Holiday music and brass have become a welcome yule-time combination in concert halls, houses of worship, and even as a rare change of pace between Mariah Carey and Bing Crosby on holiday commercial radio. The warm sound of familiar tunes made resplendent in brass harmonies and resonating overtones feels somehow familiar and timeless, evoking such images as stained-glass cathedrals and rosy cheeks in a Dickensian snowscape.

Following the Protestant Reformation in Germany, when Martin Luther emphasized a need for participatory collective singing, brass ensembles and in particular the all-trombone Posaunenchor became a staple in many 16th-century Moravian churches as a way to supplement the voices of the congregation. That tradition paid homage to the medieval practice of Turmblasen, or “tower blowing,” in which musicians would use natural trumpets or sackbuts (a trombone predecessor) to signal messages or mark occasions from watchtowers for the town below. What began as a single instrument acting as something of a musical alarm system grew into increasingly complex ensembles that found homes in both sacred and secular events, including serenading German-style Advent markets in cities like Salzburg starting in the Baroque era.

For the United Kingdom and the United States, however, the roots of the holiday brass band lead to the 19th century. In London, the Wesleyan-holiness movement of the Methodist Church gave rise to the Christian Mission, which was organized into a quasi-military structure and renamed the Salvation Army by William Booth in 1878. Booth and his three sons founded the first Salvation Army Band as a brass quartet that would march and perform to attract an audience for their evangelical message.

The Salvation Army Bands performed extensively in the lead-up to Christmas, introducing much of the English-speaking world to the sound of brass carols as the movement spread to the US, Canada, and Australia. Interestingly, Booth was skeptical of professional music, calling it a curse and advising his followers that they should lovingly “take a broom to sweep out” any professional choir that became part of their mission. Yet he understood that music itself could bring in an audience for his message, writing: “You must sing good tunes. Let it be a good tune to begin with. I don’t care much whether you call it secular or sacred. I rather enjoy robbing the devil of his choicest tunes.”

The Salvation Army helped to standardize holiday brass repertoire, publishing many arrangements, but it was not alone. By the mid-1800s, modern valved brass replaced Napoleonic-era natural horns and trumpets to create the standard British brass-band instrumentation. These groups were often sponsored by local manufacturers or coal-mining operations and became a staple of public life, performing military marches, orchestral transcriptions, and arrangements of hymns. Both amateur and professional brass bands accompanied holiday celebrations, though many had a reputation for approaching their work with more secular convivial flair than did Booth’s followers by performing in rowdy alehouses in addition to their gigs at high tea. By the 1850s, with the temperance movement on the rise in England, many brass bands took a teetotaling pledge, even adding “temperance” to their names to distinguish themselves from thirstier competition that regularly practiced in pubs. Tony Mansell, an author on the history of Cornwall, England, found letters to the Royal Cornwall Gazette newspaper in 1873 in which members of the Seworgan Band suggest that the leader of the rival Teetotal Band “must have signed the pledge very lately” if he was claiming to be abstaining from alcohol. Still, these groups were rarely more in demand than around the holidays.

From German Christmas markets to British brass bands to the bottom-heavy sound of hundreds of amateur tuba players packing the Rockefeller Center skating rink for 50-plus years of TubaChristmas, traditions take many forms. And so, holiday brass endures and is annually rediscovered by modern audiences in part because the sound can express the many feelings of the season: joy and celebration, playfulness and humor, solemnity and reflection. Happy holidays to you and yours. —Ricky O’Bannon