Changes in instrumentation

Presentism is a constant risk for students of music history. For lack of imagination or knowledge, it’s easy enough to assume that the way that we do things now is the way they always were; in this way, the researcher can unintentionally impose their own worldview on the past. Musical instruments offer a great opportunity to spot such assumptions. Almost every instrument that we play today has a historic ancestor which differed from it in important ways, and these differences affected both the sound of the instrument and the ways that people created music on them. The following essay sketches major changes in Western instruments in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Keyboard instruments in the home and elsewhere. In 1700, the most common European keyboard instrument was the harpsichord, which used a set of mechanical picks to pluck strings whenever a key was pressed. Like the guitar, the harpsichord used elaborate passagework to compensate for its inability to sustain notes; it also could not produce a wide variety of dynamic effects. The first direct ancestor of a modern piano was invented by Bartolomeo Cristofori in the early 1700s. The fortepiano (loud-soft) owes its name to its unique ability to produce loud or soft tones depending on the pressure of the player’s fingers. The “piano,” as the instrument came to be known, coexisted with the harpsichord throughout the 1700s, but eventually replaced it as a default instrument in the 1800s. The decline of the harpsichord also corresponds to the decline of continuo playing; the harpsichord’s bright tone could cut through a large ensemble and allow the performer to provide rhythmic and harmonic cues to other players, while the piano’s mellower tone blends with a string ensemble more easily. However, these early pianos still differed significantly from modern pianos in their size and volume; the instrument gradually grew larger and more powerful as it was used with increasingly large orchestras.

Stringed instruments. Despite the general popularity of violins today, they existed in competition with the older viol family. Viols came in various sizes and ranges, typically had up to six strings and were tuned in fourths. They were fretted, which meant that they used a version of equal temperament even before it was broadly accepted. The violin, on the other hand, had four strings, was tuned in fifths, and was unfretted. At first, the violin seems to have been associated with Italian instrument makers (Stradivari, Amati, etc.) and musicians (Arcangelo Corelli, Antonio Vivaldi, etc.). It spread throughout Europe with the migration of Italian musicians and musical standards, gradually displacing the viol. King Louis XIV of France (d. 1715), notably, had an ensemble of twenty-four violins that performed at his court. The viol, however, remained in use throughout the early 1700s, even after large ensembles turned to the violin. The modern double bass, which is tuned in fourths, owes something to both the viol and the violin families. Today, the viol is chiefly played by specialists in historical performance (such as the members of the Viola da Gamba Society of America). The violin, meanwhile, has also undergone significant changes since its origins; few players now use the traditional gut strings.

Brass and wind instruments. These instrument families saw the greatest growth. In 1700, the chief wind instruments available were flutes and oboes; trumpets were the most commonly used brass instrument. The clarinet was invented around 1710, and gradually became an essential element of wind ensembles and orchestras. Trumpets and horns increasingly used keys or valves that gave them the ability to play fully chromatic music, rather than simply relying on the notes which could be played with the mouthpiece alone. The saxophone family was invented in the 1840s by Adolphe Sax, and it survived (unlike many other forgotten instruments) because its inventor was able to secure a contract to provide band instruments to the French army. Meanwhile, historic instruments, such as the serpent, gradually fell from use, and were eventually replaced by the tuba and euphonium.

Instruments in popular culture. The guitar underwent several fascinating transformations in this period. Its old competitor, the lute, added more and more courses, eventually reaching thirteen courses. The lute thus became increasingly difficult to play. The guitar, which generally had no more than six strings, increasingly replaced the lute, especially with amateur performers. By the turn of the 1800s, professional guitarists such as Fernando Sor had emerged, but the guitar never lost its popular and domestic associations, and was rarely treated as a “serious” instrument before the twentieth century. It was portable, easy to learn, cheap, and small (modern acoustic guitars are much larger). Thus the guitar travelled widely. In Spain, it was closely associated with the local Roma population (who were left little option but to live a nomadic lifestyle) and the music that would later be called flamenco. In Mexico, the guitar and its local variants (guitarrón and vihuela) became an essential element of mariachi music. European sailors introduced the machete, a variant of the guitar, to Hawaii, where it morphed into the ukelele. Hawaiian styles of playing the guitar were later exported back to the United States.

Another instrument that never really earned a place in contemporary “art music” was the accordion. A European imitation of the Chinese sheng, the accordion rapidly earned a place in popular culture and folk music, while being almost completely ignored by “serious” composers and musicians. Like the guitar, its portability made it an excellent instrument for sailors. For this reason, a variant of the accordion, the bandoneon, became a defining instrument in the Argentine tango scene, which started in the port district of Buenos Ayres. 

Orchestras, orchestration, and conducting. With all these changes in instruments, ensembles changed too. An early eighteenth-century orchestra typically featured a core of strings supported by continuo instruments such as the harpsichord, with flutes, oboes, and perhaps trumpets. By the century’s end, the clarinet had been added to the orchestra and the continuo was disappearing. By the early nineteenth century, composers for the orchestra could add count on trumpets and drums as a regular presence in the orchestra.

Orchestras also grew increasingly large during the nineteenth century. While an ensemble of 40 players is sufficient for most eighteenth-century works, larger ensembles became increasingly common in the nineteenth century. By the early 1900s, the modern 100-piece orchestra, with its massive string section, was firmly established. Some earlier music, when played by large orchestras, suffers greatly, as balance between string, wind, and brass instruments is greatly out of proportion.

The rise of such large orchestras led musicians to pay increased attention to arranging and orchestration in the nineteenth century. Well-known composers, such as Hector Berlioz (1843)and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1913), wrote treatises on orchestration that are still studied today. With the standardization of orchestras across Europe—a kind of cultural homogenization—it became possible for composers to be far more prescriptive about the types of sounds they wanted. Their demands on the orchestra became increasingly specific—such as up to eight French horns, clarinets in multiple tunings, the use of tubular bells, tam-tams, piccolos, contrabassoons, and multiple harps. Some scores even called for new instruments specifically invented for the occasion, such as the Wagner tuba and the Aida trumpet—a luxury that would have been unthinkable in the eighteenth century.

Conducting also changed in the nineteenth century. Early eighteenth-century conducting often took the form of a continuo player at the harpsichord playing chords with the left hand and providing cues with the right—whether through physical gestures or through playing relevant melodic passages. In music which did not use a keyboard, the head of the violin section typically directed, sometimes using the bow to indicate the beat. Sometimes, especially in France, a musician was employed to beat time, audibly marking the beat with a stick. By the early 1800s, the time-beater had morphed into something like a modern conductor; the conductor’s baton emerged around 1820. As ensembles grew larger, the conductor became an increasingly authoritarian figure.

In summary, instruments and their sound, and the cultures associated with them changed dramatically over the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Many of the instruments that are now commonly used today have been relatively unchanged for the last hundred years. But in the past, there was a dizzying variety of instruments whose very existence is often forgotten by musicians today. They reveal fascinating insights into the changing nature of musical culture.