A Catalog of Multi-Part Repertoire for Wind Instruments or for Undesignated Instrumentation before 1600 is the sixth volume in Dr. David Whitwell's ground breaking thirteen-volume History and Literature of the Wind Band and Wind Ensemble series. This volume is a companion to the first two volumes in the series, The Wind Band and Wind Ensemble before 1500 and The Renaissance Wind Band and Wind Ensemble. Whitwell's meticulous scholarship reveals the continuous history of the wind ensemble, from its earliest roots to the nineteenth century - an unbroken tradition of wind music that music scholars have never been fully able to appreciate until now. Court, Civic and Church records document the fact that before 1550 the employed instrumentalists were wind players. In the surprisingly large repertoire, in particular the so-called 'textless' manuscripts represented by this volume, one can hear the wind ensemble in the earliest period when players began to play from the written page. One finds here already a high level of musicality.
About the Author: Dr. David Whitwell is a graduate ('with distinction') of the University of Michigan and the Catholic University of America, Washington DC (PhD, Musicology, Distinguished Alumni Award, 2000) and has done post-graduate study at the University of Vienna and has studied conducting with Eugene Ormandy and at the Akademie fur Musik, Vienna. Prior to coming to Northridge, Dr. Whitwell participated in concerts throughout the United States and Asia as Associate First Horn in the USAF Band and Orchestra in Washington DC, and in recitals throughout South America in cooperation with the United States State Department. He is a past president of the College Band Directors National Association, a member of the Prasidium of the International Society for the Promotion of Band Music, and was a member of the founding board of directors of the World Association for Symphonic Bands and Ensembles (WASBE). In 1964 he was made an honorary life member of Kappa Kappa Psi, a national professional music fraternity. In September, 2001, he was a delegate to the UNESCO Conference on Global Music in Tokyo. He has been knighted by sovereign organizations in France, Portugal and Scotland and has been awarded the gold medal of Kerkrade, The Netherlands, and the silver medal of Wangen, Germany, the highest honor given wind conductors in the United States, the medal of the Academy of Wind and Percussion Arts (National Band Association) and the highest honor given wind conductors in Austria, the gold medal of the Austrian Band Association. He is a member of the Hall of Fame of the California Music Educators Association. Dr. Whitwell's publications include more than 127 articles on wind literature including publications in Music and Letters (London), the London Musical Times, the Mozart-Jahrbuch (Salzburg), and 39 books, among which is his 13-volume History and Literature of the Wind Band and Wind Ensemble and an 8-volume series on Aesthetics in Music. In addition to numerous modern editions of early wind band music his original compositions include 5 symphonies. David Whitwell was named as one of six men who have determined the course of American bands during the second half of the 20th century, in the definitive history, The Twentieth Century American Wind Band (Meredith Music). David Whitwell is one of nine men described by Paula A. Crider in The Conductor's Legacy (Chicago: GIA, 2010) as 'the legendary conductors' of the 20th century.