Page:A Dictionary of Music and Musicians vol 4.djvu/481

Rh head towards the castle so terrified the Welsh that they instantly fled. In honour of the event the earls of Chester received the title of 'patrons of the minstrels.' This dignified title had however no influence whatever upon the progress of music, but merely perpetuated some useless public ceremonies once a year, down to the end of last century. But in Germany it was different. There the first guild at Vienna was imitated during the next two centuries by most of the large Imperial towns, who established regular bands of 'townpipers,' or 'townmusicians,' under the leadership of the 'Stadtpfeifer,' who had to provide all 'musics' at civic or private festivities. Wandering musicians were strictly prohibited from playing within the boundaries of the corporation. In some towns the number of musicians was regulated according to the importance of the occasion, or the rank of the family requiring a band. The 'full band' could only officiate on civic state occasions, or in connection with religious festivals. An alderman could only employ a reduced number; and if at a citizen's wedding more than from four to six pipers were employed, both the Stadtpfeifer and the offending citizen were mulcted in a fine. Kettledrummers and trumpeters dared not perform except at a nobleman's requisition; the lowest rank of the social scale who could indulge in this luxury being a doctor-at-law. Although the town bands had as yet but poor instrumentation, consisting mostly of fifes, flutes, schalmey, bombard (a sort of tenor or bass oboe), zinken (or cornetti, horns similar in shape to a cow's horn, with six holes, and played on a mouth-piece like that of a brass instrument), bagpipes, viols and drums,—yet they are the first germs from which modern bands originated.

In the year 1426 the Emperor Sigismund granted as 'an act of special grace' to the town of Augsburg the privilege of maintaining a corps of 'towntrumpeters and kettledrummers,' a grant extended during the next century to most other free towns; yet it does not seem that the results, in a musical sense, were of such importance as we might expect.

In the pieces written for a band, which date from about three centuries ago and have been preserved to our time, we find a strange habit of keeping different classes of instruments separate. Flutes, reed instruments, trumpets, and hunting-horns, were mostly treated as forming distinct bands. Louis XIV entrusted Lully with the organisation of certain regimental bands, which were to form a part of the regular army. Before that time the great officers commanding in the field engaged music, if they wanted it, at their own expense. These bands consisted at first of oboes (in four parts—treble, alto, tenor and bass, or bassoon) and regimental drums. The following march is one of the many written by Lully, the notation being that given by Kastner.