The American Civil War brought an upsurge of brass band popularity to this country to a high peak as each regiment of the new armies tried to hire or create its own musical organization. This led to the induction of literally hundreds of bands into the service of the armies of the Union and Confederacy. Most of America's town bands and many fine professional groups were mustered into service while at the same time, many groups of lesser ability were forced into being. They used whatever players were available, or new recruits that could be taught by rote to make more or less music.

It is easy to find many written references to bands playing with remarkable excellence and just as easy to find evidence of bands of notably low quality. The vast range of talent and training notwithstanding, the music of the American military brass bands is what the men in Blue and Gray wanted to hear. Those town band/military bands were for better or worse, to be the finest musical organizations most of the soldiers of young American would ever hear.

Prior to 1830, military bands consisted mostly of woodwing instruments with a few horns and drums, but with the development of valved brass insturments, it was then possible to play all the notes of the scale on instruments of great power and with matching quality of tone from the highest pitched instrument down to the lowest. This family of conicalbore brass instruemtns was called Sax-horn after the Belgian who built the first set to an American design (and who also invented the saxophone) and was just what was needed to become the rage of the 19th century American musical scene. Yes, the soldiers loved to sing and they played, or more often listened, to the fiddle, flute, and banjo, but the brass band was the "now" music of their country!

Most bands consisted of from seven to twenty-four players tooting from seven to ten different instrumental parts arranged to be harmonious and more or less interesting. However, the war-time band averaged fourteen players which might include one to three instruments of the drum family. There were always E-flat sopranos playing the melody supported or doubled by B flat sopranos, then E flat altos and B flat tenors, sometimes a B flat baritone or bass and at the very bottom one or more E flat basses. Occassionally, though rarely, a piccolo and one or two clarinets might be added. With this make-up, the bands of that time played on a higher average pitch than those of today but had a rich mellow tone because of the all conical-bore make-up of the Sax-horns. A snare drum with calf-skin heads, rope and leather slide tensioners and gut snares, coupled with a similar bass drum and perhaps a pair of cymbals rounded out the instrumentation.

The Chief Musician of Bandmaster was usually the solo Eb cornet player who naturally had the highest, most difficult and most important part to play. He oftentimes was the arranger, sometimes the composer, and generally the teacher of the music for his band. Much music was bought, borrowed or exchanged within the bands which was a necessary practice since neither government published any music for its bands.

The Reb and Yank bands played for dress-parades, serenaded officers and dignitaries, made music for balls, and tooted tunes to entertain the men in camp or to inspire them in the fire-zones of the great battles such as Gettysburg. In the Confederate service the bandsmen were additionally expected to be stretcher bearers and sometimes assistants to the surgeons, and in some cases as in the famed Stoenwall Brigade, they were expected to also bear arms. At the battle of Franklin, a fourteen piece Confederate band marched in front leading the 18,000 attacking Rebs while playing "Dixie", "The Bonnie Blue Flag", and "The Girl I Left Behind Me" until the death of one player and the wounding of another caused the music to stop, but not the brave doomed assault.

The merit and esteem of those army bands was often mentioned by Abraham Lincoln and other notables, while the inimitable Robert E. Lee even questioned whether his people could even have an army without bands.

Music for the soldiers consisted of everything and anything, from popular ballads, classic and operatic to the whimsical. There were the spirit lifters like "Dixie" and "Johnny Comes Marching Home" and there were the wonderful spiritual pieces such as "Battle Hymn" and "God Save the South". Much loved were the sublimely beautiful "Lorena" and "All' Quiet Along the Potomac", but equally dear to the men were "Goober Peas" and "The Army Bug."

Somehow the music these Blue and Gray foemen loved can touch us in ways beyond that of the printed words and the photographs of the Civil War epoch. It can make us more nearly feel what our great grandfathers felt, and what they believed, and for what they fought and suffered and died. Whether its the "Dixie" writeen by the Yankee tunesmith Dan Emmett two years before there was a way, or that same "Dixie" that Abrtaham Lincoln loved and called for two nights before Wilkes Booth marred history forever, or whether its "Say Brothers Will You Meet Us?" written by a Southerner at a Georgia camp meeting in the 1850's metamorphasing into "Battle Hymn of the Republic"; the brass bands made the music really come alive! It is true that Jeb Stuart's sidekick Sweeney was the father of modern five stringed banjo and it's true that the poet Sidney Lanier played his flute around the camp fires. It's also true that a Confederate cavalryman wrote "Jingle Bells" before the was and it's importantly true that "Marching Through Georgia" was never sung or even heard by Shermans' Bummers until their sad work was finished. The most undeniable truth is that the real music of that was was that of the wonderful American brass bands.

All who truly wish to touch the emotions of those long gone men of steel would do well to hear the concerts and tape recordings of the 8th Regiment Band of Rome, GA, the 11th NC band of Fayetteville, NC, the 37th Regiment Band of Athens, GA, the 1st Brigade Band of Minnesota, and the Americus Brass BAnd of California; all playing original American Civil War band music on authentic insturments of the period.

by John Carruth, Chief Musician