Ladies with Brass - A to Z

 

Musical fads come and go, depending on the public's fickle penchant for new things. This postcard of the Damen-Trompeter-Corps „Ariosta“, directed by Herr E. Behncken, was once a type of musical ensemble that everyone recognized because they had heard one at their local music hall, beer garden, or city park bandstand. The six women and four men who played in this brass band were professional musicians who promoted their group with photo postcards of the band. Unlike a traditional band of just men, these Damen ensembles went out of their way to market how women were the principle performers. As proof of their popularity, I must have several hundred postcards just like this group in my collection. Today I'd like to present a small sample of these very brassy women A to Z. Sort of.

  

In the last decade of the 19th century and first decades of the 20th, women's bands and orchestras were very widespread thorughout central Europe, mainly in the German speaking regions, which in the time before the First World War was a much larger region than Europe in our 21st century. There were Damen Streich Orchester~Women's string orchestras, Damen Blasorchester~Women's wind bands; and Damen Trompeter Corps~Women's trumpet ensembles. The last one is my focus today. The Ariosta Trompeterinnen played several different valved brass instruments like tubas and trumpets, but the Trompeter-Corps in their name refers to the three natural trumpets seen standing on their bells at the front of the band. These instruments were a type of bugle without valves that was little different from the baroque trumpets that were played in miliary bands and royal fanfares.

The Ariosta band's postcard was never posted but we know it is an official postcard based on its printed description from multiple languages. (Extra points if you can name them all!)   A rubber stamp imprint for Karl Mohr's Conzerthaus  Werth in Duisburg indicates the venue where they performed. Duisburg is on the Rhine River in western Germany, north of Düsseldorf and not far from the border with the Netherlands.

* * *

This next group has a similar makeup of six young women and four men. They are the Österreichisches Damen-Trompeter-Corps „Bohème“ directed by Herr A. Lohmann. Their name indicates that they are from Austria, which at the time was part of an immense Austria-Hungary empire that encompassed dozens of ethnic peoples. Unlike the ladies in the Ariosta band who wore folksy white dresses with dark bodices and no hats, the women of the Bohème ensemble wear matching dresses with contrasting aprons and huge sombrero hats fitted with large pompons. Not surprisingly the men are not on display and are dressed in ordinary business suits. One of them must be the leader Lohmann but I'm not sure which one he is. Maybe the tallest man, second from right.

Notice that the women hold various brass instruments but there are four natural trumpets propped up in front. Typically these trumpets came as a quartet though they were all in the same key, usually E-flat. This postcard was sent on 7 March 1912 from Hamburg, Germany, about 550 miles from Austria's capital, Wien.   

* * *

This group is an octet of seven young ladies and one man. They are the Damen-Blas-Orchester „Erato“, Kapellmeister~conductor H. Schröder. The women wear matching dresses in a dark color with folk-type vests. Herr Schröder sits in the center at a table that has two rotary valve trumpets on it. The Blas-Orchester name suggests they played woodwind instruments too, but there are none shown here. Instead their brass instruments are clumped together in front with two pairs of natural trumpets leaning on chairs on either side. Notice the banners attached to the trumpets which were often embroidered with heraldic symbols like the eagle seen here. 

This card was sent on 13 November 1911 from Oberehn, a city now known as Obernai, a commune in the Bas-Rhin department in Alsace in north-eastern France. But in 1911 it was in the German territory of Reichsland Elsaß–Lothringen acquired by the German Empire during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870.

* * *

This brass band proudly promoted its heritage by choosing the name, Damen-Trompeter-Corps „Germania“, directed by A. Hardemann. This nine member ensemble had five women and four men. Herr Hartmann is likely the fellow with the biggest mustache seated in the center. The women are in identical dresses that have a navy collar. Their flat caps are maybe like a sailor but their sashes are not very nautical unless they are emergency flotation devices, too.  Their instruments are scattered on the floor with one young lady lying down and holding a natural trumpet. Two more are just left of her. 

As is the case with most of these groups, there are no names for any musicians except the leader. The women's string orchestras often had postcards of individual female soloists on flute, violin, or cello and brass groups would do the same for a female trumpeter. In most cases this was because the soloist was the daughter of the leader. It's quite likely that some of Herr Hartmann's children or even his wife are in this group, but those are details that history has forgot.

This postcard has a postmark of 14 November 191o from Waltershausen, a town in the south-western part of the district of Gotha in the state of Thuringia, Germany, about halfway between Frankfurt and Leipzig.

* * *

This is a larger ensemble of 12 musicans, seven women and five men. They are the Damen-Trompeter-Corps „Humoresk“, directed by H. M. Brunk, who surely is the man with the valve trumpet seated right. The women's outfits are another variation on a nautical style with cadet jackets and skirts with contrasting stripes. Everyone holds a brass instrument but standing front and center are three natural trumpets. 

This card was sent from Dresden on 4 June 1908. 

* * *

My next group is the Damen-Trompeter-Corps „Rhenania“, directed by F. P. Hartwig who sits center, I think. Like the leader of the Germania band, Herr Hartwig holds rolled-up paper, a symbol of a pianist or sometimes conductor. He leads seven young ladies and two other men. The women are dressed alike with a kind of decorative apron and no hats. Except for the leader and the woman playing drums, everyone else has a brass instrument. On the bass drum is a banner embroidered with the group's name and on the right are four natural trumpets, without banners but each wound with fancy tasseled rope.  

This card was sent on 9 August 1911 from Sudenburg, a district located in southwest Magdeburg, a city about 90 miles west of Berlin.

* * *

This group is another octet of five women and three men. They called themselves Fr. Weiher's Elite Damen-Blasorchester. The honorific Fr. stands for Frau~Mrs. The man standing center with a trumpet looks like he could be Herr Weiher, but is the tuba player seated next to him Frau Weiher? I can't say. Maybe she's the flugelhorn player to his right. The women are wearing white dresses with broad contrasting trim. Their little caps are fastened to their hair with dangerously long hatpins.  

This group adds pairs of mandolins and kettledrums to the ensemble as well as a folk xylophone called a Strohfiedel on the left under the smaller tuba. In the center is another quartet of natural trumpets complete with fringed banners.    

This postcard was mailed on 10 February 1913 from Strassburg, a major city in Alsace that, like Oberehn in the Erato band's postcard, was part of the German Empire in 1913. It is now known by its proper French name as Strasbourg.

* * *

My final band is the Damen-Trompeter-Corps „Zufriedenheit“, directed by Karl Hofert. It's another ten-piece ensemble with six women and four men. The word "Zufriedenheit" translates as "satisfaction", as in "I can't get no Zufriedenheit".  Despite the Trompeter Corps label there is actually one man with a clarinet standing third from left. I can't be certain he is the leader Herr Hofert, but he does have the best mustache. The women are wearing folksy German outfits but without caps or hats. The instruments shown are heavy on the low brass. but again front and center there are four natural trumpets arranged into a pyramid.  

This postcard was posted from Essen, Germany on 2 October 1909.

If anyone has read to this point they should recognize that I've gone A to Z in ladies with brass but have left out a few letters in the alphabet. Eighteen to be precise. I think I could have met that goal but that would be cruel to my readers. 

In the examples I've featured today, these musical groups were each ostensibly called a women's ensemble, but, as we can see, were actually a mixture of women and men, all professional musicians. That kind of integration of the sexes in the working world was not common in Germany, or really anywhere in the world in this era, as women had not yet attained equal rights under the laws for property, employment, or suffrage. But it was the way these German ladies were presented as talented entertainers that first caught my attention years ago when I began collecting these postcards. As I found more and more of them there was enough to see that a Damen Trompeter Corps was once a musical fad.  

I don't know exactly what music they played, but I believe their repertoire was mainly lighter music, popular songs and dances taken from many folk traditions within the larger Germanic culture. I use the word Germanic because it includes the many complicated regions of central Europe beyond Germany and Austria's borders where German was the principal language. 

But wait, there's more! In my collection there are an equally large number of postcards from non-German music groups, too. Hungarians, Czechs, Croatians, and more. And like the ones I've presented today these groups are often mostly women with a few men.  That's an A to Z challenge for another time.     

 

For anyone who can't get enough
of this unique type of brass ensemble

Here are my previous stories on Germanic ladies:
Ladies with Brass
Ladies of Brass with Hats
More Ladies of Brass
Even More Ladies with Brass
Still More Ladies with Brass

It's difficult to know how these groups sounded,

mainly because their concert repertoire was rarely recorded.

But we can get a little idea from a modern brass ensemble.

Here is the University of Kentucky Baroque Trumpet Ensemble
performing a piece of 17th century Italian music
entitled Sonata Tedesche da Tromba.

If it sounds familiar it's because the fanfare was arranged 
for the title track in many of Sylvester Stallone's  "Rocky" movies.

  

   Postcard Trivia   

Thirteen languages were used to label my first postcard of the Ariosta band as an official postcard approved by the Unione postale universelle. For some reason two different Italian words are used.

            1.    “Brefkort” = Norwegian 
            2.    “Carta postale” = Italian
            3.    “Post card” = English
            4.    “Carte postale” = French
            5.    “Postkarte” = German
            6.    “Cartolina postale” = Italian
            7.    “Dopisnice” = Czech/Slovak
            8.    “Открытое письмо” = Russian
            9.    “Levelező-lap” = Hungarian
            10.    “Briefkaart” = Dutch 
            11.    “Tarjetas Postale” = Spanish 
            12.    “Bilhete Postal” = Portuguese 
            13.    “Brevkort” = Danish
            14.    “Korespondenčni listek” = Slovene 

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday

where every day is Mother's day.