What is brass made of?

While brass instruments had long been used together in various contexts, the first modern bands were developed early in the 19th century in Prussia, when all military and government bands were issued the new technology of rotary valve instruments and instructed to use standard tuning. This allowed musicians to much more easily play with other bands and for smaller bands to be combined into large bands. A separate tradition also emerged in the United Kingdom, mainly due to the importing of the new Belgian instruments, the saxhorns, invented by Adolphe Sax.