A brass quintet is a certainly a strange and unexpected grouping! Other instruments need a serious, ritual atmosphere, but the brass go wherever they want! For long years they were looked down on. They were OK for open-air concerts, parades and public meetings – but little else. However, this also meant they were free to try things out, free from the fetters of convention.
Renaissance music for brass rarely had its own language. It was subject to contingency, to availability and to the capricci of the moment. Scores specified the number but not the type of instruments to be used, so adaptation and transcription was the order of the day. The 16^th century term canzona, often used by musicians, is in fact based on the French word for a song – chanson – but the instrumental works of the Venetian composer Giovanni Gabrieli belong to a period when the canzona was no longer bound by this relationship; most of them were original compositions, intended for the sumptuous ceremonies of St. Mark’s Basilica. His canzona entitled La spiritata, dated 1608, is broken up into short sections, as was the habit, each with a different theme, usually using counterpoint. This elaborate play of imitation brings Gabrieli’s canzone close to the “ricercare” form of counterpoint, but it is livelier.
The counterpoint effect typical of the canzona recurs in Samuel Scheidt’s Battaglia, with its series of fanfares. This composition is specifically designed for brass instruments even though string ensembles also played the same type of music.
The sonatas for harpsichord by Scarlatti are another matter altogether, as they have been virtually rewritten in the version for brass. The harmonic instability of the Sonata in E minor K 394, is very modern, with a guitar-like cadenza hinging the first and second sections.
Johann Sebastian Bach’s Art of the Fugue, on the other hand, offers an example of a composition that is not idiomatic, meaning that it could be played not only on the harpsichord, for which it was written, but also on quite different instruments. His Contrapunctus IX is a double fugue (though the collection boasts triple and even quadruple fugues!), showcasing the composer’s outstanding mastery of counterpoint.
Händel, born in 1685, the same year as Bach and Scarlatti, offers a transcription of the well-known air with variations, popularly known as The Harmonious Blacksmith. Other transcriptions are by Grieg, Mendelssohn, Elgar. España (1897), Albeniz’s transcription, relives Spanish folk music like in a dream, without actually citing popular songs.An original for brass is the Quintet no. 3 by the Russian composer Victor Ewald, one of the most interesting composers for these instruments in the well-known group straddling the 19^th and 20^th centuries. Ewald remains true to the Austrian-German tradition, without raising too many language questions; his pieces are fresh and pleasing. This agile Quintet has a particularly inventive melody line.

Luca Segalla