Band musician

“ A brass band will fill a whole street with glamour, and the normal person finds it quite impossible to be out of step with the rhythm of the march. Watch the way in which, as the Pied Piper of Hamelin drew the children after him, the band draws the elders to the window and the children to the street: the appeal is never in vain. Marching in time with the music tired feet forget their weariness, and new strength comes from the reserves of the greater self, liberated at the unspoken appeal of melody and rhythm. ”

“ The shrill, noisy brass bands of early days have been supplanted by fine symphonic bands. Master instrument makers have invented a variety of new band instruments capable of producing many novel and artistic effects. Gifted musicians are composing and arranging music especially suited to these various instruments. The band has proved its worth and earned its right to the large place which it now occupies in our American way of life. A band is a necessary part of every community. ”

“ In one corner of the room is the band, consisting of a woman, richly dressed, and painted, with a hair-rudder standing out from behind her head in startling proportions, playing on a three-stringed guitar, a pock-marked scoundrel of the male sex playing on a two-stringed fiddle, which he holds between his feet, and another who beats the infernal tom-tom with sticks, making discord- of what might otherwise be considered an apology for music. ”

“ The influence of band music on the fighting man’s morale has been recognized since historians began to write. A band, especially a military band, may inspire courage, a wish to fight or a will to win. It beats the rhythm for marching feet and gives a tune for whistling. ”

“ Troops will step faster and march for a longer time to the rhythm of a drum than to any other way of keeping time. What is more stirring than the heavy, measured boom-boom-boom of the bass drum, the rhythmic clatter of the snare drum and the great blasts of tone from the huge, wide-mouthed horns?
In the beginning American military band music mainly consisted of the shrill tones of the fife paced by the rattle of the snare drums with their vibrating snares. ”

“ The small boy deaf to any other musical appeal, races down the street at the first blare of a band. In some measure we are all children to the last, and so it is that the music of the band sets our hearts and feet to beating out its gallant measures. Moreover such music produces definite measurable effects on the body, and it is well known that men march further and with less fatigue to the music of a band than they can without it. ”

“ I had never before heard a military band, and I gazed with wonder at the immense display of musicians, headed by a splendid-looking man, arrayed in gold lace, and swinging a huge gold-headed stick, as tall as himself, which he dexterously manipulated in time with the music. ”

“ Then, all of a sudden, reddening, the band leader rapped his music stand with his baton, next gave the signal, and the band crashed forth into the exultant strains of:
"See! The Conquering Hero comes!" ”

“ Most boys who have begun their music study with the band make it a hobby in later life, and many choose it as their lifetime profession. Composers, arrangers and music publishers have come from this Farm and Trades School Band, while many other former players have become valued members of symphony orchestras, opera and theater orchestras and nationally-famous concert bands. ”

“ On the evenings when the band plays he may be seen promenading about with becoming gravity as if he enjoyed the music. He is very fond of being taken notice of, and having his head, and the soft pouch under his long bill, stroked. ”

“ The trees are all ablaze with light; half a dozen bands of music are in full blast, and "all the world is gay." It is truly "a midsummer night's dream." I was especially attracted to a concert garden where the band, a very large one, was composed of women. To be sure there were half a dozen men sprinkled among the performers, but they seemed to have subordinate parts—only blowing away at the wind instruments—while all the stringed instruments were played by delicate female hands. It was quite pretty to see how deftly they held the violins, and what sweet music they wrung from the strings. ”

“ They need no bands of music, no drum-corps nor fifers. The whole procession, indeed, is itself a band of music, a grand army of singers and players on instruments. They sing many tunes; each uniform has a tune of its own, but, unlike what [94] happens in military and masonic parades, there is never any jangling, no matter how near together the different bands may be marching. ”

“ Edwin Franko Goldman. “They are manifestations of a popular musical culture which finds in them an expression of something not provided by any other type of concert organization. Most important, they are a form of local, or regional, or national organization fulfilling a genuine community need and serving a genuine community interest....
“The band has introduced many people to music—both listeners and performers. A band plays for the masses with mixed tastes. It is close to the people, bringing many into firsthand contact with live music.” ”

“ The boys form in classes, march to their places, to their meals, to bed, down in the morning, &c., to music; the consequence of which is that every movement is made in one-half of the time it formerly occupied, and with one-tenth part of the noise. Another advantage is the great practice it gives to the band, which now plays nineteen times a day, without the least injurious effect to the health of the performers, as they are engaged but for a minute or two each time. ”

“ The United States is today’s greatest musical nation, and bands have played a great part in developing and spreading the love and understanding of music among young and old in this country. A band is a strong music educational force; a school or college band has the widest opportunity in the world to personally convey music to the people. ”

“ After the band had finished tuning their instruments, a middle-sized, handsome man stepped forward with long strides, with a violin in one hand and bow in the other, and began waving the latter up and down, like a magician summoning his spirits. ”

“ Here the band is stationed, which is sufficiently good and sufficiently full to produce a very delightful effect: it must indeed be very villanous music which, listened to while the cool breeze of a summer's evening refreshes the spirit, should not be agreeable. ”

“ Since that long-ago day when Joshua commanded his seven high priests—probably the first seven-piece [12] wind band—to blow their rams’-horn trumpets as they marched seven times around the walled city of Jericho, countless marches have been played. And the walls still “come tumbling down” in hearts that thrill to band music.
Down through the ages the band, in its development, has sounded the call to arms and played the hymns of peace. In years gone by the music of the band led the townsfolk to the village green. Today the concert bands draw thousands of people to the public parks. ”

“ I make no doubt yer new band now's a competenter band,
And plays their music more by note than what they play by hand,
And stylisher and grander tunes; but somehow—anyway,
I want to hear the old band play.
Sich tunes as "John Brown's Body" and "Sweet Alice," don't you know;
And "The Camels is A-comin'," and "John Anderson, my Jo";
And a dozent others of 'em—"Number Nine" and "Number 'Leven"
Was favo-rites that fairly made a feller dream o' Heaven. ”

“ It's like flowers—and colors—all sorts of things—sunsets too. Our band plays beautifully, don't you think so? It makes me feel as if I could do any thing in the world, fly or dance on the air,—any thing! It's quite different when they stop. ”

“ Ta—rah—ra—rah, the trumpets go telling the boys to come,
And always and all the time, bang goes the drum.
Look at their lovely leather legs! The big brass things they blow!
I don't care where I walk or who I meet,
I'm following the band away to where the musics grow,
I'm hitting my boots heavy on the street.
For I must find the music man that lets them play so loud,
And find the funny place where soldiers go
To fill their trumpets with the noise they blow among the crowd—
It's not a tea and pastry shop I know. ”

“ And if you happen to hear a brass band filling the air with march music, don’t get scared and bolt like a stampeding broncho, for that will be the new band they’ve organized in town coming up to serenade you. ”

“ They are neat, intelligent in feature, recite fluently and feelingly simple speeches and verses, and sing sweetly and as if they felt not only the sense but the harmony of their hymns. A band of twenty youths plays brass instruments well and with great precision in time. They have all pleasant low voices and the girls exceedingly sweet ones. ”

“ Human folk need some form of self-expression and music is an ideal mode for an individual to give vent to his feelings and voice his desires. Often the mousiest, quietest little man in town joins the band and insists upon playing the tuba or pounding the largest drum. ”

“ The bands number from forty to eighty performers each, and in large cities there is no evening without music, alternating with different parks, but on Sunday they are all on duty, and with the band comes the social feature of the people. ”

“ Then you have music, harmony, the highest, fullest, finest! Educate your men to form a band, you shame dexterous trickery and imitation sounds. Then for the difference of real instruments from clever shams! ”

“ People found it unnecessary to travel to cities to hear good music, and thousands of trained bandsmen were left without jobs. The manufacturers of band instruments suffered great losses in their business until they discovered a new field in working with high school bands. ”

“ I do not think it ever entered our heads to remember that a man with a quick life throbbing in his veins, with feelings, hopes, and fears and thoughts, painted the picture, and that in seeing it we also saw him—that a consciousness, if possible, yet more keen and vivid produced the combinations of sound which brought tears to our eyes when we heard “the band”—beautiful abstraction—play them! Certainly we never considered the performers as anything more than people who could play—one who blew his breath into a brass tube ”

“ He may not make speeches, or write influential articles, but he can beat the rhythm or blow the loud “oompas” that set the pace for the whole band.
As America’s population increased, almost every village and town had a band. Their concerts in the public square became regular features. These village bands have done much for the advancement of music in our country. They have given more pleasure and delight to a greater number of people than any other agency. These bands have helped the love of music to find its way into the lives and hearts of the American people. ”

“ I therefore urged that the commanding officers be impressed with the fact that the primary object of the band is not to fight, but to cheer the fighters, and the better their music, the greater its beneficial effects upon the spirit of the soldiers, and that therefore all bandsmen should be compelled to devote at least five or six hours every day to the practice of their instruments and to rehearsals, and that other duties should be made subsidiary to their musical work and should not be of a character to unfit them for a proper performance on their respective instruments. ”

“ I'd rather listen to a good jazz band any time than to some piece by Beethoven that hasn't any more tune to it than a bunch of fighting cats, and you couldn't whistle it to save your life! But that isn't the point. ”

“ In any case, to listen to the distant strains of a brass-band is a different experience from that enjoyed in a chamber recital by your own violin-player, one who can draw from his instrument by sympathetic skill melodious chords, sounds soft and weird, grave and gay, strident or tremulous, harmonious or suddenly discordant, eye watching eye, and quick to change or repeat a note as he marks the varying expression of emotion roused by sound on animal faces, sometimes strangely expressive, or on others in which for minutes the eye alone gives token even of life. ”

“ The performers sit down to their work instead of standing up, and they do not sit on chairs, but on the floor. The only band of the kind I have yet seen consisted of five performers, all women—one of them having a sort of guitar, another a violin, another a drum played with the fingers of one hand, another with a row of bamboo sticks that were struck with a small hammer, and the last of the five had a row of metal cups that were played like the bamboo sticks. There is a good deal of variety to the music in some ways, and very little in others ”

“ The band plays a lively air; the majority of the company put their hands in their pockets and look rather serious; and the noise of sovereigns, rattling on crockery, is heard from all parts of the room. ”

“ The thumping of drums, the blaring of trumpets, the tootling of pan-pipes in front of the shows, fill the air with a din which may be heard miles away, and seem to give the crowd intense pleasure—far more than the crack band of the Coldstream Guards could impart. ”

“ It is not only that red-nosed comedian and eccentric comedienne, American dancer, or sketch got up regardless, tread upon each other’s heels; the main thing is the band, the harsh, rapid band, that never stops, that plays anything, providing it is the thing of the day, with all the regularity and indifference of the typewriter. ”

“ Goldman, “boys will not loaf or linger on the streets, not knowing what to do with their spare time. Now, with shorter work hours, people have more unoccupied time. Those who become interested in music will be interested in all the better things of life—art, literature, and sculpture. The only worthwhile things that last are cultural things. Music will remain with them forever.”
[105] Municipal Bands
Clang! Clang! went the firebell. The members of the Lone Tree Band practicing in a room above the fire department, dropped their instruments and scuttled pell-mell downstairs to go to the fire. ”