Baritone horn
The baritone horn, or often simply the baritone, is a valved brass instrument pitched in B♭ in the saxhorn family, employed chiefly in brass, military and concert bands. It has three or sometimes four valves, usually piston valves, although rotary valves are common in Eastern and Central Europe, where it is called the Tenorhorn. The bore is moderately conical, like the E♭ tenor horn and cornet, although narrower than the closely related euphonium and other valved bugles, like the flugelhorn and tuba. It uses a wide-rimmed cup mouthpiece of similar dimensions to trombone and euphonium mouthpieces. Like the trombone and the euphonium, the baritone can be considered either a transposing instrument reading B♭ treble clef, or a non-transposing instrument in bass clef.
In British brass bands, the standard instrumentation includes parts for two baritones, in addition to two euphoniums. In US concert band music there is often a part marked baritone, but these parts are commonly intended for, and played on, the euphonium. A baritone can also play music written for a trombone due to similarities in timbre and range.
Name
The name baritone has been applied to several related valved brass instruments in different places, languages, and times in history, generally pitched in 8-foot C or 9′ B♭ and developed in the 19th century. The euphonium, although similar, has a wider conical bore and larger bell that places it closer to the tuba.Names in other languages include the French saxhorn baryton, from which the modern British brass band instrument was derived, and in Italian, flicorno tenore; flicorno baritono and flicorno basso refer to the euphonium, the basso always having a fourth valve. In Germany, the baritone usually has an oval shape and rotary valves, and is called the Tenorhorn, and Baryton or Baritonhorn refer to a similar instrument but with the euphonium's larger bore and bell size. The American tendency to confuse the baritone and euphonium may have been due to the influx of German musicians and instrument makers to the United States in the 19th century.
File:1894 Lyon & Healy catalog - tenor, baritone, and bass brass instruments.png|thumb|Baritone and euphonium instruments in the 1894 Lyon & Healy catalog|400x400px
The 1894 Lyon & Healy catalog depicts instruments called the B♭ tenor, B♭ baritone, and B♭ bass, with the same pitch and overall three-valve construction and differing only in bore and bell widths.
The American-style baritone, with three piston valves on the front and a curved forward-pointing bell, was dominant in American school marching bands throughout most of the 20th century. This instrument, along with the British-style upright baritone, concert euphonium, and similar-looking cylindrical bore instruments like the trombonium, were almost universally lumped together and labelled baritone by both band directors and composers. Band scores and manufacturers have sometimes treated them as the same instrument.
History
The baritone horn found in British brass bands was derived from the French saxhorn baryton, a lower-pitched member of the family of saxhorns, although bore measurements of historical instruments show it is closer to the baritone saxotromba. These were two families of conical-bore piston valve instruments developed in the 1840s by Adolphe Sax. Other members developed into instruments now common in bands, such as the E♭ tenor horn and the E♭ and B♭ tubas.By the 1850s, Sax had convinced French military bands to use exclusively saxhorns in their bands, giving the instruments one of its first staples in the military field.
Adolphe Sax's saxhorns became standard in bands in Britain and the United States due largely to the Distin family, who helped popularise the British brass band movement, promoting and performing widely on Sax's brass instruments. By 1850 Distin & Co. was manufacturing them in London, and in New York and Pennsylvania by the 1870s after the London business was purchased by Boosey & Co.
In central and eastern Europe, the Baß-Tuba, patented in 1835 by the Prussian military conductor Wilhelm Friedrich Wieprecht and Berlin maker Johann Gottfried Moritz, inspired several related instruments. These eventually utilized rotary valves, and their characteristic oval shape was developed by Václav František Červený in the late 19th century. The equivalent of these to the baritone in bore, bell size, and sound is called the Tenorhorn in German.
Developments in North America
In the US at the start of the American Civil War, there were only a small number of military bands; the few that did exist included the United States Marine Band, the United States Military Academy Band, several Regular Army regimental bands, and bands associated with state militias. The War Department General Order no. 48 issued on 31 July 1861 entitled 2 field musicians per company of soldiers and a band of 16-24 musicians for each regiment. These groups adopted bugles and saxhorns, including B♭ baritones and euphoniums. Over-the-shoulder varieties were frequently employed, as the backward-pointing bell of the instrument allowed troops marching behind the band to more easily hear the music.During the course of the American Civil War from 1861 to 1865, US instrument makers produced tens of thousands of brass instruments, and many have survived in museums. After the war, the bands and their music remained popular, and manufacturing demand for bugles and saxhorns remained strong. From these ensembles and musicians emerged the American drum and bugle corps tradition, standardising on instruments in G by the early 1890s.
By the early 1930s, the narrow bore bass bugle in G used up until then had evolved into the baritone bugle, with a wider bore, pitched in G with a single piston valve that lowered the pitch a fourth into D. Ludwig called theirs the "Baro-tone" bugle. In the following decade, an additional semitone rotary valve was added, then replaced with a second F piston valve as permitted by a rule change in 1967. By 1990, Drum Corps International, the governing body for competitive drum and bugle corps in North America, changed the rules to permit three-valved instruments in any key, not just G. This allowed instruments common in other band movements to be used in the ensemble, including both regular and bell-forward marching versions of B♭ baritones and euphoniums.
The modern instrument
The modern baritone horn was developed in Britain from the French saxhorn baryton. In the 1870s, a three-valve compensation system was developed by David Blaikley, the factory manager at the London-based manufacturer Boosey & Co. He developed a compensating third valve, where its tubing returns the airway through the first two valves a second time, adding smaller tubing loops to rectify intonation. Similar designs were patented earlier, by Gustave Auguste Besson in 1859, and Pierre-Louis Gautrot's système equitonique in 1864. Blaikley's compensation system was the most successful, and has since been in continuous use in Britain, little-changed, on instruments by Boosey & Co., and Besson after their acquisition by Boosey & Hawkes in the mid-20th century. The three-valve system is still made on baritones from Besson, as well as Blaikley's four-valve compensating system found more commonly on euphoniums.Construction
The baritone horn, like the euphonium, is pitched in 9-foot B♭ an octave below the trumpet or cornet. When no valves are in use, the instrument will produce partials of the B♭ harmonic series which result from the vibrating air column within its of tubing.Like the euphonium, the baritone has a predominantly conical bore, but it is narrower, with less expansion of the bell flare and a consequently smaller bell diameter. It has a tighter wrap, and is thus smaller and lighter overall. These characteristics favour higher frequency overtones in the sound, rendering a brighter, more trombone-like timbre than the euphonium. Similar to cornet and flugelhorn, the two instruments are easily doubled by one player, with some adjustment of breath and embouchure, since they have essentially identical range and fingering.
As with other valved brass instruments, the valves each add lengths of tubing to lower the pitch of the instrument and produce a fully chromatic scale and range. Baritones commonly have three top-action piston valves, operated with the first three fingers of the right hand. Some have a fourth valve, generally found midway down the right side of the instrument, and played with the index or middle finger of the left hand. Some may have a fourth top-action valve placed next to the other three, played with the fourth finger of the right hand.
European Tenorhorns mostly have an oval shape and three or four non-compensating rotary valves, operated together by the right hand.
Compensating valves
Many British-style three-valve baritones and some older American instruments have a compensating third valve. These route the tubing of the third valve back through the first two, which add a second set of small correcting lengths of tubing to correct the intonation of the lower notes, e.g. C and B. On premium models, the fourth valve is a compensating valve, resolving intonation and providing range below E.The fourth valve lowers the instrument a fourth, provides an alternate fingering for valves 1+3, and serves the same range-extending function as the F valve attachment on the tenor trombone. Although less common on baritones, its absence is not a defining characteristic.
Performance
The baritone typically forms part of the tenor harmony section of a band, and it can be used to play parts written for the similarly pitched tenor trombone or euphonium.Range
On the baritone, the second partial with no valves actuated is B♭ on the second line of the bass clef. The eighth partial with no valves is concert B♭ in the middle of the treble clef. The E second partial with all three valves actuated is the nominal lowest note on the instrument. Higher notes are possible above B♭ since the upper range is limited only by the fitness of the players' embouchure, although notes above the bell cutoff frequency, around the tenth partial, are difficult to centre and continuous glissandi are possible, making valve fingering largely redundant.The lowest notes obtainable depend on the valve set-up of the instrument. All three-valve instruments are chromatic down to E, and four-valve instruments extend that down to at least C. Non-compensating four-valve instruments suffer from intonation problems in this range and cannot produce low B. These problems are solved with a compensating fourth valve. The pedals, from B♭ down, are the fundamentals of the instrument's harmonic series. They are more difficult to produce on the baritone than the euphonium, due to its narrower bore and smaller mouthpiece. The extent of the lower end of the pedal range depends on the player's emouchure fitness, and the presence of a fourth valve.