1.5 A short history of wind bands  (Page 3/5)

The beginnings of the modern concert band are often traced to the French Revolution, when large bands were a popular part of patriotic gatherings and festivals. By the middle of the nineteenth century, popular concerts by amateur bands and "people's brass bands" as well as actual military bands were a regular feature of community life throughout Europe.

At first, these military and community bands played mostly popular and utilitarian music with immediate appeal to the public. In spite of the start made during the young French Republic, which included original works written by respected composers specifically for bands, most serious composers were not interested in producing compositions for bands. Bands that wanted to include serious music in their programs often used transcriptions of well-known orchestral pieces. The composers' lack of interest was probably largely due to problems in instrumentation . One problem was simply a lack of standardization. Band instrumentation (the types of instruments used, and number of each) varied a great deal from place to place; even now it is not standardized and varies from one country to another. Another problem for composers may have been that wind instruments of that period were not as high in quality as they are today. As mentioned above, in early Europe there were no large standardized musical groups. When a large standardized group of instruments did develop - the orchestra - it was largely made up of stringed instruments, which were essentially as easy to play well as they are today. Wind instruments, on the other hand, were notably inferior in design to today's instruments. They were more difficult (sometimes basically impossible) to play in tune, often could not change notes as quickly as today's instruments, and some of them could not even play all the notes of a chromatic scale.

Bands in the u. s.

In the pre-Revolutionary American colonies, the acceptance of band music as popular entertainment was slowed by an early rejection in the more religious settlements of all instrumental music as too "worldly". Military music during the Revolutionary War was largely fife and drum, and this period saw major developments in snare drum method. The most important development for bands in the early U.S. was probably the establishment in 1798 of the Marine Band, which has since then functioned as the national band of the U.S. In the early eighteen hundreds, most army bands still tended to be the small traditional fife-and-drum ensemble, although there were some military-style brass bands in the large cities, usually as part of the local militia. Civil War regiments began with full European-style bands, but the need for fighting men eventually reduced these to teens playing fife and drum.

Following the Civil War, regiments were to have full bands again. Since the 1850's civilian bands had also been making rapid progress, spreading through the midwest. The careers of famous bandmasters such as Patrick Gilmore, widely known for festivals featuring huge numbers of musicians, and John Philip Sousa, the composer of many well-loved marches, helped to continue the spread of the popularity of band music through the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.