Period Instruments
The Vauxhall Band perform concerts on period instruments. This means we play on original (or copies of) historical instruments which were used at the time the music we are performing was composed. These instruments are mostly historical versions of the instruments you’d find in today’s orchestras. But, they require different techniques to play them, and they sound different. This is where things start to get interesting.
By using period instruments from the 18th & 19th centuries, we can hear the actual sounds that composers such as Thomas Arne, William Boyce, Handel, Haydn and Mozart would have had in mind when composing, and begin to understand more about their compositional processes. And we can hear the same sounds that audience members heard when their music was performed for the first time.
In turn, the use of period instruments offers our listeners a musical insight into a sound-world akin to what they would have heard in London in the 18th & 19th centuries, including in the concerts at Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens.
Learn about musicians & their instruments from 18th & 19th century London:
Oboe
W. T. Parke was Principal 2nd Oboist at Vauxhall Gardens from 1779, having previously played the viola and flute there. He became 2nd Oboe at the Drury Lane Theatre from 1777, and Principal Oboe at the Covent Garden Theatre from 1783…
Horn
An eminent soloist, chamber and orchestra member, Italian horn player Giovanni Puzzi became the UK’s most celebrated horn player of the 19th century…
Serpent
Mr Hurworth was a serpent player from Richmond, North Yorkshire who held a post in the Private Band of King George III. It is said that his playing was so virtuosic that he practised flute studies…
Trombone
Considered London’s leading trombonist, Signor Antonio Mariotti played for the prestigious Drury Lane Band at the King’s Theatre (1817-18), the Haymarket Theatre, the Oxford Meeting (1793), on bass trombone in York Minster (September 1825), and countless other concerts throughout the UK…
Picture Credits:
- Oboe. George Astor, London. Date: c 1800. Object ID: BK-2018-16. Rijksmuseum. Public Domain.
- Horn. Pierre Piatet (French, ca. 1796–1868). Purchase, The Howard Bayne Fund Gift, 1977. The Metropolitan Museum.
- Serpent. Purchase, Robert Alonzo Lehman Bequest, 2005, Metropolitan Museum of Art
- Trombone. Classical bass trombone after Johann Joseph Schmied, Pfaffendorf 1785, based on an original from the Historical Museum, Basel. Picture ©️ Adrian France.