CHAPTER 5 | BANDS IN ANTEBELLUM AMERICA 115
who performed Italian opera in its original tongue, on the other. An orchestra
of twenty-fi ve played for both the English and Italian “wings.” Instead of alter-
nating nights of opera with nights of other popular entertainments, as was the
norm at most opera houses, the Maguire-Lyster Company played opera every
night, and to substantial crowds.
That year in San Francisco has been termed a year of wonders in the annals
of opera. Maguire’s Opera House, which seated 1,700, gave 145 performances.
Attendance averaged 1,500 per performance, making a total of 217,000 seats sold
in a city of 60,000. By comparison, in New York City today (population 8 mil-
lion), the Metropolitan Opera, whose house seats 3,800, would have to build an
additional fi fty-two opera houses to accommodate an equivalent audience over
145 evenings. No American city, at any time, has shown a passion for operatic
performance equaling that of San Francisco in 1860.BANDS IN ANTEBELLUM AMERICA
Like opera, the wind band’s public appeal is fundamental to its history. Indeed,
the idea of a band that only connoisseurs can appreciate seems a contradic-
tion in terms. For two centuries and more, American bands have been stoking
enthusiasm by playing tunes that listeners already know in ways they can readily
appreciate.
As the 1800s dawned, the U.S. military was still using wind instruments
according to customs borrowed from the British army, with fi fes and drums per-
forming fi eld music and somewhat larger ensembles—“bands of music”—playing
Harmoniemusik (see chapter 2). With the reduction in size of the army following
the revolution, military bands were maintained by state militias, essentially
civilian groups. Many members of recreational town bands served in militia
bands to fulfi ll their military obligations.
The addition of two new categories of instruments transformed the sound of
these nineteenth-century bands. The fi rst were percussion instruments, the so-
called Janissary instruments adopted from Turkish military bands in Europe:
triangle, cymbals, and bass drum, which by the 1830s were standard in Ameri-
can ensembles, supplementing the traditional side or snare drum. The second
were brass. Until the 1820s, brass instruments other than the trombone could
not produce more than a limited number of notes, unless in the hands of highly
trained virtuosos. But the development of keyed brass like the keyed bugle and
the ophicleide, and valves for trumpets, cornets, and French horns, made it
possible to play melody with much less training. With this increased fl exibility,
by midcentury the brass band was the typical American wind ensemble.
Adolphe Sax’s invention of the saxhorn in Paris in the early 1840s furthered
the brass band’s vogue. Modeled after the upright tuba, saxhorns came in a full
range of sizes, from high treble to low bass. (Sax’s other important invention, the
saxophone, would not become a common feature of bands until later in the cen-
tury.) A brass band with cornets and saxhorns ranging from alto down to bass
could achieve a uniform blend; percussion, and occasionally a clarinet as the
sole woodwind, rounded out the ensemble. By the time of the Civil War cornets
and saxhorns formed the core of the typical band.new instruments172028_05_106-131_r3_ko.indd 115 23/01/13 8:21 PM