54 PART 1 | FROM COLONIZATION THROUGH THE CIVIL WAR
rhythmic and melodic signals such as reveille, retreat, and tattoo. The British
military brought these signals to North America, where military leaders used
them to communicate quickly with their men, both in and out of battle.
Military life relies a good deal on ceremonies. Parades that feature uniformed
soldiers marching in time to music are a display of discipline and suggest invin-
cibility. With no risk to life or limb, they contribute to an army’s goal: to deter
wars as well as to fi ght them.
Finally, a militar y unit is both a fi ghting force and a society, and its musicians
have long performed at concerts, mealtime performances, evening entertain-
ments, sports festivals, and riding exhibitions. In fact, the British and American
military in the 1700s fostered two different kinds of ensembles, one functional
and the other geared more toward aesthetic ends. Field music—which involved
fi fes and drums as in the 1775 ceremony described above—was played by musi-
cians who belonged to the regiments and whose wages were paid out of army
appropriations. Harmoniemusik—the German term is sometimes translated
as “band of music”—was performed by an ensemble made up of pairs of wind
instruments (oboes, horns, bassoons, occasionally fl utes or clarinets) and
required more polished players; they were hired by the offi cers, who paid for
them out of their own pockets.
The fi eld music, performed by marching musicians, was portable and loud—
an ideal medium for building esprit de corps, controlling troop movement, and
enhancing ceremonies. The band of music, less loud and portable but with a
harmonized sound made by upper-, lower-, and middle-register instruments,
offered wider possibilities; it was most useful for recreation, though it could also
be an inspirational and ceremonial presence. W hen colonists formed militia
units to fi ght in the American Revolution, they followed British custom, includ-
ing the two-part division into fi eld music and Harmoniemusik.
On the accompanying recording for LG 2.3, a band of music plays the most
enduring American instrumental composition of the 1700s, “The President’s
March,” composed around 1793 by Philip Phile, an immigrant musician who
worked in American theaters. In 1798 a Philadelphia judge, Joseph Hopkinson,
set patriotic words to the march, beginning “Hail Columbia, happy land,” and
the combination of tune and text held a place as a favorite national song, “Hail
Columbia,” well into the twentieth century. The tuneful melody and sprightly
march rhythm combine to create a piece of music suitable for both ceremony
and entertainment. This performance uses instruments from the eighteenth
century and modern reproductions: the fl utes are wooden, not metal; all of the
woodwinds have fewer keys than their modern equivalents; and the French
horns have no valves. Keys, which open and close holes along the instrument’s
length, and valves, which add variable lengths of tubing, assist modern wood-
wind and brass players in producing a consistent tone and accurate intonation.
Ezekiel Goodale, who published this arrangement in a method book for band
instruments, noted that the “imperfect” wind instruments of his time required
“the assistance of a good musical ear to blow... in tolerable tune.”
Military music is a rare example of a secular institution’s support of music
making in eighteenth-century America. Some bands of music played in public
concerts and at funerals; some even survived the war. When George Washing-
ton toured the United States in 1789, just before taking offi ce as president, bands
welcomed him almost every where. These ensembles played the full range of the
day’s music, from marches and patriotic songs to dance tunes. The band’s abilityLG 2.3fi eld music and
Harmoniemusik172028_02_044-062_r3_ko.indd 54 23/01/13 8:14 PM