Approaches to an Acoustic Taxonomy of Brass Musical Instruments

Scholars of brass musical instruments and curators of museums holding collections of historic brasswind have sought to arrange their material by clxsi cation systems.Some (Hombostel & Sachs 1914) and many general writers on musical instntmenls do not go beyond a division of instrument types into 'conical and cyIindricaI': both concepts have intuitive meaning but remain incapable of satisfactory de nition.Other writers (Cane I939, Tarr 1984) have developed classi cations taking into account bore size, mouthpiece pm le, bell are characteristics do, but still without precise de nition of terms.These broad-brush cIassi cations distinguish satisfactorily between the types of instntment in use before the invention of the valve, but fail to give clear places to new typs such as the comet, the tuba, the saxhorn, and tire bass lrump .