Band Sizes Over Time

http://www.murraysymphony.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Orchestra-Image.jpg

While working, when my mp3 player is not charged, I listen to the radio. Yes, the dreaded radio with commercials and the same songs that are played every day. When I take all that I can stand of traditional stations, I will switch over to 94.5, the classical music station.

The other day when “Cum on Feel the Noize” started playing, I again had enough and switched to 94.5, which was playing a symphony. As I listened to the music, I thought about how it took an entire orchestra to play this music, where as music now a days it only takes four people to play.

Thinking about the difference in band sizes, I realized that it’s been decreasing gradually since the days of classical music until now. I realized along the way, for all time, there have also been solo performers, but I am looking at bands.

The popular music of the 18^th and 19^th century was what we now know as classical music, and this music was performed by orchestras which in size could range from 50 to a hundred people.

Then, around the late 19^th and early 20^th century, there was a move towards jazz and big bands as the popular bands of the time. Despite their name, these bands were not big. Not by comparison to the bands just discussed anyways. These bands consisted of 12 to 25 musicians.

When the first blues bands were formed, in the early 20^th century, they consisted of around 7 people. The blues eventually gave way to rock and these bands slimmed down to the final band member count of 4 with some bands even cutting that to 3, or even 2.

I'm sure I could go into a long thesis essay on how this is related to urbanization, and the new free time aquired by people so that the common man could learn music and make a living off of it, but I will save that for another time.