Essay Notes

1. The designation brass for the instruments in question is an accepted generic term for metal wind instruments played with a cup-shaped mouthpiece in which the vibrating lips of the player generate the sound. Needless to say, not all brasswinds are made of brass. Some pure metals, notably copper, as well as many alloys were used at various times.

2. The soprano valve instruments appeared first in Europe in the second quarter of the century. Both the French cornet à pistons and the German soprano Flügelhorn (a term later used interchangeably with "saxhorn") are essentially conical-bore instruments, as opposed to trumpets and trombones, which are essentially cylindrical. The cornets, however, are high soprano horns, small relatives of what we now call the French horn; the caliber of the cornet bore is smaller and more gradually flared than that of the soprano saxhorn or Flügelhorn, which resembles the French military bugle of the early nineteenth century (see note 22, below). Of course, the designations "cylindrical" or "conical" are not completely accurate, since the degree of flare, the points at which it is pronounced or gradual, and the shape of all functional parts of the instrument form its mouthpiece to its bell are complex, variable, and decisive in its pitch and tone quality. Moreover, few horns are entirely cylindrical or conical: all are conical at the bell, and all valved models require a cylindrical section where the valves are introduced into the main tubing.

3. Dwight's Journal of Music (May 29, 1852): 63.

4. Ibid. (April 16, 1853): 9.

5. Ibid., 13.

6. Dwight's Journal of Music (July 16, 1853): 119.

7. Dwight's Journal of Music (August 15, 1857): 159.

8. Dwight's Journal of Music (August 22, 1857): 166.

9. Dwight's Journal of Music (June 25, 1853): 94.

10. Dwight's Journal of Music (September 11, 1858): 191.

11. Dwight's Journal of Music (October 2, 1858): 215.

12. Dwight's Journal of Music(August 2, 1856): 141.

13. Dwight's Journal of Music (June 21, 1856): 93-94.

14. Dwight's Journal of Music (July 5, 1862): 111.

15. D. Arthur Brown, History of Penacook, N.H. (Concord, N.H.: The Rumford Press, 1902), 248-49.

16. Emmons Clark, History of the Seventh Regiment of New York, 1806-1889, (New York: The Seventh Regiment, 1890), 1:379.

17. Dwight's Journal of Music (December 21, 1861): 303.

18. Bell Irvin Wiley, The Life of Billy Yank, the Common Soldier of the Union (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1952), 158.

19. Victor Herbert, "Artistic Bands," in Music of the Modern World, ed. Anton Seidl (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1895), 120.

20. Dwight's Journal of Music (February 15, 1868): 189.

21. "The Boston Band," Boston Musical Gazette (July 25, 1838): 51-52.

22. Specifically, he used a model that most closely resembled the French military bugle of the time, a wide conical-bore instrument. It should not be confused with the modern American military instrument commonly called the bugle, more properly called a "field trumpet," which is, in fact, a trumpet without valves. (See note 2, above, for amplification on the boring subject.)

23. The technical disadvantage of this construction (notwithstanding the charming sound produced by the instruments) is that, except when all holes are closed, much of the sound comes not from the bell of the horn but from the open hole. Since it is the bell of the horn and the shape of the last one-third of the bore that most influences its tone, it is easy to see why the valve system has been ultimately preferred for brasswinds. The long established acceptability of the open-hole system for woodwinds may have given Sax the idea of recycling, if not saving, the keyed bugles and ophicleides--a species he helped endanger--by substituting for the brasswind mouthpiece a single reed, as is used on clarinets. Thus, he "invented" the saxophone.

24. Quoted by William Carpenter White in A History of Military Music in America (New York: Exposition Press, 1944), 63.

25. Dwight's Journal of Music (November 15, 1862): 259.

26. Only the bass, or tuba, of the kind first developed and introduced in Berlin in 1838 by Wilhelm Wieprecht, is now consistently used in orchestras (the baritone is occasionally used). His tuba was a contrabass Flügelhorn. Orchestral use of the saxhorn ensemble is found in quite special cases: e.g., Berlioz's Les Troyens and Ottorino Respighi's The Pines of Rome.

27. Dwight's Journal of Music (August 29, 1857): 175.

28. Dwight's Journal of Music (April 16, 1853): 10.

29. Dwight's Journal of Music (June 19, 1852): 86.

30. Dwight's Journal of Music (July 10, 1852): 111.

31. Dwight's Journal of Music (April 16, 1853): 9.

32. A most extensive study of brasswind manufacturing in the United States during this period is found in Robert E. Eliason, "Brass Instrument Key and Valve Mechanisms Made in America before 1875" (Ph.D. diss., University of Missouri-Kansas City, 1968, available from University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan, as No. 69-7227).

33. In the motion picture Born Yesterday (Columbia, 1950), based on the play of the same name by Garson Kanin that appeared in New York, February 1946. The question is prompted by the need to explain the phrase "Yellowing Democratic Manifesto," and the amusing irony created by the location of the film sequence is, understandably, absent in the stage version.

34. A checklist of sources for original band music in the United States is Frank J. Cipolla, "Annotated Guide for the Study and Performance of Nineteenth Century Band Music in the United States," Journal of Band Research 14, no. 1 (Fall, 1978): 22-40.

35. Elias Howe Jr., First Part of the Musician's Companion (Boston: Elias Howe, Jr., 1844), title page.

36. E. K. Eaton, Twelve Pieces of Harmony for Military Brass Bands (New York: Firth and Hall, 1846), title page.

37. Allen Dodworth (1822-1896) was the most prominent member of a family that contributed significantly to musical life in New York. He and his father, Thomas, became managers of a band in 1838 and succeeded in developing their business to include managing bands and orchestras, establishing a dancing school, composing and arranging music, publishing, and selling, as well as developing musical instruments.

38. Allen Dodworth, "The Formation of Bands," Message Bird (August 1, 1849): 9.

39. Allen Dodworth, Brass Band School (New York: H. B. Dodworth, 1853), 11-12. Dodworth's grouping of saxhorns and cornets is appropriate, but his general description of them as being "of large calibre," by which he means a large bore, may have been a bit casual. See note 2, above.

40. J. Howard Foote, Catalogue of Musical Instruments (New York: J. Howard Foote, 1888), 36.

41. The second and third sets of the books of the Third New Hampshire Volunteer Infantry are at the New Hampshire Historical Society in Concord and the New Hampshire Antiquarian Society in Hopkinton.

42. Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs (New York: The Century Co., 1909), 1:183-84.

43. Dwight's Journal of Music (September 28, 1861): 207.

44. See Alfred S. Roe, The Twenty-fourth Regiment, Massachusetts Volunteers, 1861-1866 (Worcester, Mass.: Twenty-fourth Veteran Association, 1907), 124 and 417.

45. Dwight's Journal of Music (September 13, 1862): 191.

46. Roe, The Twenty-fourth Regiment, 31.

47. See Albert W. Mann, comp., History of the Forty-fifth Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Militia: "The Cadet Regiment, (Jamaica Plain, Mass.: Brookside Print, 1908), 196.

48. Record of the Service of the Forth-fourth Massachusetts Volunteer Militia in North Carolina, August 1862 to May 1863 (Boston: Privately printed, 1887), 31.

49. Frank Rauscher, Music on the March, 1862-65, with the Army of the Potomac, 114th Regt. P. V., Collis' Zouaves (Philadelphia: Wm. F. Fell & Co., 1892).

50. Ibid., 13.

51. Ibid., 13-14.

52. Ibid., 14-15.

53. See Daniel Eldredge, The Third New Hampshire and All About It (Boston: E. B. Stillings and Co., 1893), 993.

54. Mann, History of the Forty-fifth Regiment, 195.

55. S. Millett Thompson, Thirteenth Regiment of New Hampshire Volunteer Infantry in the War of the Rebellion, 1861-1865: A Diary Covering Three Years and a Day (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1888), 369.

56. Harry H. Hall, A Johnny Reb Band from Salem (Raleigh, N.C.: The North Carolina Confederate Centennial Commission, 1963), 49-50.

57. A. J. L. Freemantle, Three Months in the Southern States; April-June 1863 (Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons, 1863), 266.

58. Dwight's Journal of Music (September 6, 1862): 183.

59. Dwight's Journal of Music (January 16, 1869): 382.

60. Dwight's Journal of Music (August 28, 1868): 301.

61. G. K. Chesterton, Charles Dickens (London: Methuen & Co., 1906), 106-8.