 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Brian Peterson
Date: 2002-12-16 18:33
Just listened to a fine rendidtion of Dvorak performed by the Hanover Band.
I've been curious for a long time, but have never gotten around to asking anyone until now. Why the designation "band" when to my ear they sound like an orchestra?
BP
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Author: Nick
Date: 2002-12-16 20:19
Sorry, which Dvorak piece are you talking about?
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Author: liquorice
Date: 2002-12-16 21:03
The term "orchestra" was not always applied to large ensembles, even up to the 19th centruy. As an ensemble specializing in "period" interpretations, they probably didn't want to give themselves a 19th century title. That's my guess anyway!
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Author: Ken Shaw
Date: 2002-12-16 21:21
Brian -
The word "band" meant "group" before it meant "a group of wind and percussion players." Think of "Robin Hood and His Band of Merry Men."
Think of the 3rd verse of The Star Spangled Banner. Francis Scott Key was writing about the soldiers, not the fife-and-drum corps.
And where is the band
Who so vauntingly swore,
'Mid the havoc of war
And the battles confusion,
A home and a country
They'd leave us no more?
Their blood has wash'd out
Their foul footstep's pollution.
No refuge could save
The hireling and slave
From the terror of flight
Or the gloom of the grave;
And the star-spangled banner
In triumph doth wave
O'er the land of the free
And the home of the brave.
(And now you also know why the 3rd verse of the SSB is never sung.)
The ensemble was formed as the Hanover Wind Band. See http://www.orchestranet.co.uk/hanover.html. When it added strings, they built on the established name.
Besides, using "band" instead of "orchestra" gives an olde-timey feel appropriate to the music and reproductions of period instruments they play.
Best regards.
Ken Shaw
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Author: Don Berger
Date: 2002-12-16 21:42
Very well said/explained, Ken, I had figured out some, but not all. The Star S B was a surprise, TKS, Don
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Author: Mitch K.
Date: 2002-12-17 03:19
There's a third verse to the Star Spangled Banner? It's sort of odd that in all of my studies, especially on American History, no one ever pointed that out.
Thanks,
Mitch King
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Author: Willie
Date: 2002-12-17 05:37
Ironic too is that the melody was plagerized from the attacking force, the Brittish. Probably because Francis Key was watching the ordeal from the deck a British ship and may have heard them sing the "Anacreon Society" song earlier in the day.
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Author: beejay
Date: 2002-12-17 11:56
George Bernard Shaw usually referred to orchestras as bands in his music criticism.
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Author: Bob
Date: 2002-12-17 12:36
....and the "Star Spangled Banner" ,historically speaking, is a rather new National Anthem. Who recalls when it was made so and what it replaced?
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Author: Dee
Date: 2002-12-17 16:27
Actually Francis Scott Key only wrote the words to "The Star- Spangled Banner". He never set it to music at all but wrote it as a poem only. It wasn't set to music until about century later. It just happened to fit nicely to an existing melody.
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Author: Larry Liberson
Date: 2002-12-17 16:43
Actually Dee, he wrote the new words (that we know as the Star Spangled Banner)to the melody of a well-known drinking song (as Willie mentioned above). The Library of Congress has an 1814 printing (from a Baltimore printer) of the words and music together in their collection.
What happened more than a century later was that Congress finally proclaimed it to be our national anthem.
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