Articles and galleries detailing the American brass band movement, contemporary recordings of works, photos of civil war bands and instruments.
Articles and Essays
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The American Brass Band Movement The early 1850s saw the brief flowering of a brilliant style of brass band music that constitutes an important but insufficiently explored part of our musical past. -
A Concert for Brass Band, Voice, and Piano On September 27, 1974, the Music Division of the Library of Congress recreated a typical concert of brass-band and vocal music from mid-nineteenth-century America. Recorded selections from that concert are presented here. -
Photo Gallery Most of the photographs presented here are selected from the collections of the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress. Some also appear in the online collection Selected Civil War Photographs. In those cases a link to the bibliographic record in that collection has been provided. -
About the Instruments Used in the Recordings The instrumentation of the New Hampshire band, with the standard federally authorized size of twenty-four men (the number may have varied in practice though not in principle) is basically that advocated by Allen Dodworth for a balanced ensemble of cornets and saxhorns, with the exception of the additional D-flat piccolo and clarinet.