The History and Literature of the Wind Band and Wind Ensemble: A Catalog of Multi-Part Repertoire for Wind Instruments or for Undesignated Instrumentation before 1600

A Catalog of Multi-Part Repertoire for Wind Instruments or for Undesignated Instrumentation before 1600 is the sixth volume in Dr. David Whitwell’s ground breaking thirteen-volume History and Literature of the Wind Band and Wind Ensemble series. This volume is a companion to the first two volumes in the series, The Wind Band and Wind Ensemble before 1500 and The Renaissance Wind Band and Wind Ensemble. Whitwell’s meticulous scholarship reveals the continuous history of the wind ensemble, from its earliest roots to the nineteenth century - an unbroken tradition of wind music that music scholars have never been fully able to appreciate until now. Court, Civic and Church records document the fact that before 1550 the employed instrumentalists were wind players. In the surprisingly large repertoire, in particular the so-called ‘textless’ manuscripts represented by this volume, one can hear the wind ensemble in the earliest period when players began to play from the written page. One finds here already a high level of musicality.