Review

Trevor Herbert and Helen Barlow
Music & The British Military in the Long Nineteenth Century:

New York, NY, United States
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Date of Publication: 2013

Primary Genre: Study Material - book

The history of music and music making in the British military has long needed an accurate, scholarly treatment. Two books by Henry George Farmer, Memoirs of the Royal Artillery Band: Its Origin, History and Progress (Boosey & Co., 1905) and The Rise & Development of Military Music (Wm. Reeves, 1912) are still helpful if greatly outdated resources and Algernon Rose’s Talks with Bandsmen (William Rider, 1895) is useful only by employing the filter needed when dealing with a book that is notable for its enthusiasm but can hardly be considered scholarly. That it took this long to see publication of a thorough look at such an important subject may seem surprising until we note that the history of military music in the United States still lacks any kind of definitive treatment.
 
Trevor Herbert and Helen Barlow have collaborated to write an exceptionally helpful guide of manageable length (353 pages) that focuses on what Eric Hobsbawm called “the long nineteenth century,” expanded by the authors to encompass the 1770s to the end of World War I in 1918. This timeline is instructive: while music making took place in the British military before 1770, it was by that time that music was being written to be played by competent musicians, and within a decade, players were more frequently enlisted (“attested” in British nomenclature) soldiers rather than free-lance musicians hired by officers. As with any history of a subject that has so many disparate and interconnected parts – consider only the transition of music from its primary role of signaling events to performing transcriptions of symphonic works for the edification of civilian audiences, to say nothing about how military music was employed across the vast British Empire – only so much can be told. But Herbert and Barlow have given us a thoroughly engaging, informative account that stylistically reads like Herbert’s seminal The Trombone (Yale University Press, 2006) and The British Brass Band: A Musical and Social History (Oxford University Press, 2000) of which he served as editor.
 
While the book does not attempt to give a history of the use of particular instruments apart from brief sketches of those such as keyed bugle, serpent and ophicleide that are no longer part of modern ensembles, we learn that trombonists were in short supply in Britain in the early 18th century. The subject of pay for musicians is also of interest. In the first half of the 19th century, soldiers (including musicians) were paid about a shilling a day. While wages were low, for trombone players they represented more than the per-service pay that professional civilian players made since most symphonic music didn’t call for trombones. Perhaps the penny a day soldier-musicians were given for beer helped to mitigate their meager paychecks. That there were 4500 musicians in the British army by 1850 – and their numbers continued to grow through the decades of Empire – strikes the reader as nothing short of astonishing, but this is just a small indication of the importance of music in both military exercises and in providing music for “the masses” in order to promote patriotism and civil order and contentment. 
 
The reader learns a great deal about the transition from high to low pitch, tempos for marching, the early recorded history of bands and how brass bands and volunteer bands had influence on British musical life. The fact that the book is not ordered in a strictly chronological way is refreshing and the authors’ writing style is neither breezy nor overly academic. There is a little confusion about the use of the English bass horn (pages 89-91); while Anthony Baines is cited as saying it was not used outside Britain, it actually was employed with some frequency in Europe, and it is not, as the authors state, surprising that the first English performance of Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in 1843 employed English bass horn rather than ophicleide. The composer quite intentionally wrote the part for “corno inglese di basso,” only later making the concession for ophicleide to play it as the English bass horn drifted toward obscurity. The question of when the first band of attested soldiers was employed in the British military needs ongoing unraveling; the date of 1749 for such a band (quoting an article in the London Evening Post with commentary by J. W. Fortescue, author of A History of the British Army, MacMillan & Co., 1899) seems much too early, with 1785 being the now widely accepted date for the introduction of the practice. But these small points simply go to show that this history is still being written, and the book’s ample footnotes, numerous appendices and extensive bibliography give readers and scholars more paths to explore. Highly recommended.

-Douglas Yeo                                                                           
Arizona State University