Fane, John, Lord Burghersh. See Burghersh. Fanelli, Ernest

Fanfare

(1) A flourish of trumpets or other brass instruments, often with percussion, for ceremonial purposes. Fanfares are distinct from military signals in usage and character. In addition to its musical meaning, ‘fanfare’ has always had a figurative meaning. The root, fanfa (‘vaunting’), goes back to late 15th-century Spanish. Although etymologists believe the word to be onomatopoeic, it may in fact be derived from the Arabic anfár (‘trumpets’). The word ‘fanfare’ occurs for the first time in French in 1546 and in English in 1605, in both instances figuratively; it was first used to signify a trumpet flourish by Walther, although it may have been used earlier to mean a hunting signal: See (3) below.

Walther, Altenburg and an anonymous 18th-century author belonging to the Prüfende Gesellschaft in Halle all agreed that a fanfare was ‘usable on all days of celebration and state occasions’ and consisted of ‘a mixture of arpeggios and runs’ improvised by trumpeters and kettledrummers (J.E. Altenburg, 91); a ‘flourish’ in the British Army during the same period was ‘without any set rule’. Heyde has shown that this type of unreflective improvisation, the purpose of which was to glorify a sovereign, goes back to trumpeters’ classicum-playing during the Middle Ages. The effect of a medieval classicum (a field or battle signal) or an 18th-century fanfare was due to sheer noise rather than musical merit. About 100 trumpeters and fifers produced ‘such a din’ at the wedding of George the Rich in 1475 ‘that one could hardly hear one’s own words’. Walther said that a fanfare ‘indeed makes enough noise and strutting, but otherwise hardly smacks of art’. And in 18th-century French music ‘fanfare’ denotes a short, bustling movement with many repeated notes. This genre may have been influenced by the hunting signal.

It was during the 19th century that the term came to mean a brief composition consisting of a ceremonial flourish for brass (and percussion). The flourish composed by Beethoven for a single trumpet to announce the arrival of the Governor during the last act of Fidelio (first produced in 1805), and incorporated in the Leonore overtures nos.2 and 3 (1805–6), would probably have been called a signal rather than a fanfare. As well as coronation fanfares by eminent British composers, notable examples have been written in the 20th century by Dukas (La péri, 1911), Jolivet (Fanfare pour Britannicus, 1946), Copland (Fanfare for the Common Man, 1942), Stravinsky (Fanfare for a New Theatre, 1964, a brief serial composition for two trumpets), Petrassi (an extended composition for three trumpets, 1944, rev. 1976) and Ginastera (four trumpets, 1980). Britten’s Fanfare for St Edmundsbury (1959) for three trumpets is a polytonal work in which each trumpet is assigned the notes of a single harmonic series, on F, C and D respectively. A number of fanfares by composers such as Falla, Satie, Bliss and Milhaud were printed in Fanfare, a fortnightly paper on contemporary music and the arts published from October 1921 to January 1922 under the editorship of Leigh Henry.

(2) Any short prominent passage for the brass in an orchestral work.

(3) A signal given in the hunt, either on ‘starting’ a stag or after the kill when the hounds are given their share of the animal (this is an exclusively French usage).

(4) In 19th-century France and Italy, a military or civilian band consisting mainly or entirely of brass instruments.

(5) In German colloquial speech, a misnomer for Fanfarentrompete, a modern natural trumpet usually built in E.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

‘Abhandlung, von den Trompetern, und ihren besonderen Rechten’, Der prüfenden Gesellschaft zu Halle fortgesetzte, zur Gelehrsamkeit gehörige Bemühungen (1743); repr. in D. Altenburg: Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der Trompete im Zeitalter der Clarinblaskunst (1500–1800) (Regensburg, 1973), ii, 173–200

EDWARD H. TARR