Tower music


Tower music is a musical performance from the top of a tower. It can also designate the music composed for or played in such a performance.
In the early European Middle Ages, musical instruments on towers were used to warn of danger and mark the passage of time. At first this was done by a tower watchman, later by ensembles of instrumentalists employed by the city. The music became more choral, and came to by played on specific days of the week, and to mark specific dates. The practice largely died out in the late 19th century, but was revived in the early twentieth, and continues to this day. Modern tower music is often played by volunteers.
The tower used would often be a church tower, but the tower or balcony of a civic building might also be used.
The instruments had to be audible to someone not on the tower. This eliminated the quieter instruments, leaving the louder instruments. Apart from bells, natural trumpets, slide trumpets, trombones, shawms, bagpipes, and drums were used.
Music was written specifically to be played from towers, but other works could also be used. Alta capella musicians playing the tower music would generally also perform in processions and ground-level outdoor events, and in some cases would also perform indoors.

History

Many English cities in the 1500s had town waits, as did rich individuals and institutions. In 1571, London ordered its waits to play “upon their instruments upon the turret at the Royal Exchange every Sunday and holiday toward the evening.”. These may have been London’s first regularly scheduled public concerts. London's waits also played from its walls.
These civic wind bands of town pipers had been a feature of larger German towns and cities since well before the beginning of the sixteenth century, similar to the employment of waits with their sackbuts and shawms in England. Martin Luther, one of the chief figures of the Reformation, encouraged music-making in the service of God, and by around 1570 town councils were employing musicians specifically to take part in church services to supplement the organ playing.
One of the most popular forms of outdoors public music-making in the 17th century in Germany and central Europe was tower music, organised by the town piper or tower master. He and his band of musicians, also called Stadtpfeifer played music for loud and penetrating wind or brass instruments from church towers and town hall balconies.
Generations of the Bach family in Erfurt filled the office of Stadtpfeifer or Ratsmusiker. By 1600 Halle, Dresden, Berlin, Cologne, Stettin, Nordhausen and even Eisenach with only 6,000 inhabitants, all had 'Stadpfeifers', whose job it was to sound the hours in the days before striking clocks were common in towers and churches. They started around 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning to start the working day, sounded the mid-morning break around 10 o'clock and the afternoon break around three or four o'clock in the afternoon. Finally, at around 9 or 10 o'clock, there was an Abendsegen, or evening blessing. Well known pieces by and for 'Stadtpfeifer' include Johann Schein's Banchetto musicale and Samuel Scheidt's Ludi Musici.
File:Matthäikirche Leipzig 1749 Foto H.-P.Haack.JPG|thumb|left|The Neukirche (New Church

Musical pieces

Pieces named "Tower music"