Alta Capella
An alta cappella or alta musica (Italian), haute musique (French) or just alta was a kind of town wind band found throughout continental Europe from the thirteenth to the eighteenth centuries, which typically consisted of shawms and slide trumpets or sackbuts. ''Waits'' is the British equivalent. These were not found anywhere outside of Europe. History ''Alta musique'' in general refers to the "loud music" of instruments like shawms, sackbuts, trumpets, and drums, in contrast to ''basse musique'', the "soft music" of recorders, viols, fiddles, harps, psalteries, and the like.Howard Mayer Brown, and Keith Polk, "Alta (i)", Grove Music Online, edited by Deane Root (accessed 28 January 2015) These ensembles first appeared in Europe in the thirteenth century, taken from the ceremonial loud bands of the Arab World, consisting of small shawms, nakers, and other percussion, together with pairs of straight trumpets functioning as something of a cross between drone and percussion. In Eur ...
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