Description
The History and Literature of the Wind Band and Wind Ensemble, volume 6
One of the most amazing accomplishments of contemporary music publication. — Wolfgang Suppan, Internationale Gesellschaft zur Erforschung und Forderung der Blasmusik, Mitteilungsblatt, Nr. 15, Marz, 1985.
This History and Literature of the Wind Band and Wind Ensemble will remain for a long time the principal source for the ultimate study of the literature of wind instruments. — Giovanni Ligasacchi, “Quattro Secoli di Storia La Letteratura degli Stromenti a Fiato,” Brescia Musica (Italy), Anno V, n. 21, Febbraio, 1990.
A Catalog of Multi-Part Repertoire for Wind Instruments or for Undesignated Instrumentation before 1600 is the sixth volume in Dr. David Whitwell’s ground breaking thirteen-volume History and Literature of the Wind Band and Wind Ensemble series. This volume is a companion to the first two volumes in the series, The Wind Band and Wind Ensemble before 1500 and The Renaissance Wind Band and Wind Ensemble. Whitwell’s meticulous scholarship reveals the continuous history of the wind ensemble, from its earliest roots to the nineteenth century — an unbroken tradition of wind music that music scholars have never been fully able to appreciate until now. Court, Civic and Church records document the fact that before 1550 the employed instrumentalists were wind players. In the surprisingly large repertoire, in particular the so-called ‘textless’ manuscripts represented by this volume, one can hear the wind ensemble in the earliest period when players began to play from the written page. One finds here already a high level of musicality.
All earlier efforts stand in the shade of this undertaking … Whitwell’s great undertaking presents not only an abundance of new material, which belongs to the literature of anyone interested in wind music but also creates a new dimension for discussion by musicologists. One can not thank Whitwell enough. — Wolfgang Suppan, Oesterreichische Blasmusik, Nr. 5, 1983.
