Brass Instrument Metal Working Techniques: The Bronze Age to the Industrial Revolution

Abstract

In this article I will describe historical and current metalworking techniques used in brass instrument making. I will discuss the development of each of these techniques in chronological fashion, independently from the development of the instruments themselves. Of several important studies in this area, I wish to draw particular attention to the article of Robert Barclay in Studia Organologica, in which the author describes very succinctly the techniques used in the making of Nuremberg trumpets in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. To investigate the metalworking techniquesof past ages, we may draw upon several sources. From the earliest times, we have more than just artifacts and excavations to examine. Descriptions and illustrations in hieroglyphs and on antique Greek painted vases can help to give us insight into the development of metallurgy (Figs. 1,2a, 2b).