Music has been lifted to new heights by a Communist innovation for brass bands.
It is the multi-belled instrument.
The bell is the end of a trumpet, cornet, trombone or sousaphone where the music comes out. For centuries, trumpets, cornets, trombones and sousaphones have had only one bell. Only one brass instrument, the euphonium, is ever made with two bells and its smaller one, actuated with a fourth valve, is seldom used.
This month the Communists showed off a complete brass band of multi-belled instruments at the East Berlin rally for Soviet Astronaut Gherman Titov.
The band was one of the Communist world's lesser known musical organizations, the East Berlin BEG Turbine Gas Works Brass Band and Musical Society. Every instrument had at least six bells, long slender lily-shaped bells clustered in the front of the instrument like Christmas tree ornaments.
Unfortunately, the East Berlin BEG Turbine Gas Works Brass Band and Musical Society did not have an extensive repertoire and its multi-belled instruments were not put to a particularly severe test.
Its offerings were confined to such avant garde Communist composition as the "BEG Turbine Gas Works Brass Band and Musical Society Marching Song," the ever-popular "Onward and Upward With Ever Higher Production Quotas Anthem," and the traditional "Collective Farmers, the Kuibyshev Hydroelectric Plant Workers Are With You" march.
The extra bells did, however, produce greater volume, giving the observer the impression the band was larger than it was.. It numbered 20 and sounded like 47.
Despite its splendid effort, the BEG Turbine Gas Works Brass Band and Musical Society was not altogether popular at the rally. It was one of three bands there and its outpourings were frequently interrupted by one of the other two bands. The People's Army Band and the People's Police Band had single-belled instruments.
And while the BEG Turbine Gas Works Brass Band and Musical Society was playing, the public had a tendency to walk among the players, occasionally jostling them.
That may have been because the BEG Turbine Gas Works Brass Band and Musical Society did not have a particularly choice location on Marx-Engels Platz. It stood not far from the People's Latrine.
