Description
Throughout human history, soldiers have marched off to war accompanied by music: traditionally, loud wind-blown instruments and drums are as functionary (particularly in signaling movement and other calls to action) as they are morale-boosting. Off the battlefield, brass instruments during the Renaissance also became an integral part of religious observance and civic events.
During the cross-cultural fertilization of the Classical era, European composers were struck by the sound of Ottoman janissary bands, whose ranks included percussion as well as wind instruments; indeed, something of a craze for that particular sonic color erupted across the continent, and composers from Mozart (such as in his Piano Sonata in A Major, K. 331) to Beethoven (most famously, in the final movement of his Ninth Symphony) evoked the janissary sound.
While composers across Europe such as Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov wrote avidly for marching bands in the 19th century, perhaps nowhere was band music so hugely embraced as in the United States. Composer John Philip Sousa--the son of a US Marine Band musician who became the leader of the same band in 1880--left behind an unprecedented legacy of music for such ensembles.
