NEWCASTLE'S MUSICAL HERITAGE AN INTRODUCTION By ...

playing, coupled with the means of purchasing these instruments and perhaps
the greater availability of printed sheet music, the Brass Band Movement took off
in a big way. Some of the first Brass Bands were established in the North East.
Most collieries, factories, shipyards and other industrial concerns, although
reluctant to become involved at first, eventually took a pride in their band and the
movement generated a great deal of healthy competition subsequently giving rise
to not only local but regional and national band contests. The Brass Band
Movement was popular by definition but made a contribution to art music in that it
created the first mass involvement of working class people in instrumental ‘art’
music. It has always been an awkward union; many classical composers were to
write pieces for brass band ( Gustav Holst was the first in 1928 with his Moorside
Suite) but ‘arty’ musical establishments and serious music lovers kept them at
arms length. They suffered a bit from an image of ‘comic book’ northerness’
although they spread across the length and breadth of the British Isles. However,
brass band contests have raised playing standards, and as well as keeping the
Brass Band Movement alive, have also helped to produce some of the country’s
best orchestral brass players. The movement still survives today even if it has
suffered from the raised standards of the working classes and the many other
preferred ways the younger members now have of spending their leisure time
rather than standing in some draughty hall, dressed in a ‘uncool’ uniform and
doing hours of tedious practice.
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