The Structure of brass ensembles in Lithuania: tradition or pragmatism?

ENHistorical sources mention that academic wind and percussion instruments were widely used in the army of the Great Duchy of Lithuania as well as in the palace of the Grand Dukes at the end of the 14th and the beginning of the 15th centuries. Brass instruments became extremely popular in the Baroque period. Jesuits organized elaborate feasts of Corpus Christi in Vilnius as well as in Kražiai and Pašiaušė with singers and orchestras. The majority of Catholic churches and brotherhoods had their own brass and percussion instruments: usually two trumpets, two French horns and two kettledrums. Brass bands as an echo of the nobleman’s large wind instrument orchestras started to play at the weddings of rich village people approximately in the middle of the 19th century. The popularity of brass overwhelmed Lithuania, and especially the Samogitia region, in the first half of the 20th century. During that time not only military regiments and various societies had such bands, but also villages. A brass band could be of highly varying compositions, from four to nine or more musicians, but different sources point out that a village brass band needed at least five members. The instruments most often played were: two cornets (clarinets, trumpets), the althorn (baritone), baritone (tenor), bass (tuba, helicon). In the second half of the 20th century, the number of musicians in brass ensembles started to decrease. Musicians explained that it is possible to fit no more than four men with instruments into one car to go to a funeral. Now only three (or sometimes two) musicians play at the night vigil. According to them, people are not able to pay for more musicians. In this article I will review the composition of brass ensembles from the earliest mentions of them to this day. I will try to answer the question of whether and to what extent practicality influences and changes traditional composition and music making.This article examines the change and continuity of the structure of brass ensembles in Lithuania from the 19th century to the present day. The article aims to answer the question of which factors have influenced the survival of brass music - whether they are tradition or pragmatic criteria - and in doing so I will draw on historical documents and archival sources and provide an overview of the size and instrumentation of these ensembles. From the second half of the 19th century to the 20th century, ensembles of four to six people were especially popular in villages in northwestern Lithuania, in the region of Samogitia. The author’s ethnographic material collected across Samogitia confirms this claim. At the turn of the 21st century, brass ensembles decreased in size due to various practical, political and economic factors. However, the evidence from recent field work shows that pragmatic reasoning may not only have contributed to the downfall of tradition, but also to its regeneration. The term brass ensemble refers to a musical group generally, especially when the size is unknown or there are only two to three musicians. In the folk tradition four to five or more musicians composing an ensemble were labelled a brass band, and therefore this is the predominant term in the article for groups of four to seven or more people. The term orchestra is reserved for professional, military and amateur brass bands of 14–19 people or more. [From the publication]

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