Vorpal Sordino
One of the most confusing aspects of writing for brass is the use of mutes. They are an important part of the brass player’s color palette. When brass players have had the largest impact on the 20th century musical culture, they were using mutes. The trombone has captured the imagination of many people through Quentin Jackson’s passionate plunger playing or Tommy Dorsey’s shimmering solo-tone. Miles Davis found his voice with the help of a Harmon mute with no stem. Mutes were a staple of the Duke Ellington and Count Basie orchestras and were used extensively in all of the dance bands, musical theater pits, radio, television and film orchestras for most of the 20th century.
As I write this at the beginning of the 21st century, it seems that using mutes for brass is becoming a lost art. I believe brass players are primarily to blame for this, and I hope that this article will help composers and players understand the challenges and benefits of exploring the muted colors again.
In the many world premieres that Gaudete has played and the many standard brass quintet works that I have studied, mutes, beyond the straight mute, are quite rare. This is puzzling because mutes allow an ensemble made up of only brass players to access many different colors. Additionally puzzling is the fact that the mute in most common use, the straight mute, is the closest mute in the sonic spectrum to the open horn. I can understand the rarity of mutes for brass in an orchestra. If you want a different color you can use an oboe, or flute, or violin, or tuba. With brass alone, however, those colors need to be created other ways. Certainly range and volume and the different combinations of instruments can be effective, but mutes allow us to access sounds that are wildly different and, when used creatively, can be very effective.
There are some barriers to this wonderful world of musical color however. The first is that many composers (and even some brass players who have not yet become mute nerds) simply don’t know about all of the options. Straight, cup, Harmon with stem, Harmon without stem, plunger with pixie style mute, plunger on its own, solo-tone, bucket, mel-o-wah, and whispa mutes are all available muting options for trumpet and tenor trombone players. This list can be a bit overwhelming, but all of these create distinctly different sounds. How can a composer who is not a brass player and mute nerd take advantage of them? One of the most compelling options I have seen is from the pen of Leonard Bernstein. In his Dance Suite he wrote “dirty mute” in the trombone part at one point. This doesn’t specify any particular mute but invites the player to choose a mute that he or she feels matches the affect the composer calls for. In Bernstein’s Suite, one can choose a favorite mute that can create a “dirty” sound. This is commonly a plunger mute which also has the connotation in the popular imagination of being a “dirty” mute (I have actually been asked after a concert if I took it from a used plunger), but it is up to the player to use all of his or her creative skill, imagination, and arsenal of mutes to make the right choice. Composers who aren’t intimately familiar with all of the brass mutes could use descriptive words for the muted passages, and then players could choose from the options available what would work best for the particular performance. It is also essential that composers sit down with brass players who know mutes to learn what the very difficult things to do on a mute are. For example, a stemless Harmon can be very unresponsive on trombone in the low register. A composer should know that they are making the player fight with the mute when such a part is written.
One difficulty that comes up when writing for mutes is determining the amount of time needed for players to put in a mute. Some brass players get really good at fast mute changes, but I don’t know that any of us like having to do a quick mute change. The mutes can cause damage to our bells when really fast mute changes are required, even if one is good at it. I have developed a test that a composer can try to determine if a mute change can be easily accomplished. Take a beer glass equivalent to the size to the mute you want to use. For trombone I would use a pint glass, for trumpet a taster glass, and for tuba one would need to find the largest boot available. Fill the glass with excellent beer all the way to the rim. Set the glass on the floor and move it to the table without spilling a drop. This is approximately the amount of time needed to insert the mute. To time the removal of the mute just reverse the process.
One of the other questions composers sometimes ask is regarding writing mute dynamics. While not all mutes have an effect on the volume, most do. Some of them, like the trombone Harmon mute, will have a drastic effect on the volume. Given this volume reduction, the question arises, “should the dynamic written be the desired relative sounding dynamic or the dynamic the player should feel like he or she is playing?” Since all mutes effect the volume differently for different players and that amount will vary drastically even between different brands of the same type of mute, the best practice for composers is to simply write the desired sounding dynamic and have the players do their best to produce it, keeping in mind that in a resonant space, a muted instrument such as a horn or trombone could have trouble keeping up with the volume of an open tuba.
From the player’s perspective, developing brass players often don’t have the encouragement or the opportunity to explore the unique mute colors. At school, we almost never talked about mutes. The only time it came up was when a work for a large ensemble called for a particular mute. Learning to play that particular mute or was rarely stressed in lessons. As long as you owned the kind of mute specified in the part, you were fine. I believe this experience is fairly common in brass pedagogy. On some level it isn’t complicated, you put the mute in the bell and you blow, but one must get used to the the differences. Players should spend time playing together in chamber music with mutes in to learn how to tune them and have them respond with some consistency. Mutes do make it harder to play, and all of them compromise intonation and articulation to some extent. Learning how to play in a mute can help reduce these problems, even if they will never be gone entirely.
When mutes were used most effectively in the ‘30s trumpets and trombones were (along with the saxophones) the primary instruments in many of the popular musical styles. There was a huge market for mute sales from big bands. I recently saw a photo of a mute stand from the Jimmy Dorsey Orchestra. There were two different kinds of cup mutes in addition to straight, solo-tone and hat mutes. The mutes available to these players are in many cases make sounds that are simply not available to players buying mutes today. If I wanted a solo-tone with a sound like the ‘30s players had, I need to wait for a mute from the ‘30s to come up on eBay. There just isn’t a large market for trombone solo-tone mutes made the old way. Trombone bells also were generally smaller at that time. I have found that the smaller horns generally work better with certain kinds of mutes than larger belled modern horns. I have recently acquired a few vintage mutes (a cup and straight) and the sounds are very cool.
There are some signs that the art of the mute is reviving. Mute expert Roger Ingram has applied his expertise in restoring vintage mutes to the development of a 3D printed solo-tone mute for trumpet that has the awesome vintage sound. Our trumpet player Bill bought the first one on the market and it sounds great. If only he would make one for trombone. (Please.)
Since you are reading a Gaudete Brass blog, there are some mute issues unique to the brass quintet that I should mention. The first is that while the trumpets and tenor trombone have many mute options, the horn only has straight mute and stopped horn and the tuba only has a straight mute. (I know cup mutes and bucket mutes for these instruments exist, but almost no players have them and for some reason don’t want to go buy them.) Although the straight mutes are the only option for the conical instruments, that should not limit the use of the other mute varieties for the cylindrical instruments. Horn and tuba are instruments that excel at blending, and their mute colors can work the same way. A quintet cup muted color can be created in a quintet with the trumpets and tenor trombone in cup mutes and horn and tuba in straight mutes.
There is one more aspect of using mutes that I need to address that I feel very conflicted about. While I have been extolling the virtues of creative use of mutes, I do run up against one aspect of modern life that speaks against mute prodigality - air travel. As I write this, getting baggage on an airplane has become more and more difficult. Checked bags cost money, and for an individual or a small business owner, those fees can have a negative impact. Carrying on baggage is becoming more restricted as airlines remove those privileges from budget level tickets. This is especially problematic when our instruments absolutely must stay with us. If we have to bring additional mutes for just a few notes or bars, then the mutes become a travel liability. I don’t know exactly what the solution is for this. I have solved the problem in a small way by asking mute craftsman extraordinaire Gerry Birch of Peter Gane Mutes to make me a travel straight mute/cup mute combo that is very compact. In many respects, it is the best straight mute and cup mute I own and it is durable and compact for travel. It still doesn’t address the problem of the Harmon mute or other mutes I would like to travel with, though. I believe the best solution lies in an openness on the part of players, composers, and mute designers to continue to discuss these problems so that brass players continue to cultivate this part of our heritage and communicative color palette.