Abstract
In spite of being a national movement, brass bands are accepted—almost without question—as being working class and Northern. This was partly because of the density of brass bands found in their cultural home; the Southern Pennines. This large number of brass bands concentrated in an industrial region allows Etheridge to explore two gendered themes that emerged in this period. They are, firstly, the military orthodoxy found in the training of bandsmen and, secondly, how a top-down driven desire for bandsmen to act as gentlemen was a difficult culture to enforce amongst working-class men. Etheridge then, through an examination of bandsmen’s uniforms, explores the military imagery of brass bands in the public space and how working-class men reacted to the restrictions imposed by this culture of gentlemanly educational expectations and the martial influences of uniforms. These explorations add to the understanding of a period when both men and women were taking part in pastimes that started to define working-class cultural identity after the mid-nineteenth century.
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Notes
- 1.
Magazine of Music 9, no. 6, June 1892, 102.
- 2.
The development of the brass band is too lengthy for this chapter. Bands emerged from the 1820s from a mix of woodwind and brass instruments, influenced by military bands, through a number of phases, to, by the 1870s, the standard band instrumentation seen today. Key stages were the invention of the keyed bugle (1820s), the invention of the piston valve (invented no later than 1814, it was developed through 1827–1850). The development of the saxhorn, invented by Adolphe Sax in the 1840s and 1850s, was also significant. The saxhorn was later promoted by the Distin family whose popular concerts showed it to be a melodious instrument.
- 3.
See, Stephen Etheridge, “Southern Pennine Brass Bands and the Creation of Northern Identity, c. 1840–1914: Musical Constructions of Space, Place and Region,” Northern History 54, no. 2, (March, 2017), 244–61.
- 4.
Wright and Round’s Amateur Band Teacher’s Guide and Bandsman’s Adviser (Liverpool, 1889), front cover.
- 5.
J. L. Scott, “The Evolution of the Brass Band and its Repertoire in Northern England” (PhD diss., University of Sheffield, 1970), 248.
- 6.
British Bandsman, April 18, 1914, 349.
- 7.
Eric J. Hobsbawm, Industry and Empire from 1750 to the Present Day (London: Penguin, 1968, this edition revised and updated with Chris Wrigley, 1999), 34.
- 8.
Patrick Joyce, Work, Society and Politics: The Culture of the Factory in Later Victorian England (Brighton: Methuen, 1980, this edition, London, 1982), xiii.
- 9.
Percy A. Scholes, “A Neglected Force-The Brass Band,” in Everyman and His Music: Simple Papers on Various Subjects, ed. Percy A. Scholes (New York: Trubner, 1917), 23–28.
- 10.
Ibid., 24.
- 11.
Martin Childs, Labour’s Apprentices: Working-Class Lads in Late Victorian and Edwardian England (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1992), 143.
- 12.
See Eric J. Hobsbawm, “The Making of the Working Class, 1870–1914”, in Uncommon People: Resistance, Rebellion and Jazz, ed. Eric J. Hobsbawm (London: Abacus, 1998, this edition, 1999), 78–99.
- 13.
The work of the Journeyman Engineer Thomas Wright is significant here as an example of these observations. Titles such as Some Habits and Customs of the Working Classes (1867), The Great Unwashed (1868) and Our New Masters (1873) reflected an interest in observing and understanding lives of labouring people. Wright started work with a seven-year engineering apprenticeship in Liverpool. By attending journalism classes at mechanics’ institutes, he eventually became a journalist and gave the middle-class reader what was effectively an insider’s view of working-class life. See Alistair J. Reid, “Wright Thomas (1839–1909),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2006), http://www.oxfordnb.com/view/article/4426 (last accessed August 1, 2013).
- 14.
In its most elaborate form, the notion of music as a rational recreation was developed by the High Church Theologian Hugh Reginald Haweis. His influential book, Music and Morals, was published in 1871. It became an important text for individuals who were interested in the relationship between music and social reform, being widely read in socialist circles; see, Chris Waters, British Socialists and the Politics of Popular Culture, 1884–1914 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), 98.
- 15.
Martin Francis, “The Domestication of the Male? Recent Research on Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century British Masculinity,” The Historical Journal 45 (2002): 637. The passage from references 15–21 was first cited in Stephen Etheridge, “Music as a Lifelong Pursuit for Bandsmen in the Southern Pennines, ca. 1840–1914: Reflections on Working-Class Masculinity,” in Gender, Age and Musical Creativity, ed. Lisa Colton and Catherine Haworth (Ashgate: Farnham, 2015), 88.
- 16.
Karen Harvey and Alexander Shepard, “What Have Historians Done with Masculinity? Reflections on Five Centuries of British History, circa 1500–1950,” Journal of British Studies 44 (2005): 277.
- 17.
Michael Roper and John Tosh, eds, Manful Assertions, Masculinities in Britain Since 1800 (London: Routledge 1991), 1.
- 18.
See J. A. Mangan and James Walvin, eds, Manliness and Morality, Middle-Class Masculinity in Britain and America, 1800–1940 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1987).
- 19.
Anna Clark, The Struggle for the Breeches, Gender and the Making of the British Working Class (Rivers Oram: London, 1995), 1–5.
- 20.
Ibid., 3.
- 21.
Ibid., 2.
- 22.
Rohan McWilliam, Popular Politics in Nineteenth-Century England (London: Routledge, 1998), 28.
- 23.
Trevor Herbert and John Wallace, “Aspects of Performance Practices: The Brass Band and its Influence on Other Brass Playing Styles”, in The British Brass Band: A Musical and Social History, ed.Trevor Herbert (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2000), 298.
- 24.
Ibid., 295.
- 25.
The British Bandsman had numerous titles. For clarity I use British Bandsman. The titles were: British Bandsman (September 1887 to May 1888); British Bandsman and Orchestral Times (June 1888 to December 1890); Orchestral Times and Bandsman (January 1891 to December 1892); British Musician (January to December 1893); British Musician and Orchestral Times (January 1894 to December 1898); and British Bandsman (January 1899 to the present).
- 26.
Algernon S. Rose, Talks with Bandsmen: A Popular Handbook for Brass Instrumentalists (London, 1895), 359. This book emerged from a series of eight lectures about the history and development of brass instruments that was given to workers in a London factory.
- 27.
Ibid., 363–67.
- 28.
Trevor Herbert, “Nineteenth-Century Bands, Making a Movement”, in The British Brass Band, 63 (see note 23).
- 29.
Joanna Bourke, Working-Class Cultures in Britain, Gender, Ethnicity and Class (London: Routledge, 1994), 176–77.
- 30.
Anon., “How Our Military Bandsmen are Trained”, Magazine of Music 13, no. 3, March 1896, 175.
- 31.
Ibid., 174.
- 32.
David Russell, “The Popular Music Societies of the Yorkshire Textile District, 1850–1914: A Study of the Relationships between Music and Society” (PhD diss., University of York, 1979), 251.
- 33.
Trevor Herbert and Helen Barlow, “The British Military as a Musical Institution,” in Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain: Music and Institutions in Nineteenth-Century Britain, ed. Paul Rodmell (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), 252.
- 34.
Russell, “The Popular Music Societies of the Yorkshire Textile District,” 251 (see note 32).
- 35.
Herbert and Barlow, “The British Military as a Musical Institution,” 252 (see note 33).
- 36.
Ibid.
- 37.
Herbert, “Making a Movement,” 37 (see note 28).
- 38.
Ibid., 36.
- 39.
Russell, “The Popular Music Societies of the Yorkshire Textile District,” 252 (see note 32).
- 40.
Ibid.
- 41.
Roy Newsome, “The Nineteenth Century Brass Band in Northern England, Musical and Social Factors in the Development of a Major Amateur Musical Medium” (PhD diss, University of Salford, 1999), 124.
- 42.
Ibid., 125.
- 43.
Herbert, “Making a Movement,” 37 (see note 28).
- 44.
Arthur R. Taylor, Brass Bands (St Albans and London: Granada, 1979), 50.
- 45.
Michael. J. Lomas, “Amateur Brass and Wind Bands in Southern England between the Late Eighteenth Century and circa 1900” (PhD diss., The Open University, 1990), 73.
- 46.
Volunteer Service Gazette, July 25, 1868, cited in Lomas, “Amateur Brass and Wind Bands in Southern England,” 72 (see note 45 above).
- 47.
Ibid.
- 48.
Trevor Herbert, “God’s Perfect Minstrels: The Bands of the Salvation Army,” in Herbert, The British Brass Band, 194 (see note 23).
- 49.
British Bandsman, April 3, 1909, 383.
- 50.
Cited in J. A. Mangan, Athleticism in the Victorian and Edwardian Public Schools: The Emergence and Consolidation of an Educational Ideology (Abingdon: Routledge, 2000), 136.
- 51.
Cornet, January 15, 1895, 4.
- 52.
Ibid.
- 53.
Ibid.
- 54.
Wright and Round’s Amateur Band Teacher’s Guide and Bandsman’s Adviser, 11 (see note 4).
- 55.
Ibid.
- 56.
Cornet, October 15, 1898, additional supplement, 2.
- 57.
Brass Band News, December 1, 1901, 4.
- 58.
Ibid.
- 59.
As in “got left behind,” or were no longer employed as trainers.
- 60.
Brass Band News, February 1, 1908, 4.
- 61.
British Bandsman, April 18, 1908, 532.
- 62.
British Bandsman, May 2, 1908, 1.
- 63.
Ibid.
- 64.
Ibid.
- 65.
John Benson, The Working Class in Britain, 1850–1939 (London: Longman, 1989), 125.
- 66.
Wright and Rounds Amateur Band Teacher’s Guide, 11 (see note 4).
- 67.
Etheridge, “Music as a Lifelong Pursuit for Bandsmen in the Southern Pennines,” 88–100 (see note 15).
- 68.
Bury Archive Service, Correspondence re Bury Recreation Grounds, June 26, 1895.
- 69.
Harriet Jordan, “Public Parks, 1885–1914,” Garden History 22, no. 1 (summer, 1994): 1.
- 70.
Bolton Archive Service, Superintendents Reports on Bands (30 May, 1912–31 July, 1913).
- 71.
Magazine of Music 9, no. 4, April 1892, 62.
- 72.
Stephen Lord, The History and Some Personal Recollections of the Whitworth Vale and Healy Band (Bacup, 2005), 11.
- 73.
Robert Carrington, The Centenary Chronicle of Rothwell Temperance Band, 1881–1981, A Tribute to Those Who Have Gone Before (Rothwell, 1981), 2.
- 74.
Uniforms Act 1894, http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts1894/pdf/ukpga18940045_en.pdf (last accessed January 3, 2010).
- 75.
Ibid.
- 76.
Musical News 7, no. 184, September 8, 1894, 189.
- 77.
British Bandsman, April 4, 1903, 88.
- 78.
Ibid.
- 79.
Herbert Trevor, “Selling Brass Instruments: The Commercial Imaging of Brass Instruments (1830–1930) and its Cultural Messages,” Music in Art: The International Journal for Music Iconography 28, nos. 1–2 (Spring-Fall 2004): 222.
- 80.
Ibid., 223.
- 81.
Magazine of Music 9, no. 4, April 1892, 62.
- 82.
Michael Roper and John Tosh, eds, Manful Assertions, Masculinities in Britain since 1800 (Abingdon: Routledge 1991), 1.
- 83.
J. A. Mangan and James Walvin, eds, Manliness and Morality, Middle-Class Masculinity in Britain and America, 1800–1940 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1987), 1–4.
- 84.
Callum McKenzie and J. A. Mangan, “‘Duty unto Death’– the Sacrificial Warrior: English Middle Class Masculinity and Militarism in the Age of the New Imperialism,” The International Journal of the History of Sport 25, no. 9 (2008): 1101.
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Etheridge, S. (2018). Bandsmen, Brass Band Uniforms and Nineteenth-Century Militarism: Southern Pennine Bandsmen and Stereotypes of Military Masculinity, c. 1840–1914. In: Leonardi, B. (eds) Intersections of Gender, Class, and Race in the Long Nineteenth Century and Beyond. Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96770-7_9
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