Instrument family

One speaks of an instrument family when a type of musical instrument is built in several sizes or layers.

Renaissance

In the Renaissance there were numerous families of instruments, each of which was developed from the treble (soprano) in several intermediate stages to the bass or even lower and sometimes also in positions above the soprano. The individual layers are usually referred to as follows:

• Sopranino
• Soprano or treble
• Old
• tenor
• bass
• Great bass

There are no uniform names for the highest position. A corresponding recorder is called a garklein . The names of the positions below the large bass recorder are also inconsistent, one finds the names double bass, subbass and subcontrabass.

Instrument families in the Renaissance period:

• Wind instrument families :
  • Recorders
  • Flutes
  • Common horns
  • Shawms
  • Pomerania
  • Whistling
  • Screaming whistles
  • Crooked horns
  • Cornamuses
  • Kortholte
  • Sordune
  • Rankette
  • Dulcians
  • Prongs
  • Trumpets
• String instrument families :
  • Violins
  • Viols
  • Rebecs
  • Liren (with Lira da Braccio and Lira da Gamba )

Michael Praetorius documented the instrument families of the Renaissance in his work " Syntagma musicum " (1619).

Most instrument families died out after the Renaissance. From the remaining families only individual representatives were taken over into the baroque instruments .

present

The development of today's instrument families began in the Baroque era, beginning with the violin family, and was essentially complete at the end of the 19th century. Today, a distinction is made between the following families of instruments, which are used in symphony orchestras , wind orchestras and big bands and are also referred to as standard instruments :

• Violin family: violin , viola , violoncello , double bass (the origin of the double bass, however, is controversial, it is sometimes assigned to the viols )
• Family of Oboe: Oboe , English Horn ,
• Family of clarinets: clarinet , clarinet, basset horn , bass clarinet
• Family of saxophones  : baritone, tenor, alto, soprano and sopranino saxophone
• Bow horn family : flugelhorn , alto horn, tenor horn / baritone horn / euphonium , tuba
• With the trombones , the one tuned in “B” is the normal version as a tenor trombone . If it is equipped with one or even two valves , it is often referred to as a bass trombone , although the main tube length without valve is the same as the tenor trombone. The E-flat alto trombone, on the other hand, is shorter, the rare B flat soprano trombone even shorter. Sometimes this is also referred to as a slide trumpet because of the same pitch and similar sound.
• The trumpet is made in many different pitches. The lowest version as a bass trumpet is blown by trombonists in orchestral practice.
• Among the flutes there are also alto and even tenor instruments, but these are not common enough to be known as an instrument family

Bassoon family: bassoon, contrabassoon The less frequently used instruments in a family are also called secondary instruments .

The Sarrusophon , also built as a family in the 19th century , never caught on.

With the increasing interest in early music for several decades, Renaissance instruments are again being built in whole families (see above Renaissance), which means that these instrument families are present again alongside the instrument families of today.