The Military Band.

The drum, fife and bagpipe were all very in their place, but each carried connotations
of the parade-ground and military duty, which all soldiers, at one time or another,
wish to forget. The officers of the eighteenth century sought more sophisticated
entertainment, and music, in the civilian circles in which they preferred to move when
not on duty, played a major part in almost every social occasion. It was, therefore, a
logical step for the officers to provide themselves with music of a similar sort to
solace their leisure hours. Thus there came into existence the 'Band of Musick', the
predecessor of the present-day military band.

The officers, as might be expected, had to finance the project themselves, usually
by paying a monthly subscription into a Band Fund, from which instruments were
bought and men to play them hired. It goes without saying that it was unlikely that
trained musicians were to be found in the ranks, unless they had fallen on hard times
or were covering their tracks for some reason or other. Therefore, it was necessary
to hire musicians at the going rate if an effective band was to be formed and
maintained. Naturally, such a band was understood to be at the disposal of the
officers, who were paying for it, and it was not regarded as part of the battalion or
regiment.

None the less, a band was an important social asset for the officers. When the
Inverness Militia was being formed in 1803, the adjutant wrote to his commanding
officer:
'I fell in with Major Rose a few days ago. He said he would join us in a subscription
for the band instruments. I am satisfied there is not an officer who would not give
his mite. Suppose I put you down for ten guineas and see what the rest will do? I
pawn myself to have a band to give any man pleasure by the time you come north, and
I'll engage that there is not a regiment in North Britain would do it at three times
the cost.'

As they were intended to provide music for indoor social occasions, the earliest bands
were not suitable for playing on parade, consisting as they did of eight to ten
musicians playing clarinets, horns, oboes and bassoons some, no doubt, being able of
playing stringed instruments as well. A group of this nature could tackle chamber and
indoor music quite successfully, but for parade purposes some percussion to mark the
beat distinctly was essential. If the band was required and agreeable to play on
parade, some drums would have to be detailed to accompany it. The early bands of
the footguards were also employed to play drums and fifes, playing the 'Duties', the
New Guard, from Horse Guards Parade, where the guard-mounting took place, to St
James's, where the Old Guard was relieved with due ceremonial, the band discoursing
appropriate music all the while. The changeover complete, the band led the Old Guard
back to Horse Guards, where it was formally dismounted.

During the eighteenth-century wars, however, the decisive battles were fought on
the mainland of Europe, where the British Army usually took part in conjunction with
German Allies and often in earshot of their common foe, the French. Both Germans
and French had bands of enlisted musicians, whose role it was 'to excite cheerfulness
and alacrity' in the soldiers be enlivening with their music the main events of the day:
The Reveille, the Troop, the Retreat and the Tattoo. At a later period, the great
Napoleon is said to have agreed with a remark attributed to the Abb Raynal: 'If
Frederick the Great owed come of the victories to the speed of his marches, surely
he owed others to his military bands.'

King Louis XIV of France had put the military music of the French Army onto a sound
and well-organised footing by having his court musicians compose and arrange the
trumpet calls, ceremonial music and marches. The French also had a school for
training bandsmen and trumpeters, thus ensuring that all the calls and beatings were
sounded and played to a standard set by the school and not by individual bandmasters
and drum majors, as tended to happen in the British Army, where every battalion was
a law unto itself. Where it took their fancy, the French had also borrowed Prussian
innovations in instrumentation.

The British, not unnaturally, sought to compare with those foreign armies musically as
well as tactically, but the British musician was never the man to be put upon, and as
he was usually hired by the month, when things were not to his liking he simply walked
off. Thus, there was no alternative to enlisting the musicians as soldiers subject to
military law, but it was now until 1803 that authority was given for one soldier from
each of the ten companies in the battalion to be employed as a musician and for him
to play in the band. One non-commissioned officer was allowed to me employed as
'Master of the Band', but when active service was in prospect, all had, in theory at
least, to take up musket and bayonet and return to the ranks. The band then ceased
to exist.

Service in a line or 'marching' regiment had little appeal for the professional British
musician, unlike service in a band of the footguards, stationed permanently in London,
where duty was over by midday and the musician could supplement his income by
accepting engagements to play at other events in the afternoon and evening. This
system was accepted; it flourished until the middle of the twentieth century, when
the excellence of the young musicians being trained by the colleges of music of the
change in popular musical taste from the dance band of reeds, brass and percussion,
to that of amplified guitars, made it difficult for the serving military musician to
secure casual, paying engagements.

The number of musicians willing to enlist was always below requirements, especially
when a fresh outbreak of hostilities led to an increase in the marching requirements
during the recurrent wars of the eighteenth century. Although some of those
regiments were disbanded once peace returned, the demands of the expanding empire
led to the retention of others, with a corresponding requirement, not only for
recruits to keep them up to strength, but for musicians as well. Even in far-off India,
need for the relaxation and entertainment, which familiar music only could provide,
was very real. Sometimes, indeed, it was available; and as Sir Arthur Wellesley, then
at the outset of a career which was to see him become Duke of Wellington ten years
later, wrote to Mrs Gordon, wife of his paymaster, in May 1804 from his
headquarters at Chittendore in South India: 'The floor of my tent is in a fine state
for dancing, and the fiddlers of the (19
th
Light) Dragoons and the 78
th
(Highlanders),
and the bagpipes of the 74
th
(Highlanders), play delightfully.'

The 78
th
had been overseas for eight years and the 74
th
on India for seventeen. Both
had distinguished themselves, along with the 19
th
, at the great battle at Assaye in
1803, suffering severely. Wellington's remarks suggest that both fiddlers and the
pipers provided more than acceptable dance music, and it says much for all three
regiments that they had managed to maintain their own sources of domestic music
among all the vicissitudes of the First Mahratta War.

When the Elector of Hanover became King George I of Great Britain in 1715, he
retained his hereditary position as ruler of Hanover which, in the opinion of many,
remained his spiritual home. Consequently, Britain had a foothold among the German
states, many of which from time to time sent or hired out contingents of their
troops to support and argument the British Army in its many campaigns on the
mainland of Europe and in America. Germany was then the heartland of military music,
and so Britain had access to a ready supply of military musicians trained in the latest
developments. Not only were the Germans highly competent instrumentalists, they
were also more amenable to discipline than their British counterparts and were less
likely to desert. In many cases, and for many years, the entire band was composed of
Germans. As late as 1818 an inspection report of the Royal Scots Greys states: 'This
regiment, although they have an excellent band, never bring then out mounted to the
field. Most are Germans, good horsemen, and all are trained and fit for the ranks and
do not exceed the number allowed by the regulations, but many of the trumpeters
also play with the band.'

The number of musicians authorised in the cavalry at this time was one per troop,
with an NCO as master of the band. There being six to eight troops in the regiment,
each with its trumpeter, their inclusion in the band would have doubled it's size, and
if, as might well have been the case, the trumpet major and master of the band had
played also, the total might have well approached the strength authorised in the
1980s, which was twenty-one. The fact that the band of the Scots Greys did not turn
out mounted would seem to indicate that horses of a suitable temperate were not
available, as it was noted that all bandsmen could all ride well. The availability of
suitable horses remained the factor that decided whether a cavalry regiment could
turn out a mounted band.

With the German bandsmen came German ideas if what constituted a military music,
that is, music appropriate to military occasions as opposed to social functions. Here
we should remember that the sound or tone of the band remained the same, no
matter what the occasion or function might be, and that the tempo at which the more
popular ballroom dances of the period was performed was very similar to that at
which the soldiers marched onto the drill square. It is also the case that the earliest
bands could not play on the line of march until the roads became fit for formed
bodies of troops to march on in step and in time. The role of the bands, as far as
military occasions were concerned, was to provide music to accompany the evolutions
and manoeuvres on the parade-ground, and for this purpose the pieces played did not
have to last for very long, perhaps only for the time it took the battalion to march
past the saluting base at the ordinary step of 72 paces to the minute. For this
reason, most of the marches of the eighteenth century consisted of two quite simple
sections of eight or sixteen bars in common time, each section repeated. There was
an increasing demand for marches of this type, and over a period these came to be
associated with specific regiments, particularly those stations permanently in the
capital cities and larger towns of the princely German states, where the guard or life
regiments lived in barracks adjacent to or near the royal palace or residence. One of
the sights of the city, and a source of pride to the citizens, might be the daily guard-
mounting and changing ceremonies, carried out with music; and one of the special
occasions was the Beating the Retreat or Tattoo by the bands, drums and fifes,
either on the parade-ground where the guards mounted, or in the main square of the
city itself. In the garrison towns of the unified Germany of the later decades of the
nineteenth century, such occasions included the Grosses Wecken, when, at Reveille,
the massed bands, drums and fifes of the garrison would play through the streets of
the town on New Years Day , the Kaisers birthday and similar occasions, led by the
adjutant mounted on his charger.

The master of the band, as well as prominent local composers, might produce these
short marches for the regiment, which could find itself with several marches, to the
despair and confusion of future military historians. Some, indeed, had three or four,
all called The March of the Umpteenth Regiment. And not only in the eighteenth
century did composers write for the military band. In the early nineteenth,
Beethoven composed the Yorckschermarcsh, to commemorate Count Yorck von
Warternburg, who took his Prussian contingent over to the Russians in 1812, the first
step in the eventual downfall of Napoleon. In 1882, the great operatic composer
Richard Wagner composed three fanfares for the trumpeters of the cavalry
regiment of the Bavarian Army stationed in Bayreuth, which was to become the
centre of the Wagnerian cult. The regiment was the 6
th
Chevaulegers Prince
Albrecht of Prussia, Chevaulegers light horse being the Bavarian equivalent of the
hussars of other armies. The 6
th
treasured the three fanfares, although the trumpet
major was heard to mutter That idiot Wanger! Nobody could blow that stuff!

With the bands, small though they were, appearing more and more frequently on
parade, it became necessary to introduce an augmented percussion section to mark
the beat. Not all soldiers, and certainly not all officers, have an ear for music, and
unless the marching rhythm was marked clearly and distinctly and loudly enough for
all to hear, some soldier somewhere in the ranks was going to lose the step and throw
the whole of his platoon or company into confusion. At first, the drummers, massed,
were detailed to accompany the band, effectively drowning its music and, probably,
thoroughly enjoying doing so. In Prussia, the financial advisers, clearly soul mates of
the present generation of their British counterparts demanded the abolition of the
regimental bands, on the ground that no one could hear them anyway. Frederick the
Greats answer was to increase the size of the bands.

At the same time, however, another influence was sweeping Europe in the ever-
changing evolution of the military band. The south-east frontier of the Holy Roman
Empire marched in the Scottish sense with that of the Ottoman, and for
centuries, wars of varying intensities had flickered on and off. Over the years, the
Austrian armies had become well accustomed to the often intimidating sound of the
Turkish martial music, which they associated particularly with the Corps of
Janissaries, the household troops of the Turkish Court recruited from captured
Christian boys brought up in the Moslem faith. Perhaps the most impressive element
in this warlike sound was the novel and striking percussion effect. Turkish military
musical combinations included bass, tenor and snare drums, as well as triangles and
cymbals of varying pitch and volume. This effect acquired the name Janissary Music.

It appears that complete Janissary bands were presented to the King of Poland who
was also Elector of Saxony and, later, to Frederick the Great of Prussia. As the
original members died, brass instruments were discarded in favour of oboes, horns,
trumpets and bassoons. The Turkish percussion section was retained intact, and there
is evidence that it was a standard element in Prussian military bands by about 1777.
This was a logical step in the military context. The augmented percussion, with the
accent firmly on the beat, made the music easier to march to but without drowning
the sound of the other instruments, as the drums had done. The Turkish or Janissary
influence soon spread all over Europe.

British military bands were not behindhand in acquiring the elements of the Turkish
or Janissary percussion. Another Continental fashion taken up with enthusiasm by the
British in the eighteenth century was the enlistment of black youths to play these
exotic Turkish percussion instruments, rather than fresh-faced lads from the plough
tail or the slums, which were even then beginning to proliferate in the wake of the
industrial revolution.
It was easy for British battalions to find blacks willing to enlist for the band. Not
only had some of the battalions spent time in the West Indies, but when slavery was
declared illegal in Britain, many of the black servants kept by the wealthier people
more or less as fashion accessories had been turned out into the street so that
their employers might avoid having to pay them wages. But it need not be thought
that the blacks were inevitably regarded and treated as inferior beings; three
soldiers of the 25
th
Regiment, stationed in the West Indies at the time, were
awarded nine hundred lashes each by a court martial, six hundred of which were
inflicted, for attempting to outrage the person of Susan, a black slave.

These blacks were dressed in what were fondly supposed to be Turkish costumes, and
were encouraged to caper about in appropriately uninhabited style so as to draw
attention to themselves and the band. It has been suggested that a relic of this
period is seen in the wearing of tiger and leopard skins by bass and tenor drummers
and the way in which these drummers customarily flourish their drumsticks. They also
made excellent musicians, particularly on brass and percussion instruments, and were
popular in the cavalry, where their skill with the trumpet made them much sought
after. But at least one turned out to be a proper soldier. Drummer Charles Bogle was
a man of colour, a fact sedulously concealed by the Victorian chroniclers of his
regiment. He died at the Siege of Burgos in 1812, fighting most gallantly, wielding his
drummers broadsword in single combat with a French soldier, who died equally
gallantly. Their bodies were recovered, the Frenchman run through with Charlies
sword, his bayonet through Charlies body.

Instrument Regulation 79
th
Cameron Highlanders
Flutes/piccolos 3 2
Oboe - -
Eb Clarinet 1 1
Bb Clarinet 6 8
Bassoon - 4
Horns 2 2
Cornets 2 4
Alto Horn (Bb) 1 2
Trumpet 1 2
Tenor Trombone 2 2
Bass Trombone 2 2
Euphonium 1 1
Eb Bass 1 1
Bb Bass 1 1
Total Musicians/Bandsmen 23* 31

*The regulation strength of the band was: 1 bandmaster-serjeant, 1 band serjeant,
1 band corporal, and 19 bandsmen, a total of 21 playing members, although there are
instruments for 23, surely an invitation to exceed the authorised strength, as most
regiments did.

The General acceleration of movement on the battlefield was reflected in a
corresponding increase in the speed at which the soldier was expected to cover the
ground, both in training and on the parade ground, where the old formal Ordinary
Step of seventy-two paces to the minute was regulated to what were called occasions
on parade. The rate of marching was stepped up to the Quickstep speed of one
hundred and forty; and if that to us appears to verge on the sluggish, we must
remember that in the first decade of the nineteenth century the soldier went into
battle, and everywhere else as well, carrying all his worldly goods on his back a
crippling burden for a tired or ailing man, but one which was to be part of the
soldiers lot for many a long year yet.

Science, too, takes a hand here; and the development of the metalled road surface
invented by that worthy Scot, John MacAdam not only revolutionised the postal
service by making it possible for mail coaches to run predictably to a timetable, but
also enabled larger bodies of troops to move from one place to another at the
Quickstep. This worked out at three miles in the hour, exclusive halts for rest, and
this improved road surface also made it possible for the marching troops to maintain
their formation without straggling, and to march in step, always less tiring than when
every man sets his own pace and time. As a result, marching to music became possible
and, indeed, normal, so that in 1803 we find instructions being issued to cover the
hitches which might occur on a long road march. It appears that by this time it had
been accepted that the drums and fifes the corps of drums and the military band
constituted two separate musical entities, each playing in turn on the line of march.

The 1803 Regulation directed that the band still called the Musick was to be
frequently practised with the corps of drums abbreviated usually to The Drums
so that when they took over from each other on the march, the correct time or
tempo would be maintained. This was a thoroughly practical requirement, as nothing is
more tiring and distracting to a laden soldier than constant nagging changes of speed
and step. This remained a difficulty as long as soldiers marched to music, and was
recognised as such, to the extent that until 1939, the pipes and drums and the
military band of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders carried out march practice
every Saturday morning while the rest of the battalion was being subjected to the
rigours of the commanding officers weekly inspection. It is worth noting, too, that
the 1803 order directed that the drum major was to take charge of the practice and
not the master of the band. Here might be the origin of the convention whereby the
drum major takes command when the band and the drums, or the band and pipes and
drums, parade together, even though the bandmaster, as a warrant officer, is the
senior. This convention us also observed in the foot guards where all the directors of
music are commissioned officers, the senior often a lieutenant-colonel, who
nevertheless falls in with his band on parade, conforming to the drum majors orders.

From 1808, the British Army, with its Portuguese and Hanoverian allies, was engaged
in operations against the French in Portugal and Spain. In all the plethora of written
and printed orders, directions and instructions which emanated from the
headquarters of the Army in the field, there is no mention whatever of music
whether played by bands, drums, fifes, bugles and bagpipes. The anecdotal evidence
of the presence of all these with their regiments seems conclusive enough at first
sight, but, as so often is the case, credulity is strained when we read of bands playing
patriotic music while all around them battle rages. It is, for instance, difficult to
accept that having played their comrades into action at Talavera in 1809, the band of
the 48
th
Regiment then joined in the hand-to-hand combat which ensued. Talavera
was a hard and bloodily contested affair, and the bandsmen are likely to have been
fully occupied picking up the wounded of the 48
th
, their role, even then, in battle.

Similarly, would the Master of the Band of the 88
th
Connaught Rangers have been so
insensitive as to have his band play the doleful Irish love song, Savourneen Dileas
Faithful Darling just before the assault on the fortress of the town of Badajos in
March 1812. The 88
th
was celebrated for high spirits and lively conduct, but a song of
that nature, which doubtless all the Connaughtmen knew, is hardly likely to have done
much for morale, relating as it does how the soldier returns home from the wars, only
to find that sorrow at his absence had brought his sweetheart to her cold grave, the
prospect of which faced all the soldiers in the assault that night.

While there can be no doubt that the bands, the drums, the buglers and the pipers
were all present with their battalions in the Peninsula, and that they did play at
formal parades and at social functions, it has to be remembered that at best they
were very small; that the roads in the Peninsula were, and some still are, execrable;
that it is probable that, in battle at least, they left their instruments with the
baggage and acted as very necessary stretcher-bearers; and that on the march, they
were silent until the occasion arose at which music might have been appropriate.

All tales of war, then as now, skim over one aspect on which all soldiers who have
experienced protracted infantry combat would agree: the best are taken first. The
earliest casualties fall heaviest among those who can be least spared. Always the
tallest poppies, is the German saying, and it is true. What this implies is that war will
wreak its havoc as much among the bandsmen, the drummers and the pipers, as among
the born leaders and the most experienced men. The more these come to be relied
on, the more likely it is that the cruel sport of war will see to it that they suffer out
of all proportion to their numbers, so that, for instance, when the cry goes out for
the pipes and drums during a period of rest and retraining, the role call reveals that
the best of them have disappeared through death, wounds, or sickness; and that the
survivors have all been promoted out of the pipe band.

As with the musicians, so with their instruments. These are rarely constructed to
stand up to the hard wear inseparable from the daily business of life in the field in all
weathers, which is the inevitable lot of the infantry soldier. Drum heads must have
split, spares been lost, fifes, like bagpipe chanters, must have broken, and the band
instruments must have become damaged and unplayable if taken into the field at all.
The bugle, too, was at this period coiled or wreathed only once, and so must have
been battered into uselessness as time went on So when the band, drums, or the
pipes were called for, the chances of them falling on parade as an effective musical
unit were probably slight.

On the final conclusion of the wars against France in 1815, Paris was occupied by the
Allies, the occupying force comprising contingents from the Prussians, Austrian,
Russian and British Armies. Inevitably, comparisons were made, and the British bands
of ten or so musicians could not compete with those of their Allies. By 1816, the
Prussians were parading with bands twenty-six strong, and although these were the
bands of regiments of three battalions each, and therefore no stronger
proportionately than the British, their impact was, of course, much greater. When
the occupation ended in 1818, the Prussian bands were established at thirty-two,
their instrumentation much like the British, with a percussion section of bass drum,
two side drums, cymbals and a triangle. This was an addition to the Spielleute, the
drummers and fifers, of whom where were two of each to every company in the
regiment, providing the music for the daily routine in barracks and playing as a corps
on the march, the fifers also sounding the signalhorn, the Prussian bugle, when
required.

But in the British Army the mills, as ever, ground exceeding slow, and it was not until
1823 that it was conceded that a band was essential to the credit of the regiment,
and the number of men allowed to be employed as bandsmen was increased to
fourteen. That was as far as it went. The only instruments provided by the War
department were the drum, the fife and the bugle in the infantry, and the trumpet in
the cavalry. These were classified as Instruments of Command. All band instruments
had to be bought out of the Band Fund, to which the officers subscribed one days
pay on the first appointment, and twelve days pay a year thereafter. But this,
however, was not enough to equip an effective band, because after 1815 the range of
essential instruments increased dramatically.

In 1817, the Prussian Army issued its first list of approved marches, to which the
regimental bands were to be restricted on all official occasions, parades and reviews.
The moving spirit behind this step was King Frederick William III, whose great
interest in the Prussian tradition, lay with his Army and, especially, the outward show
and ceremony connected with peacetime soldiering. When the Prussian Army had to
be reformed and reorganised after the defeat of 1806 by the French, the King had
been allowed to design the uniforms while his generals got on with the real business
of reorganisation.

The Army March Collection was organised in three sections. The first comprised
marches in the old ceremonial time of seventy-two to the minute. The second
contained the new quicksteps at the Prussian tempo of one hundred and fourteen. The
third, issued in 1824, was the cavalry section the infantry was the senior arm in
Prussia and included marches at seventy-two for playing at the walk, tunes in the
double time of one hundred and forty or so for ranking past at the trot and in
rollicking 6/8 for the gallop past. When ranking past, the band played at the halt
opposite the saluting base, and before the regiment reached it the mounted drummer
executed the Galoppvolte, in which he rode a figure-of-eight pattern at the canter in
front of the band, beating time all the while. The evolution demanded a strong and
well-trained drumhorse and a confident drummer, as the horse had to be controlled
by knee pressure alone.

This was a bold and, on the whole, successful attempt to bring some order into what
was, even then, a fairly diffuse subject and had already been introduced in Russia,
where many German military musicians were employed as bandmasters to the Russian
Army. As time passed, other marches were added to the lists, until at length there
were one hundred and eight slow marches in Section 1, two hundred and sixty-seven in
quick time in Section 2 and one hundred and forty-three in the Cavalry Section. A
further unnecessary list was promulgated in 1933, but it was from the original lists
that regiments choose their marches, one from Section 1 to be played as an
inspection tune or Prsentiermarsch, with one from Section 2 for the march past at
the Parademarsch, the famous goose step. Cavalry and horse artillery regiments
chose four tunes from Section 3; one stately slow march as the inspection tune,
another as the walk past; while for the trot and the gallop past, perhaps one of the
many light classical pieces arranged for the cavalry band, which in Prussia comprised
brass instruments alone. Although the Sturm Abteilungen, the Storm Detachments,
the Brownshirts of the Nazi Party, were organised on paramilitary lines with their
own bands, they were not permitted to play the regimental marches of the old
Imperial Army.

The collection includes two marches which illustrate the evolution in military musical
styles. In the early nineteenth century, Paris was occupied twice. Once in 1814, after
Napoleon, Emperor of the French, had abdicated; and once, a year later, after the
Hundred Days War, the campaign which followed his escape from Elba, where he had
been confined after his abdication. Two marches commemorate those two
occupations. The March of Entry into Paris 1814 is in the old ceremonial time of
seventy-two to the minute; The March of Entry into Paris 1815 is a quick march at
one hundred and fourteen.

Although musical affairs are rarely amenable to the General Staff approach, the
Prussian March Collection was a step in the right direction. The drawback was that
the earlier marches were scored for an instrumentation which the military or
marching band could not at that stage match. As a result, in their original
arrangements, the marches, both slow and quick, are perhaps more evocative of the
salon and the ballroom rather than the parade ground. But instruments were steadily
becoming more sophisticated. The brass instruments, the horn and the trumpet in
their different forms, were restricted to the notes of their harmonic series, as the
bugle and the cavalry trumpet are to this day. They were therefore unable to produce
a scale; unlike the reed and string instruments which some of the bandsmen could no
doubt also play. Attempts had been made over the years to modify the brass
instruments by the use of crooks inserted into the instrument which altered the
length of the tube, enabling a further harmonic series to be played. The range of the
horn could also be extended by stopping the bell with the hand. Neither was
satisfactory. Crooks were inconvenient and useless in a marching band; stopping
muffled the tone of the horn and led to poor tone quality.

Experiments had also been carried out in which holes had been made in the trumpet
and bugle, covered either by the players fingers, as in the fife, flute and the bagpipe
chanter, or by keys operated by the musician, but to little avail, with the possible
exception of the key bugle, patented in England in 1810. This was an extension of an
idea out some years before, when keys had been fitted to a trumpet. The Duke of
Kent, soldier brother of the soldier Duke of York, Commander-in-Chief of the Army,
encouraged the incorporation of the key bugle into British military bands, the
instrument acquiring the name of Kenthorn as a result.

It was also called the fuglehorn. When a squad of soldiers was being drilled, the
smartest used to be placed in front so that the others might follow and imitate his
actions. He was also the fugleman; and as the bandsmen playing the kenthorn
marched as the right hand man of the front rank, where the fugleman would march in
a drill squad, the instrument came to acquire the name. The key bugle certainly
reached the bands in the Peninsula, and might have been used to sound routine calls
like The Roast Beef of old England, which, played on the fife and drum, summoned
the soldiers to dinner, as it was later to call the officers. Perhaps the key bugles
might have been combined to form a rudimentary brass section in the band, as its
range enabled tunes to be played, as well as calls to be sounded. The Kenthorn is the
earliest example of a brass instrument capable of playing a complete scale, and its
descendant still flourishes in the brass band, where it is called the flugelhorn, the
Flgelmann being the German equivalent of the British fulgeman, which might itself
be a corruption of the German term.

The key bugle had indicated the way ahead, however, and by the 1820s the invention
of the valve had released all brass instruments from the restrictions of their
harmonic range. The valve had been invented in 1813 by one Blhmel, who played the
oboe himself, but who was nevertheless to revolutionise the whole range of brass
instruments through his invention. The valve operated on the same principle as the
crook, in that it enabled the length of the tube, and hence the air passage, to be
adjusted. Being fitted near the upper end of the instrument, the valve could easily be
operated by one hand, a spring device returning the valve to the open position when
realised. It was quickly realised that the principle could be applied to all the brass
instruments, although it was some time before all the faults, inherent in any new
system, were to be eliminated. The higher register instruments, the trumpet and the
horn, were first to be modified, but the bass had to wait until the appearance of the
tube and its associated range of instruments in 1835.

These were the result of a fruitful period of co-operation between J.G. Moritz, a
Berlin instrument maker, and one Willhilm Wieprecht, one of the most influential
figures in the history of military music. The son of a Trompeter, a bandsman in the
Prussian cavalry, Wieprecht was a trombonist in the orchestra of the Berlin opera
house, and had first become interested in military music while listening to the band at
the daily guard-mounting parade. Initially, he tried his hand at composing marches for
the cavalry band, the somewhat misleading named Trompeterkorps. This brought him
to the attention of the officer commanding the Guard Dragoon Regiment in Berlin,
who gave Wieprecht a free hand to reorganise and improve the Guard Dragoons Band.
From the Guard Dragoons, Wieprecht graduated to the band of the Regiment der
Gardes du Corps, the Prussian equivalent of the British Life Guards. In due course,
his fame spread, and he was appointed still a civilian- as director of music of the
Guard Army Corps, which compromised cavalry, infantry and artillery regiments, some
ten bands in all.

A new range of instruments which Wieprecht and Moritz perfected are with us to
this day. Admirably suited to the military band, they are reliable, portable and with
the competence of the soldier musician to master. They imparted brilliance and
sonority to the military band, which transformed its hitherto essentially indoor or
chamber effect and enabled a vastly greater range of music to be played. Wieprecht
was in the forefront of the movement, and might justly be claimed to be the father
of the military band as we know it. A talented arranger, he made many classical and
orchestral compositions available to the band and also pioneered the massed military
band spectacular in Berlin in 1838 when he conducted one thousand one hundred and
ninety-seven bandsmen, drummers, fifers and trumpeters from thirty-two bands. He
also conducted a performance of the Grosser Zapfenstriech, the Prussian Tattoo
ceremony, before Queen Victoria and her consort Prince Albert outside Cologne in
1845, an experience which might well have caused Her Majesty to wonder when she
was going to see and hear a similar performance from her own bands. But a
performance of this scope and magnitude could only be successful given a common
doctrine, a coherent policy and a shared outlook, all of which were some way in the
future for the British Army.

An improved and more ambitious quality of parade music also began to be composed.
The old, short, two-sectioned marches in slow time went by the board and the earlier
quick marches were prolonged by the addition of the Trio. Longer marches arranged
from popular operatic themes were now within the capacity of the band, as were
sections from the operas themselves, and these, along with popular dance music
waltzes, polkas and so on and operatic overtures came to be expected by the
audiences in the parks and municipal gardens where military bands were increasingly
engaged to play and where a wider range of programme music was demanded than had
hitherto been the case.

All those new instruments opened up a brilliant vista of possibilities for the band, but
they had, in the Prussian as well as the British Army, all to be bought and paid for,
the whole cost falling on the officers, who were naturally not anxious to pay more
than they had to in view of all the other calls on their purses. Once the instruments
had been acquired, it was only common sense to procure the best possible return on
the investment by hiring out the band to play at concerts and similar functions at
which music was expected. The clinching factor, in the case of the military band,
being that it could play out of doors without any of the problems which playing in the
open air of an evening posed for string players, for instance.

The colourful uniforms of the military bands it was the golden age of military
millinery and tailoring were another attraction, and as the bandsmen were also
trained to play standing and from cards rather than sheet music, they could set up
and play almost anywhere. Performances by the garrison bands became a popular
source of entertainment for the general public, who were prepared to pay to be
diverted for a while and to come back for more. But programmes of this scale and
scope had to be rehearsed and scores had to be mastered and practised, and a
sergeant from the ranks, no matter how talented, was unlikely to be able to train and
conduct a band of the necessary quality, capable of sustaining a weekly concert
programme, each consisting of different pieces, without disaster in some form or
another. What was clear was a trained, competent, and full-time musician rather than
a part-time soldier. Britain had its share of musicians; but the military way of life
held no attractions for them, nor was the Band Fund likely to be able to afford the
salaries they could demand. So where were such men, capable musicians prepared to
accept the challenge of transforming forty soldiers into competent instrumentalists
at the modest salary offered, to be found?

After the long wars with France were over, travel to the Continent became possible
once more, and almost every visitor could return with tales of the excellence of the
Continental European bands. The daily guard mounting was a feature of life in all the
garrison towns of Europe, from France to Russia, and the bands not only marched the
guards to and from their duties, but also gave a short concert as the duties were
being handed and taken over, much as they do in London today, one of the few places
where this once general ceremony can still be seen. The best bands were said to be
German, so it made sense for the officers who were having to pay for the upkeep of
the band and much more besides to engage a German bandmaster to train and
conduct the band, preferably one who had done his compulsory military service as a
hoboist, or bandsmen, in a German Army band, where the standards of musicianship
and parade-ground deportment were equally high. This would make the best use of all
those new and expensive instruments and would also enable the officers or rather
the Band Fund to recoup sine if their outlay by giving concerts of a standard
sufficiently high to attract a paying audience and consistent enough to persuade them
that they wanted to hear the band again. Even in the principle cities and towns, where
concerts were frequent, the bands of the regiments in garrison were an important
element in the recreational life of the population. In Edinburgh, for instance, the
band of the regiment stationed in the castle would play on the castle esplanade of a
summer evening, attracting many of the strollers round the sights of the city. Unjust
as it might seem, the reputation of a regiment in its own garrison might depend as
much on the excellence of its band and the variety and frequency of its
performances, as on the behaviour of its officers in local society and the off-duty
conduct of its soldiers, of whom, however, not too much was expected.

Enter then, the German bandmaster, a civilian engaged and paid by the officers from
the Band Fund, very often given the job on the recommendation of one of the firms
dealing with the manufacture and supply of military band instruments. In return, the
bandmasters might undertake to persuade the officers to deal solely with that firm
and, as an added inducement, he might receive a percentage on any orders placed with
it. So it could happen that on arrival, the new bandmaster might condemn all the band
instruments out of hand, ordering a new set from the firm to which he owed his
appointment, it being highly unlikely that any officer on the Band Committee, which
administered the band, would be in a position to disagree.

One of the disadvantages of the civilian bandmaster, no matter how much he owed to
the regiment, and especially if he was a foreigner, was that when swords were
sharpened in anticipation of battle, or when long years in some fever-stricken outpost
of Empire loomed, he was able to take himself off to more congenial and lucrative
employment with some regiment just returned from abroad, whose band needed
restructuring, reorganising, and re-equipping if it was going to be able to compete for
paid engagements against other regimental bands. This happened; but there are other
well-documented cases where the foreign bandmaster stayed with the regiment to
which he had been first appointed, accepting whatever came in the way of foreign
postings. Some stayed for thirty years, longer than most officers; and in such cases
the regiment would take the bandmaster, his wife and children to its collective heart,
he acquiring that special status which long service alone could bring, treated as an
officer in all but name, and like Wilhelm Wieprecht conducting the band of the
regiment in frock coat and cravat to the very end.

As we have seen, the earliest military or regimental bands had been engaged by the
officers primarily for their own entertainment, and were composed of civilian
musicians, eight or ten in number, playing oboes, trumpets, horns, clarinets, or
bassoons. The entire cost was borne by the officers, who, not unnaturally, regarded
the band as their own property, at their sole disposal. Even after a somewhat
grudging authority was given in 1803 for one serjeant to act as Master of the Band,
and one soldier per company to be employed as a musician, making a band of ten at the
most, the whole expense of the instruments and their upkeep fell on the officers.

By any reckoning, the expense was considerable the records of the Royal Scots
disclose that in 1802 clothing for the band came to over 400 in the case of the 2
nd

Battalion, with a further 200 being spent on clothing three years later. In 1807,
swords for the musicians cost almost 100. A recurrent item of expenditure in all
four battalions of the 1
st
Royals, as they were then, was the cost of buying and
emblazoning, and sometimes of replacing, the twenty brass drums each battalion held.
This would appear to indicate that the drums issued from Ordnance sources were
wooden and that smarter regiments with a reputation to maintain, like the 1
st
Royals,
preferred to buy brass drums from a private source, perhaps for their enhanced tone
and appearance. The drum majors staff, and shoulder belts, bugles, fife cases then
made with the regimental device caps, feathers, all had to bought and paid for,
although some of the expense may have been recoverable from the Government.

The 1
st
Royals had been unique among the regiments of the line in that they had
allowed to hold a drum major and one piper on the strength of the 1
st
Battalion, but
when, in 1769, the 2nd Battalion applied to be granted the same privilege, King George
III refused, saying that the regiments honour and reputation were secure without
the addition of further privileges. It appears, however, that other battalions enlisted
pipers. In 1807 the 4
th
Battalion of the 1
st
Royals bought a pair of bagpipes for one
Donald MacDonald at the order of Colonel Hay. In 1812, the Colonel of the 1
st
Royals,
the Duke of Kent he of kenthorn fame tried to enlist no fewer than forty-four
complete pipers, one for each company in the four battalions of the Royals. It is,
therefore, all the more surprising that pipers seem to have entirely disappeared from
the regiment thereafter until they were authorised, but at regimental expense, in
1881. Not until 1918 were the Lowland Regiments placed on the same footing as the
Highland, with a pipe major and five pipers in addition to the establishment.

The band might have been a costly affair and a burden on an officers purse, but, as
we have seen, in the Peninsular War it took the field along with its battalion, playing
as and when it could. On 15
th
June, the eve of the battle of Quatre Bras which
preceded that of Waterloo the three days fight, as Serjeant Wheeler of the 51
st

Light Infantry accurately described it the Duchess of Richmond gave a ball, which
was to become one of the most celebrated inn military, if not in social history. The
ball was held in Brussels, Headquarters of the Duke of Wellington, Commander-in-
Chief of the Allied Army, with many of the British troops being billeted in Brussels
itself. During the ball, attended by many of the regimental and staff officers
stationed locally, a report came that the French were advancing, led by the great
Napoleon himself, thus taking the Allies, including Wellington, by surprise. The troops
were turned out, a scene of high drama, the atmosphere well captured by the poet
Lord Byron, in Childe Harolds Pilgrimage:

And wild and high the Camerons Gathering rose,
The war-note of Lochiel, which Albynns hills
Have heard, and heard, too, have her Saxon foes:-
How in the noon of night that Pibroch thrills,
Savage and shrill! But with the breath which fills
Their mountain-pipe, so fill the mountaineers
With the fierce daring which instils
The stirring memory of a thousand years,
And Evans, Donalds fame rings in each clansmans ears!

Byrons mother was Catherine Gordon of Gight in Aberdeenshire, a distant relative of
the Duke of Gordon, and he had been christened George Gordon Byron. Much of his
childhood had been on Deeside, in the heart of the Gordon country, under the shadow
of Dark Lochnagar, subject of a later poem.

The 92
nd
had been raised by the Duke of Gordon as the Gordon Highlanders, but
commanded in 1815 by Lieutenant-Colonel John Cameron of Fassiefern in Lochaber,
Clan Cameron country, but of which the Duke of Gordon was feudal superior, and from
where many of the 92
nd
had been recruited, some by Cameron of Lochiel, Chief of
Clan Cameron, himself. Byrons reference to The Camerons Gathering might
therefore be to the 92
nd
, and not to the 79
th
Cameron Highlanders recruited partly
in Lochaber by Alan Cameron of Erracht in defiance of the Duke of Gordon - to whom
it has always been ascribed in regimental folklore. Fassiefern was killed in the
encounter battle fought the day after the ball at Quatre Bras.

There is a tradition that the pipe tune played to rouse the soldiers of the Highland
regiments in the early hours of that fateful morning was not The Camerons
Gathering. Several tunes have been known by that name, one of them called Chlanna
nan con, thigibh a seo s gheibh sibh feil Sons of dogs, come here and get meat
the slogan or war-cry of clan Cameron. The tune said to have been played to turn out
soldiers out is Lord Breadalbanes March, the tune of a song from Strathspey in the
Central Highlands. People of this Glen, Awake!, the song begins, and goes on to warn
that James Grant of Carron on Speyside, a notorious ruffian and reiver, has been
seen in the glen with his henchmen. People of this Glen is also said to have been
played in the gloaming of the winters evening before the massacre of Glencoe in
February 1692, in a last-minute attempt to warn the people of the treacherous
attack that was planned for the next morning. It was played by Hugh MacKenzie,
piper to Robert Campbell of Glenlyon, who commanded the soldiers of the Earl of
Argylls Regiment who carried out the massacre. The tune, and its connotations, would
have been well known to the Highland soldiers of the Black Watch, the 79
th
and the
92
nd
who had heard it in the first light of the June morning.

Despite the foregoing, it is significant that when the 79
th
marched off on the road to
Quatre Bras and Waterloo, it was not to the sound of the pipes, as might be
expected, but to the music of their band. The tune they played was Loudons Bonnie
Woods and Braes, more familiar now as a strathspey tune for dancing, but perfectly
suitable as a march in common time. Given the situation and the occasion, however,
the words seem highly appropriate for the time:

Loudoun's bonnie woods and braes.
I maun lea' them a,' lassie;
Wha can thole when Britain's faes
Would gi'e Britons law, lassie?
Wha would shun the field of danger?
Wha frae fame would live a stranger?
Now when Freedom bids avenge her,
Wha would shun her ca', lassie?

The years that followed the successful completion of the Waterloo campaign were
marked by an increased emphasis on parade-ground display and impact, at least for
those troops stationed at home. In 1830, the bands were ordered into white coasts,
while the drummers, who had hitherto been dressed in reversed colours their
coats were the colour of the regimental facings were given red, like the rank and
file. The trend had been for some time towards different tartans for the band, and
scarf plaids and dirks also began to appear, although the weapon of the bandsmen was
the broadsword in the Highland and band sword in the Lowland regiments, which we
must remember were at this time dressed as infantry of the line, where the swords
issued to the band were curved and were worn from waist belts with slings, unlike the
shoulder belts of the Highlanders.

It seems ludicrous that at a period when so much emphasis was placed on dress, and
in which so many exotic band uniforms were tolerated, that no attention whatsoever
was paid to what the bands played, or how they played it. The instrumentation of the
band developed entirely on the preferences or whims of the foreign civilian
bandmaster, as did the arrangements in which the band played it repertoire. Nemesis
came during the early days of the Crimean War of 1854-1856. The Allied armies, the
French, British and Turkish, were concentrated at Scutari, on the shores of the
Bosphorus opposite what is now Istanbul. A parade, attended by all the dignitaries of
the armies, was held to celebrate the birthday of Queen Victoria. All went well until
the time for the Royal Salute, when the massed bands of the British Army struck up
the National Anthem, but not with that perfect unanimity which could be desired.
Each band played its own arrangement, in its own key and pitch, and at its own tempo.
In terms of military public relations, the parade was a disaster.

After the war, HRH The Duke of Cambridge, grandson of King George III and cousin
of Queen Victoria, became Commander-in-Chief of the British Army, a position he
was to hold for almost forty years. He had commanded the 1
st
Division in the Crimea,
although whether he had been present at the debacle at Scutari is not clear. He had
heard the excellent bands of the French and, later, the Sardinian contingents, and
for whatever reason, he gave his weighty backing to the plan which now matured, that
of setting up a school of military music for the Army. The authorised strength of the
band had by then risen to one serjeant and twenty bandsmen, which was in theory,
enough to provide a musically effective band on the square or in the bandstand. In
practice, as was to be found out yet again a century and a half later, a band of this
size is rarely complete, there being always one or two bandsmen absent, with or
without leave, or sick, or on one of the innumerable excuses the ever-fertile mind of
the soldier can always devise. It was the accepted practice for the band to be
augmented by acting bandsmen attached nominally to the different companies of the
battalion, but employed permanently with the band, returning to the ranks before an
official inspection and rejoining the band thereafter. In some cases, the effective
strength of the band was almost double as a result.

The Royal Military School of Music began life as the Military Music class in 1857,
after the usual wrangle about who was to pay for what. It was accommodated at
Kneller Hall at Twickenham, then in the country outside London, always an important
point, as the further the soldiers were from the fleshpots, stews and temptations of
a big city, the more attention they paid to their work. The money to run the school
was subscribed by all regiments in the Army which maintained bands. The staff
consisted of a commandant from the half-pay list, the retired list of the period, re-
employed and paid as a captain. There was a superintendant and there were
professors teaching the various band instruments. Eighty students attended the first
course, and four women were officially attached to the class, presumably to do the
students laundry, three being the wives of students, the fourth the mother of a lad,
as older boys were known.

The Scottish Regiments sent nine students. The 1
st
Royals sent two Lads; the 25
th

Kings Own Scottish Borderers a drummer and a bandsmen, indicating that the 25
th

had a corps of drums at the time, and that the drummer sent to Kneller Hall was
probably a flute player. The Black Watch sent a lance-corporal and a boy. From the
79
th
came a lance-corporal, one of the first to qualify on the course, later, appointed
bandmaster of the 3
rd
Buffs. The 93
rd
sent a bandsman.

The aim of the course was to instruct bandsmen to a higher degree of proficiency
than was possible within the battalion or regiment and to produce NCOs fit to be
bandmasters. This included training the bandsmen in their separate instruments, as
well as in the production of a functioning band that could meet all the musical needs
of the regiment from providing music in the line of march, the most important aspect
as far as the regiment itself was concerned. From the point of view the band
president, and of the bandsmen themselves, playing on the march was a chore to be
got through, the all-important factor being the ability of the band to attract paid
outside engagements and the skill of the bandmaster in securing them, preferably
well away from the regiment and as lucrative as possible, to the benefit of both the
bandsmen and the band fund, which took a percentage of all paid engagements.

The unspoken aim of the course was to oust, in time, the foreign and civilian
bandmasters, replacing them with graduates from Kneller Hall. This was achieved, but
it took a long time, the last civilian director retiring in 1906, albeit with an honorary
commission. The post-Crimea reforms made provision for the appointment of a
bandmaster serjeant, presumably trained at Kneller Hall. The band itself consisted of
a band serjeant, a band corporal and twenty bandsmen. The bandmaster serjeant
ranked as a 1
st
Class staff serjeant, his precedence with, but after, the serjeant
major, the schoolmaster, the quarter-master serjeant, and the serjeant instructor in
musketry. The drum major also ranked as a 1
st
Class staff serjeant, but was held
against the establishment of drummers, whereas the pipe major, another of the elite
1
st
Class staff serjeants, had his own niche in the Highland regiments and the Scots
Guards.

The badge of rank of the 1
st
Class staff serjeants was a four-bar chevron originally
worn point down between the elbow and the shoulder, surmounted in the case of the
serjeant major by a crown, while the drum major wore an embroidered drum above
his. In time, the chevrons were ordered to be worn point up, between the wrist and
the elbow, and there they remain to this day, worn as a badge of rank and office by
drum and pipe majors both in the Army and in civilian pipe bands. The bandmaster
serjeant wore no chevrons, but was distinguished by gold shoulder cords. His band
serjeant wore three chevrons, and ranked with the platoon serjeants.

In 1881, the rank of warrant-officer was introduced, to which both the serjeant
major and the bandmaster serjeant were promoted. By then all the fancy and fanciful
uniforms of earlier periods had disappeared. Since 1873, the band had worn the
scarlet tunic or doublet, which became the dress of all the Scottish regiments in
1881, kilted and non-kilted. Some distinctions remained. The band of the Highland
Light Infantry wore scarf plaids and feathered bonnets with their tartan trousers,
with a red hackle in the bonnet, as did the band and the drummers of the
Seaforth Highlanders. The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders bandsmen also wore a
red hackle and a white sporran with two black tassels in place of the swinging six of
the rank and file. When the Leslie tartan was introduced into the Kings Own Scottish
Borderers, the bands were given scarf plaids in the same tartan. The Gordon
Highlanders bandsmen had a red and white hackle in the feathered bonnet, while
those of the Camerons kept up the black leather waist belt they had worn in the ways
of the white band doublet. This it was that in many different ways the sensed of the
separate identities was kept alive, setting the regiments apart from each other and
the bands from the rest of their battalions, and this was to endure through the two
world wars of the next century; right up until the regimental bands themselves
disappeared in 1994.