thumb|Early 17th-century Flemish alta cappella, drawing by [[Denis van Alsloot. Instruments are (from left to right): a bass dulcian, an alto shawm, a treble cornett, a soprano shawm, a second alto shawm and a tenor sackbut.]]
thumb|A re-created wait in York
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
thumb|left|Modern reconstruction of a fifteenth-century slide trumpet
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. 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 Europe, these instruments were sometimes augmented by bagpipes and pipe and tabor.
By the fifteenth century, these bands had come mainly to consist of three musicians, two playing shawms and the other a slide trumpet or (later) sackbut, but in the sixteenth century the size gradually increased and the instrumentation became more varied.
Many English cities in the 1500s had town waits, as did rich individuals and institutions. In 1571, London ordered its waits to play "upon their instruments upon the turret at the Royal Exchange every Sunday and holiday toward the evening" (with winter break, between September and late March, excepted). These may have been London's first regularly scheduled public concerts.
Present-day descendants of this tradition are the Catalan cobla bands, who play music for sardana dancers, and which feature a modern version of the shawm with melodies traditionally played by the tenor member of the family. During the sixteenth century, cantus firmus settings gave way to other kind of dances, sometimes improvised and sometimes composed. Music in four parts had become a normal texture by the early sixteenth century, and the bands accordingly increased in size.