5.  Russia

Employment of foreign, especially Prussian, bandmasters brought rapid modernization to Russian military music. The most famous of there bandmasters was Anton Dorffeld who became Director of the entire Kaiser’s Guard Corps. 

One of the greatest figures of the Nineteenth century though, was Rimsky-Korsakov who in 1873 was appointed Inspector of Navy Bands in Russia. In this position he suddenly acquired absolute authority over the instruments, music and the education of the players and conductors under his supervision. He once told:

“ In the bands of musicians, I was met as superiors were met.. I made them play their repertoire in my presence; caught the wrong notes; detected the slips in the instrumental parts; examined the instruments and made requisitions for new or additional ones… […] ” 

The transcriptions that Rimsky-Korsakov himself made for these bands are only a very small portion of the probably vast repertoire of interesting music unknown in the West today.

This instrumentation had a wide influence on all continental military bands during the second half of the Nineteenth century. Today we still use a member of the saxhorn family which is the Baritone or Euphonium. The use of the saxophone family was not immediately adopted in every French regiment but they are still part of today’s bands too.

Adolph Sax instruments

Catalogue of the principal Sax instruments

4.  England 

During the early years of the Nineteenth century military music in England was supported completely by private officers and not the government. During the period 1820 - 1845 Prussia, Austria and France experienced a vigorous period of experimentation with new instruments, resulting in a series of official orders dealing with military band instrumentation. England had no strong personality such as Wieprecht, Leonhardt or Sax to influence the thinking so the instrumentation of regimental bands was left to the individual bandmasters. Bandmasters were usually civilians who owed their position to the influence of various instrument makers. The newly appointed bandmasters would immediately replace all the instruments with those made by his industrial partner. The guiding force was only commercial. 

Another commercial influence came from the band’s journals, just before 1850 bands adjusted their instrumentation as necessary to perform the works in their subscribed journal. Therefore, the most popular journals tended to indirectly contribute to the standardization of band instruments. 

In 1845 Carl Boosé was the bandmaster of the Scots Guard and also printed his own journal. He was an “imported” German bandmaster as he was born, studied and served as professional military musician in Darmstadt before going to England. The instrumentation set in his journal was based on the Prussian-German model and was influential in pointing England in that direction too. 

After the mid of the century there started to be concern about the quality and reorganization of the English military bands and specially about the tradition of accepting civilian bandmasters.

“The Crimean War opened the eyes of the authorities. When the war break out, our bands, deserted by their bandmasters (civilians who wanted nothing to do with battle), were soon disorganized. On the other hand, the French maintained their bands at a high state of efficiency throughout the campaign. The final humiliation came at Scutari in 1854 when, in front of 16000 men marching past the band, our bands struck up “God Save the Queen” not only playing from different arrangements but also in different keys, and all this before the general staff of the allied army.”

This happened because of the absence of an organized system! This concern let to the start of the famous Kneller Hall military school in 1857. The instrumentation of English military bands, however, continued to resist the brass orientation of the Austrian bands.

2. Where does a specific “sound identity” come from? 

A wind band's specific sound identity is given by several aspects, the most influential are the historical events.

1. Prussia
2. Austria
3. France
4. England
5. Russia
6. Italy

During the Nineteenth century the prestige of the military was very high and this widely contributed to the development of the military wind band music scene too.

We can define three periods for the nineteenth-century military bands:

• the period from the beginning of the century through the Napoleonic Wars (between 1803-1815), when the military bands in most countries just continue the Harmoniemusik approach of the eighteenth century with no major changes.
• the years between 1820 - 1825 are years of extraordinary development in the construction of single wind instruments, including new inventions. This reflects into the growth in size and instrumentation of military bands all over “Europe”.
• half through the century, all the previous facts lead to the “Golden Age” of military bands.

The success of his new instrumentation made Wieprecht become the director of all the military music of the Berlin Guard in 1838.

He so started organizing the “Monster Concerts” which were held on special occasions and consisted in combining all the 16 infantry bands  and 16 cavalry bands from Berlin in one enormous ensemble of among 1000 musicians and 200 percussionists conducted by Wieprecht himself. 

It was in fact during one of these “Monster Concerts” in 1843 that he realized it was necessary to standardize instrumentation as he had to write out many different versions of the single parts in order to allow all the musicians to play.

The same year Berlioz, writing about Wieprecht, reported: 

“… he has a body of six hundred musicians under his command, all good readers, all well up in the mechanism of their instruments, playing in tune, and favored by nature with indefatigable lungs and lips of leather; unattainable by our artists in France. They are regiments of musicians rather than musicians of regiments. […] the range of the tuba is very noble, not at all dull like that of the ophicleide, but vibrant and very sympathetic to the tones of the trombones and trumpets, of which it forms the true double-bass, and with which it blends perfectly. The clarinets seemed to me equal to the brass so far that the 8 cylinder trumpets played as rapidly as the clarinets could have done.” 

Wieprecht was beginning to achieve control even if he had not yet reached a real standardized instrumentation.

In 1845 in Berlin Wieprecht suggested an extraordinary new concept of military band instrumentation which consisted of:

• given number of players in both Guard Infantry and regular Line Infantry bands
• 21 different parts
• 3 registers balanced in an “acoustic pyramid” as he called them:

In 1901 in Rome, M°Alessandro Vessella made another important reform with the aim of unifying the setting of a wind band by dividing it in groups, not according to the role as Gatti has done, but according to the carachteristics of the instruments:

- woodwinds

- light brass

- dark brass

- percussion

Vessella’s reform determined the subdivision of the traditional wind band setting into 3 groups of settings defined by size:

Small band --> 35 musicians

Medium band --> 54 musicians

Great band --> 102 musicians

The main characteristics of this reform is the big instrumental variety: Vessella aimed at using the largest number of instruments from each family, from the highest to the lowest. In this way, it was possible to obtain timbre shades which were impossible to create with the previous settings.

Hans von Bülow, one of the most important music critics of the nineteenth century associated Wieprecht to Louis XIV because no other military musician has ever been more influential. 

Wieprecht had entered the military through the less interesting canal that usually musicians don’t prefer, this is the trumpet corps of the cavalry. Cavalry units at that point were made up by ensembles of natural trumpets who were only used to play signals. By doing that he very intuitively understood that it was the brass instruments which were meaningful to express the exuberance and pride of the citizens in the process to rebuild Prussia, not the old court oriented Harmoniemusik which was the heart of the larger infantry bands. 

Wieprecht started his career as composer by writing six marches for the Guard Dragoon Regiment but he felt the instrumentation had big harmonic limitations (only natural trumpets in G, F and C and trombones) so he asked Major von Barner to buy valve instruments for his 13 players + 7 hired musicians because at that time they were not used in Berlin cavalry units. He so obtained a full “blech-instrumental-harmonie” which allowed all modulations and was so formed:

A large concert band such as the one listed above, would have been unthinkable only twenty years earlier, large bands were no longer uncommon in Prussia by mid-nineteenth-century. 

Although in 1848  a band of 24 men was still considered de rigueur, it was normal to have bands of 50/60 musicians. 

In addition to the Guard Infantry and Line Infantry, each regiment had a choir of soldiers which consisted in 60 voices to perform the necessary hymns with the band.

In 1860 the War Ministry created 34 Infantry and 10 Cavalry regiments more and Wieprecht was given the responsibility to create their bands, not to mention he managed to do so in only 3 months! This task gave him the opportunity to publish another reorganization of Prussian bands. 

His idea was that if publishers would make compositions available which were scored in accordance with this plan, then the same piece of music could be purchased and used by any of the three basic types of bands.

Aside from his contribution to the reorganization of Prussia’s military music, Wieprecht also contributed tremendously as a composer and arranger of enormous numbers of complete symphonies and overtures for large Infantry band.

The Battle of Leipzig (1863) - Wilhelm Wieprecht

2.  Austria 

During the first half of the Nineteenth century in Austria typical Infantry bands were made up by small groups of professional musicians (called Hoboisten) coming from the Baroque tradition + 35 musicians (called Bandisten) who were soldiers and then trained as musicians in the Regiment + hired civilians. 

The beginning of the 1800 century seems to detect the worry that a band might become “musical” and develop beyond the military function. After 1840 in fact, the exceptional musicality of Austrian bands is evident and this because the military band leaders are civilians trained as musicians in conservatories and Austria could profit from a particular distinguish group of conductors among which was also Julius Fučik).

By 1840 it is already possible to find instrumental characteristics which are usually associated with the Nineteenth century Austrian music, in particular the prominence of brass instruments, the Eb trumpets, and the appearance of the flugelhorns and euphoniums. 

A large Austrian military band still included a sizable number of extra hired players, although they were only authorized 35 or 40 musicians, Austrian infantry bands sometimes reached 70 or 80 players! 

The most important figure in the Nineteenth-century Austrian military music was Andreas Leonhardt who was appointed “Armeekapellmeister” and immediately fought for:

• larger bands
• increase of the social status of the conductors by giving them regular army ranks and pay (he was not successful in the pay part)

He supervised also the purchase of new instruments and music and was the consultant for regiments who wanted to hire civilian conductors.

Leonhardt’s reorganization and standardization of all the army music in 1851 resulted in a basic infantry band of 48 men + 12 apprentices in peace time. Anyway, single regiments could still decide to hire extra players. 

Shortly after the 1848’s civil disorders, a strong feeling towards modern march starts in the Austro-Hungarian empire. By the end of the century, this new march feeling spreads also to Germany, America, Russia and China…

3.  France

Little development of military bands occurred in France because Napoleon only allowed to have larger bands when it was payed by private officers. His own taste for military music was very basic; he only allowed the use of trumpets for signals so he only supported the Trumpet School of Versailles which was under the leadership of the German composer David Buhl. Bull’s innovation was to bring the trumpet signals from 2 parts to 4/6 parts and to enlarge it to 4 trumpets, 2 horns and 2 trombones (to be considered of military necessity and not art) in order to be able to transmit more sophisticated instructions for troop movements. 

It was a period of smaller bands also because Napoleon had great losses during the campaigns, it was said that over two thousand French military musicians died during the offensive in Russia alone. 

It was during this period of small bands that Anton Reicha in 1815 composed “Commemoration Symphony” for three military bands, each band consisting of:

• piccolo
• pairs of oboes
• clarinets in C
• horns
• trumpets
• bassoons
• string bass or contrabassoon 
• percussion
• cannons

 Carafa, even with his greater number of players had a band which was 60% woodwinds, some of which, such as oboes and bassoons, were of no use in the open air. Sax’s band was instead only 24% woodwinds and was much stronger on the lower register. As a result, we can be sure that Sax’s band sounded darker, moro homogeneous and with a bigger sound.

There was no contest!

About the performance of Carafa’s “Andante” composed for the occasion by Adam was said:

“ This piece, perfectly played by the principal students of our ancient school of military music and by several professors of the same establishment, was headed with lively attention. The audience applauded but without enthusiasm.”

Sax’s band, conducted by A.Fessy, music director of the 5th Regiment of the Parisian National Guard, performed the same composition.

“ Almost immediately followed the music of Sax, playing the same Andante. This good military music was bold, open, sonorous, noble, sustained, less varied in timbre, without a doubt, but more homogeneous, equal throughout and infinitely more adaptable to soldiers on the march or on the battle field… The piece played by Sax was followed with cries of enthusiasm and applause.”

The commission decided in favor of Sax but for political reasons, his ideas couldn’t be used till 1854 when a government ordinance set the official instrumentation and the infantry and cavalry (brass) bands. This includes the new appearance of the saxophones!

Bass saxhorn in Bb

6.  Italy

The political situation retarded the opportunities to follow the instrumentation development which had taken place in Europe (Prussia, France and Austria).

A commission on military music formed in 1848 by Teodulo Mabellini set the instrumentation for a regimental band at only 8 players + possible hired players. 

In 1865 a second commission on military band instrumentation was formed by Mercadante. This commission recommended a standard infantry band instrumentation of around 45 musicians and a cavalry band of 30 musicians with a distinctly Austrian flavor but without the Sax instruments.

I Vespri Siciliani - Giuseppe Verdi performed by the Banda dell'Arma dei Carabinieri (Italy) in 1964

1. Prussia 

Following this tradition, the growth of military bands began firstly with the expansion of the Harmoniemusik idea. Following the French taste, the first change which took place was the expansion of the number of clarinets players. Secondly, the start of the hire of extra civilian musicians (up to a maximum number of 12 regular players + 12 “Hilfsmusiker”)

In 1820 Georg Abraham Schneider was appointed Inspector of Army Bands in Berlin, although he absolutely wasn’t as innovator as his successor Wilhelm Wieprecht, he helped to establish an artistic climate in which contemporary and later men could bring Prussian military band concerts to be rarely surpassed by any symphony orchestra of the nineteenth century.

According to compositions dated around 1830, so just before the Wieprecht period, infantry bands included valved instruments for the first time and the following was the setting:

The various contributions of Wieprecht were in large part responsible for the great popularity of Prussian bands through the end of the century. 

By World War I, 541 bands from various Prussian military corps existed. 

What is today modern Germany partly followed the lead of the Prussians but Wieprecht found nothing to admire when he travelled to Bavaria in 1845, same impression Berlioz had when in Dresden in 1842 although he made a noticeable remark: 

“ […] the military band is very good, even the drummers are musicians but the intonation left much to be desired and the bandmasters of these regiments would do well to order their clarinets from our incomparable Sax […]” which was something he really admired in Darmstadt were: “ […] there is a military band of about thirty musicians, for which I envied the Grand Duke. They play in good tune, with style, and with such a feeling for rhythm that even the drum parts are interesting.” 

Wieprecht also pointed out the lack of suitable instruments in the lower range (the tuba was still unknown there) he said:

“ […] This demonstrates how little care is given to military music in Bavaria.”

 One institute who tried to preserve the old traditions was the Gymnase de Musique Militaire. Founded in 1836 by Berr, Klosé and Carafa, it was a school for talented members of all Regiments training for both players and conductors (until it was closed in 1870).

This institution was devoted to preserving the old military instrumentation, based on the traditional Harmoniemusik instruments. It was closely allied with the Parisian instrument makers who only produced these traditional instruments.

The Director of the school was Michele Carafa, represented the tradition of French military music and was a great “enemy” for the young foreigner Adolph Sax who had to battle to win his revolution in French military music. 

Sax was a talented young instrument maker in Brussels when he came to attention of the French Général de Rumigny in help on the field to Louis Philippe. It was probably Général de Rumigny who was largely responsible for sponsoring Sax’s move to Paris in 1842 when almost immediately Sax begun a correspondence with the Minister of War relative to the poor condition of the instruments of the French military school. By doing so, Sax got in conflict with the traditional school, led by Carafa, who at once attempted to undermine his ideas and his new business in Paris. Sax was subjected to nasty press campaigns, his best workers were tempted away by higher salaries, a mysterious fire destroyed part of his factory and he was even attacked physically. 

It was Berlioz who described all this in Memoires.

In this atmosphere, the Minister of War organized a commission in 1845 to study the conditions of the French military music. 

The discussion was about the size and instrumentation based on three fundamental questions:

1. How many players are strictly necessary for infantry and cavalry bands?
2. Which instruments, either old or new, should be adopted for these bands?
3. How many of each instruments (doubling) are necessary for a desirable sound?

Rather than discuss about it, they organized a field test on 22nd April 1845 on the Champ de Mars which was a spacious military parade ground where today the Eiffel tower stands. This offered the opportunity to test the instrumentation plans in an outdoor environment, typical for a military band, and also to offer to the interested public the opportunity to make first-hand judgements. 

The commission decided to test primary the instrumentation plans submitted by Carafa and Sax both representing the older traditional ideas and the entirely new. Both were asked to recruit a band each and both had to play music composed for the occasion by on elf the members of the commission, composer Adolph Adam in addition to music of their choice.

A maximum limit of 45 musicians was defined.

Carafa had one important advantage, his players were the professors and best students from the Gymnase de Musique Militaire and were all playing on traditional instruments. Sax’s players were instead playing on entirely new instruments they had only seen for the first time the day before!

Carafa was determined to win, not only he arrived with four players above the limit, he also had his agents kidnap seven key members of Sax’s band. The commission refused to allow Carafa the extra players. Sax trying without success to replace his missing layers, arrived late for the contest with two instruments he himself played alternately in an attempt to cover the missing parts.

The most significant example of Vessella’s wind band setting is the “Banda Musicale dell’Arma dei Carabinieri”, one of the 6 Italian military bands, the only professional wind orchestras in the Country.

It is possible to listen to two versions of the same composition performed in 1964 and 2013 by the same Banda dell'Arma dei Carabinieri preserving the same instrumentation throughout the years.

Since the Vienna Classic period the trend was to get larger and larger in:

setting (growing from the "Octet")

sound (starting with Beethoven and Wagner)

space (need of bigger concert halls).

Let's consider how these aspects developed in the history of wind bands.

Saxotromba

[ Wilhelm Wieprecht came from a very musical family, his grandfather, father and four cousins all being professional musicians. Born in 1802 followed a strict musical education given by his father. He studied trombone and held court position as trombonist in Dresden, Leipzig and finally Berlin. When in Berlin, the turning point of his life occurred, when he heard a Prussian military band perform the overture “Le Nozze di Figaro” by Mozart and decided to dedicate himself to military music. It could sound strange to read that a professional orchestra musician could be taken by an outdoor performance of a military band but we speak of a time when most orchestras were opera orchestras and the great repertoire orchestras had not yet emerged. Moreover, the military bands, due to the military, were more disciplined and performed at a higher technical level than these small opera orchestras. ]

[ Harmoniemusik:

usually 6/8 players —> 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 horns, 2 bassoons  these musicians were also called “Hoboisten” and this name remains associated with military bands till the Austrian start making a difference due to uniform, and sometimes pay, between “Hoboisten” and “Bandisten” within a single band ]

Michele Carafa

[ Commemoration Symphony - Anton Reicha

audio

Modern edition by David Whitwell

This Symphony is one of the great monuments of the repertoire for wind band. To fully understand the unique nature of this score it is necessary to recall the late eighteenth century tradition of the great public festivals in Paris during which a large wind band, composed by bringing together numerous smaller bands, played a central role. During the first of these festivals in 1790, which featured a Te Deum by Gossec for chorus and band, the powerful influence on the public made by a large mass of musicians in an outdoor environment caught everyone by surprise. The final organization of one of these large public festivals resulted in the Berlioz Symphony for Band.

So it was that in 1815 with the final fall of Napoleon and the consequent end of the long period of the Napoleonic Wars, which had been so expensive in lives and money, Anton Reicha, a gifted composer then living in Paris, anticipated that another one of these great festivals might be organized. It seems clear that his purpose, in 1815, was to create in advance a composition suitable for such a great outdoor performance. In the same spirit as Beethoven, who first dedicated his Third Symphony to Napoleon and then changed his mind and scratched out the dedication on the autograph score, Reicha apparently realized that a work dedicated to Napoleon would have a very brief performance life and so he outlined a much broader purpose. While the title on the autograph score reads, “Symphony without strings” (Harmonie complete ou Symphonie sans insts. à cordes), in his handwritten preface Reicha identifies his purpose. 

This work is composed to commemorate: 

1st, the memory of great exploits; 

2nd, the death of heroes and great men; 

3rd, to celebrate any important future event.

David Whitwell ]

Rimsky-Korsakov

Adolph Sax