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90 MILITARY MUSIC AND ITS STORY. |
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All this campaigning would scarcely leave regimental bands in good form, and it is feared that they earned an experience somewhat similar to that afterwards obtained in the Crimea. An old Peninsular officer said5 that he never felt so ashamed of our meanness and neglect of military prestige, as when he marched into Paris in 1814, and heard the fine bands of other nationalities, compared to the meagre and scanty musical display of the British troops.
Then came Waterloo. Bands have been mentioned6 as having taken part in the great battle, but there is no mention of them in any of the accounts of that event, or in any regimental record.7 After the battle bands appear much in evidence. It is recorded8 that our regiments had their bands when they made their entrance into Paris, and on that occasion played a |
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' " British Bandsmen," April, 1888. •Rose, "Talks with Bandsmen." * At the Royal Military Exhibition (1890), Messrs. J. and R. Glen, of Edinburgh, exhibited a bassoon "believed to have been used " by the Forty-second Highlanders during the 1815 campaign. There is also a bass drum belonging to Seventh Hussars, said to have been picked up on the battlefield of Waterloo (" Worshipful Company of Musicians' Exhibition Catalogue," 1904). Against the use of the latter at the battle of Waterloo one writer has urged, that as the Seventh Hussars were mounted at the battle, a bass drum would have been no use to a mounted band. This is quite an error. Mounted bands of the period carried the bass drum on horseback (see Kastner), and even in recent years a similar custom was in vogue in Austria.
'"Dictionary of Musicians," 1825. |
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