is produced with a love for the subject matter and an accurate eye for the academic.

The music of course, is a sheer delight.

The opening ‘Yorkshire Waltzes' is played by a small group from the band, which include an Eb Clarinet, G Trombone, Ophicleide and two vintage cornets to supplement the more modern instruments of today.  It allows us a fascinating musical glimpse into our history to a time when the very early ‘all brass' bands were finally gestating from their embryonic ‘brass and reed' state, through the addition of more readily affordable instruments from makers such as Higham, Besson, or Hawkes.

This is music from 1856 and the brass band in a final hybrid form – a brass banding archaeopteryx if you like. It is redolent of its time: mannered and full of Victorian reserve, but with an undercurrent of the exciting technical possibilities that were as yet undeveloped.

You can somehow imagine big red necked middle class Yorkshiremen with hands the size of coal shovels, over starched collars and dropped vowels, daintily progressing across a Bradford Town Hall dance floor with a petite young maiden from Brighouse on their arm.  It is an absolute jewel.

It is followed by an other priceless artefact; the great Jean Baptiste Arban's arrangement of ‘Quadrilles', which sees a slightly enlarged group (the inclusion of a tuba) take us forward in time by 20 years to 1876.  This music derives from the ballet, and like the ‘Waltzes' it too has a firm structure, although a slightly more complex inner framework which is brought beautifully to life by the performers and MD.   

Some of the compositional giants of the movement of those early years are remembered too. Alex Owen was a leviathan, whose lifespan (1851 – 1920) amazingly coincides with the beginning and end of the period covered by this release. If ever a historical period of our time can be summed up in a single person, he is it, and his delicate arrangement of the hymn tune ‘Nearer My God To Thee' shows his genius in full.  

Another working class pioneer was George Allen from the North East, whose ‘road march' ‘The Diplomat' recalls a period when brass bands still performed as community icons at the head of processions such as Whit Friday or as the clarion callers to the burgeoning trade union movement in the coal mining areas where he spent his life.  What makes this inclusion even more interesting though is pointed out by Roy Newsome in his notes – the odd musical reference to ‘Three Cheers for the Red, White and Blue', which strikes a strange similarity to a famous old Sousa march. Listen and find out.   

The more complex, and later form of the classic brass band ‘contest march' is brought thrillingly to life with a real romp through ‘BB and CF' by James Ord Hume, whilst a second, later period waltz - this time of a rather more exotic nature, entitled ‘Estudiantina'  (as the Victorians and their future blood relatives in the Franco and Austro-Hungarian Empires headed incestuously to ultimate Armageddon) is played with an assuredness of elegance that is a delight.    

The importance of the operatic world and its music is given its rightful place too; with the short excerpt from ‘William Tell', which includes the famous ‘Gallop' but also some of the ballet music. Meanwhile, Humperdinck's ‘Hansel and Gretel', arranged by the early 20th century version of Gordon Langford, Charles Godfrey is also played with authentic splendour. 

The importance of these types of arrangements cannot be overstated, and formed the central core of contesting performances for nearly 50 years as Godfrey produced no less than 48 arrangements of great, good (and not so good) operatic pieces to be used at the Open, and latterly the Nationals from 1872 onwards. ‘William Tell' was used in this arrangement at the Bacup Contest of 1866, whilst the Humperdick was used at the Open in 1895, two years only after the original was composed.

That finally leaves the two substantial works of the release – both of which are rightly seen as ‘classics'. The first is the cornet solo ‘Pretty Jane', played with a lovely understated sense of musicality by Richard Marshall.

This is the type of ‘Music Hall' feature that the great cornet performers of the time played with a facility that wowed audiences – a theme and variations entitled a ‘Grand Fantasy' (the Victorians were not shy of a bit of hype) based on a simple tune and then increasingly embellished by the pyrotechnics of the age.  Richard Marshall does them all proud.

Finally, the tone poem, ‘Labour and Love' which is seen as the fulcrum contest composition in our movements history, even if its inspiration reads like an episode of an Edwardian working class soap opera! It's style and form is till very much with us today in, unfortunately, far too many ‘test piece by numbers' compositions that have been used at contest in the past 30 yeas or more.  It heralded the likes of ‘An Epic Symphony' ‘Life Divine' and ‘Pageantry', but closed the era that started so naively by those ‘Yorkshire Watlzes'.

It tells us much about how far we have, and have not come, since it was composed that its inclusion here is a masterstroke.  As Roy Newsome himself says; "…(the release) has attempted to demonstrate some of the seeds from which modern brass band repertoire has grown…" Indeed.

As we have said – this is a glorious CD release and one that deserves all the plaudits that we are sure it deserves. On its own it is one of the most important releases of the past couple of years; together with what has gone and what is to come in the series of ‘The History of Brass Band Music', it could well become a part of the most important musical anthology in our history.

Iwan Fox.

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