This book provides a broad overview of the story of brass instruments in western, and, to a lesser extent, non-western, music. Neither the book as a whole, nor any of the individual chapters contained in it, lays claim to being a comprehensive survey of its subject. Indeed, this is the first volume in the Cambridge Companion series to be devoted to a family of instruments rather than a single instrument type. Though it was a close-run decision, we felt that it was most helpful to look at the family of brass as a whole, because, though individual brass instruments have their own special histories, the merits of considering the family – particularly with respect to the way that brass instruments relate to each other – outweigh the benefits of dealing with just individual members of it.

There is probably no other family of instruments which has been more affected by the progress of history, with its attendant social changes, technical inventions and musical fashions. These changes have resulted in each instrument having not one, but several idioms. Such diversities are exemplified by the dilemma of modern performers who, on any day of any week, maybe required to imitate the style of the seventeenth century, the nineteenth century, 1920s Broadway, modern jazz, the Second Viennese school, or play the music of their own time within current parameters of taste and style.