The British Brass Band
Several projects have been devoted to, or include investigations into topics relating to, the British brass band. The British brass band originated as a mass working-class amateur activity in the mid-nineteenth century. By the start of the twentieth century, it had a standard instrumentation and a clearly defined musical idiom. Through the twentieth century a repertoire developed that centred on contest test-pieces. Contests were critically important to brass bands because they raised standards and gave occasion for regular congregations of band players; thus the standard musical idiom of the brass band was further galvanised. During the twenty-first century the British brass band model has been imitated in several European countries and the USA. Developments in the southern hemisphere, particularly in Australia and New Zealand, have origins that stretch back to the nineteenth century.
Trevor Herbert, ‘Chapter 1, Nineteenth-Century Bands: Making a Movement’, from The British Brass Band (Oxford University Press, 2000)
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