American Brass of the 1800s
Dr. Robert Eliason: Bachelor’s in Music Ed., University of Michigan; Master’s in Performance (tuba), Manhattan School of Music; Doctorate in Musicology, University of Missouri at Kansas City. Careers in performance (Kansas City Philharmonic) and organology (curator of musical instruments, Henry Ford Museum). Publications on American wind instrument makers and on brass instrument history appearing in the AMIS Journal, Galpin Society Journal, The New Harvard Dictionary of Music, and The New Grove Dictionaries. Research on the American keyed bugle and on over a hundred 19th century American brass and woodwind makers.
Bob Eliason began his career with an instrument that first appeared around 1850, the tuba, one of a group of new or improved brass instruments to emerge from an active half century of experimentation and invention. It was the contributions of American brass instrument makers to that productive period that Eliason has studied in depth. His work has added an extensive body of knowledge to music history.
Bob has graciously provided the following:
At the beginning of the century woodwind instruments with keys were far more versatile than brass, since most of the brass instruments could play only the notes of the harmonic series. This limitation had been only partially overcome by using a slide (slide trumpet and trombone), finger holes and keys as on woodwinds (cornetto, serpent, and keyed trumpet), playing in the high register where notes were closer together (horn and clarino trumpet), and hand stopping, stuffing the hand into the bell to alter the pitch enough to get other notes (horn and trumpet). After centuries of little change, the events of the first half of the 19th century revolutionized brass instruments first with the invention of the keyed bugle in 1810, and then by the development of the valve beginning about 1815.
The keyed bugle was the first brass instrument other than the trombone that could easily play all the notes in any key. It was accepted almost immediately into bands of the period, and became the solo voice of those organizations in very short order. By 1821 a whole family of keyed brasses was available, the bass or ophicleide being the most commonly used member of the family after the soprano keyed bugles.
Soon after its invention, the keyed bugle was introduced to this country by Richard Willis who came to direct the West Point band in 1816 and became a popular soloist. By 1821, “Patent Kent Bugles, octave bugles with keys” from Dublin were advertised for sale in this country, and other players had taken up the instrument. Francis Johnson, a black Philadelphia musician encouraged by Willis, became even more famous than his teacher, achieving wide popularity in the United States and traveling with his band to Europe.
Soon American craftsmen began to make keyed bugles and ophicleides. Although Nathan Adams, maker and repairer of chronometers (ships clocks), is known to have made a keyed bugle about 1825, it was Graves & Co. of Winchester, N.H., with the help of an English maker’s son, James Keat, who first made them in commercial quantities about 1837. Henry Sibley, J. Lathrop Allen, E. G. Wright, Thomas D. Paine, and Isaac Fiske followed in the late 1830s, though Sibley made only a few, and all except Graves and Wright soon made only valved instruments. E. G. Wright became the foremost maker of the soloist model E-flat keyed bugle, and made many fine presentation instruments of silver and gold.
Brass instruments with valves were introduced to this country shortly after the keyed bugle, and were made by some of the same early makers. At first they were clumsy and less easily played than the keyed instruments, but by the 1840s instruments with valves began to find places in the brass bands forming rapidly around the country. Several different kinds of valves were tried beginning with the unique inventions of Nathan Adams in the 1820s. In the 1830s Sattler twin piston valves were tried by most of the early American makers, and in the 1840s rotary valves were introduced. Sometime in the late 1840s, J. Lathrop Allen invented his pinched rotary valves which became very popular. Also late in the 1840s the Saxhorns of Adolph Sax began to be imported and copied in this country. These instruments had better proportions, used sturdy Berlin piston valves or rotary valves, came in all sizes, and were very easily played.
American valved brasses were made in a great variety of shapes including over-shoulder, upright, circular, teardrop (Louis Schreiber), and shoulder models (Henry Lehnert). Materials used included brass, copper, German silver, silver, and even gold.
By the 1850s most of the lower instruments in brass bands were valved instruments, and by the 1860s the valved cornet had successfully challenged the keyed bugle for leading soprano voices. By this time a host of American makers were producing valved instruments, and they were also being imported in quantity. The modern piston valve, invented by François Périnet in 1838, began to appear in this country in the 1860s and was dominant by the end of the 1870s.Significant American Brass Makers and Dealers of the 1800s
| John George Klemm | Philadelphia | 1819-1897 |
| Firth & Hall | New York | 1821-1841 |
| Charles G. Christman | New York | 1823-1857 |
| Nathan Adams | New York; Lowell, Mass. | 1824-1835 |
| Graves & Co. | Winchester, NH; Boston | 1824-1870 |
| Henry Prentiss | Boston | 1830-1859 |
| Firth, Hall & Pond | New York | 1833-1847 |
| Henry Sibley | Boston | 1835-1846 |
| John C. Rosenbeck | New York | 1838-1839 |
| J. Lathrop Allen | Sturbridge, Mass.; Norwich, Conn.; Boston; New York | 1838-1868 |
| E.G. Wright | Roxbury, Mass.; Boston | 1839-1871 |
| Joseph Rohé | New York | 1840-1863 |
| Thomas D. Paine | Boston; Woonsocket, R.I. | 1841-1857 |
| Isaac Fiske | Worcester, Mass. | 1842-1888 |
| Jules Lecocq | New York | 1845-1872 |
| Charles A. Zoebisch | New York | 1848-1905 |
| Gotfried Martin | New York | 1852-1884 |
| Christian R. Stark | New York | 1855-1865 |
| William Seefeld | Philadelphia | 1858-1908 |
| John F. Stratton | New York | 1860-1879 |
| Benjamin F. Quinby | Boston | 1861-1884 |
| D. C. Hall | Boston | 1862-1865 |
| Ernst Seltmann | Philadelphia | 1864-1887 |
| Louis Schreiber | New York | 1865-1884 |
| Moses Slater | New York | 1865-1920 |
| Hall & Quinby | Boston | 1866-1880 |
| Henry G. Lehnert | Philadelphia | 1867-1914 |
| John Howard Foote | New York, Chicago | 1864-1880 |
| Boston Musical Instrument Manufactory | Boston | 1869-1919 |
| Charles G. Conn | Elkhart, Ind.; Worcester, Mass. | 1875-1950 |
| Henry Distin | New York, Philadelphia, Williamsport, Pa. | 1877-1909 |
| J. W. York | Grand Rapids, Mich. | 1882-1940 |