A brass band in front of the King’s statue in Weymouth, Dorset. Painting by A. Beattie (Oil on canvas, 1844). Credit: Weymouth Museum.

Britain’s brass bands are older than thought and were invented by soldiers from the Napoleonic Wars, according to a new study.

Military musicians returning from the Napoleonic wars established Britain’s first brass bands earlier than previously thought.

A new study undermines the idea that brass bands were a civilian and exclusively northern creation.

It is widely believed that brass bands originated with coal miners and other industrial communities in northern England and Wales between the 1830s and the 1850s. New evidence rewrites this history.

A University of Cambridge historian has found compelling evidence to show that Britain’s earliest brass bands were founded by military musicians in the 1810s.

Dr Eamonn O’Keeffe argues that regimental bands first experimented with all-brass formats in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars.

While wartime bands included woodwind instruments such as clarinets and bassoons, O’Keeffe points out that the 15th Regiment of Foot had already organised a bugles-only band by 1818 and that numerous regiments had established all-brass bands by 1830, taking advantage of new instrument designs developed at home and in Continental Europe.

The Life Guards, for example, performed on valved trumpets gifted by the Russian Czar.

Local defence units also mustered brass bands, including a volunteer rifle corps in Paisley (1819) and yeomanry troops in Devon (1827) and Somerset (1829).

Band of the Second Regiment of Life Guards, leaving Windsor, 1830. Oil on canvas by John Frederick Tayler, 1830. Credit: National Army Museum.

Veterans

O’Keeffe also shows that veterans of the Napoleonic wars founded many of Britain’s earliest non-military brass bands from the 1820s onwards.

These ensembles often emerged far beyond the northern English and Welsh industrial communities with which they later became associated.

The first named civilian band which O’Keeffe has identified, the Colyton Brass Band, played God Save the King in a village in Devon in November 1828 as part of birthday festivities for a baronet’s son.

O’Keeffe found slightly later examples in Chester and Sunderland (both 1829), Derby and Sidmouth (1831), and Poole (1832).

In 1834, Lincoln’s brass band was being trained by William Shaw, ‘formerly trumpeter and bugleman’ in the 33rd Regiment of Foot.

“These findings illustrate just how deeply brass bands are embedded in British history and culture,”

O’Keeffe, who is the National Army Museum Junior Research Fellow at Queens’ College, Cambridge and part of the University’s Centre for Geopolitics, said: “We already knew about their relationship with industrialisation.

“Now we know that brass bands emerged from Britain’s wars against Napoleon.”

Dramatic proliferation 

O’Keeffe points out that the Napoleonic Wars (1793 – 1815) led to a dramatic proliferation of British military bands.

By 1814, more than twenty thousand instrumentalists were serving in uniform, in the regular army and militia, as well as a host of part-time home defence formations.

Most of those in full-time service received higher pay than regular soldiers but were still subject to military discipline.

The majority were fifers, drummers, trumpeters and buglers, whose music conveyed commands while enhancing parade-ground pageantry and morale.

The remainder served in regimental bands of music, which not only enlivened military ceremonies but performed at a wide variety of public occasions, including balls, concerts, and civic processions.

By studying previously overlooked press reports, memoirs and regimental records, O’Keeffe reveals that once demobilised, men and boys who honed their instrumental skills in uniform embarked on a variety of civilian musical careers, becoming instructors, wind performers, composers, and even opera singers.

Many performed in an array of militia and volunteer bands that remained active long after demobilisation.

Others instructed or participated in a growing assortment of amateur wind and all-brass bands, which often sported uniforms and consciously emulated their regimental equivalents.

Regimental guise

O’Keeffe said: “It is widely assumed that brass bands were a new musical species, distinct from their military counterparts.

“They are primarily seen as a product of industrialisation pioneered by a combination of working-class performers and middle-class sponsors.

“But all-brass bands first appeared in Britain and Ireland in a regimental guise.

“As well as producing a large cohort of band trainers, the military provided a familiar and attractive template for amateur musicians and audiences.

“This coincided with expanding commercial opportunities and a growing belief in the moralising power of music.”

O’Keeffe argues that these quasi-martial troupes enjoyed cross-class appeal, becoming fixtures of seaside resorts, pitheads, and political demonstrations in the decades after Waterloo, and were not confined to northern English industrial towns.

He said: “Soldiers returned from the Napoleonic wars amidst a severe economic recession and many suffered a great deal

“But here we see musicians using the skills they developed in the military to survive and often thrive.”

O’Keeffe, who is writing a book about British military music during the Napoleonic Wars, added: “Brass bands enabled aspiring musicians of all ages to develop new skills and allowed people to make music as a community, learning from each other.

“That was the case in the nineteenth century and it’s still the case today.”

The study is published in The Historical Journal.