War Music

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Title:     War Music
Author: Francis Darwin [More Titles by Darwin]

AN ADDRESS TO A SOCIETY OF MORRIS DANCERS
DECEMBER 21, 1914

According to the Dictionary of Music {195} the military march is meant "not only to stimulate courage but also to ensure the orderly advance of troops." In other words, military music serves to incite and to regulate movement. But these cannot always be discriminated. The tramp tramp of marching soldiers is ordered by the rhythm of the band. This is obvious, but we cannot say how far the bravery of the tune puts strength into tired legs, and this would be incitement,—and how far it is the unappeasable rhythm that forces the men to keep going, and this may perhaps be called regulation. There are occasions when the trumpet comes as a signal to troops waiting to make some sublime effort, and where the fierce imperious sound has a lift and a sting which perhaps no pre-concerted signal of a weaker type could give. This is an example of incitement, but in as much as it determines the moment of attack it is also a regulating agent.

Marching is still of importance,—in spite of the part taken by railways in modern strategy. I should like to know whether the magnificent marches of the Russians are made to the accompaniment of a band or of the regimental choir. One sees in our volunteer army the tendency to sing on the march. But it must be allowed that neither words or tunes are particularly inspiring. The Englishman is habitually afraid of being solemn, and though his marching songs may contain good things they are apt to be treated in a light spirit. There is one which includes the words, "Rule, Rule, Britannia!" and "God Save the Queen!" but these famous phrases serve as chorus to lighthearted fragments, e.g. nursery rhymes, such as "Little Miss Muffett." I regret to add that even this classic is not respectfully used. It should run, "There came a great spider and sat down beside her and frightened Miss Muffett away." I forget the precise words of the parody, except its ending, "And Little Miss Muffett said, 'Bother the creature!'" I still remember the fine effect of German soldiers heard many years ago singing the "Wacht am Rhein" on the march. Once, too, I listened to Zouaves, and no greater contrast can be imagined. It was hardly more than a murmur, a chatter of diverse scraps, and had no inspiring effect. These magnificent troops may need no artificial stimulus, but ordinary folk are certainly kept going by martial music. I remember, as a boy, marching to the tune of the "British Grenadiers," which has foolish words, and is not striking from a musical point of view, but it seemed to take us along. This march-tune comes in finely in Rudyard Kipling's story of the Drums of the Fore and Aft. An untried British regiment is cut up by Afghans and retires in a helter-skelter rush, leaving behind two boys of the Band, who strike up the "British Grenadiers" with the solitary squeak of a fife and the despairing roll of a drum. The answer comes in a great cheer from the Highlanders and Gurkas waiting on the heights, and in a charge that turns defeat into victory. I wish that Kipling had allowed the boys to survive, but the tragedy of their death is after all the effective close. To return to marching-tunes. For average people all that is needed is a well marked rhythm: "John Brown's body," etc., is an admirable march, though taken from its context of tramping soldiers it is hardly a fine tune. But so far as words are concerned it must be allowed that the refrain, "His soul goes marching along," is in the right mood for a war song.

It may be objected that if all I want is rhythm I should be satisfied with instruments of percussion alone. To this I reply that the effect of drums is splendidly martial. I was at Aix at the outbreak of the war, and every day the regiment quartered there used to march out to the music of drums, and of bugles which played simple tunes on the common chord. When the buglers were out of breath, the drums thundered on with magnificent fire, until once more the simple and spirited fanfare came in with its brave out-of-doors flavour—a romantic dash of the hunting song, and yet with something of the seriousness of battle. And indeed this is the sort of melody that suits the dauntless spirit of our allies. As I watched these men, so soon to fight for their country, I was reminded of that white-faced boy pictured by Stevenson, striding over his dead comrades, the roll of his drum leading the living to victory or death. Drums are said (incorrectly I believe) to be made of donkey's skin, and Stevenson imagines how, after death, the poor beast takes this magical revenge for the blows received in life, by leading cruel man to destruction. The old English military music seems to have been played by drums alone. King Charles I issued a warrant in the following words: {198a} "Whereas . . . the March of this our nation so famous in all honourable achievements and glorious warres of this our Kingdom in forraigne parts was through the negligence and carelessness of drummers . . . so altered and changed from the ancient gravity and majestic thereof as it was in danger utterly to have been lost and forgotten. . . ." He therefore wills and commands drummers to play only what is recorded in the curious old notation of that day. It must be remembered that drums and trumpets had something of the sacredness of Royalty in the 17th century. No one was allowed to play them in public without a license from the Sergeant Trumpeter, {198b} an officer who certainly existed a few years ago, and may, for all I know, still survive. In the 17th century it was a post of some dignity, and gave its holder the title of Esquire.

During the great retreat in the winter of 1914 the effect of music was magnificently illustrated. Mr. Conan Doyle {199} writes, "Exhausted as the troops were, there could he no halt or rest until they had extricated themselves from the immediate danger. At the last point of human endurance they still staggered on through the evening and the night time, amid roaring thunder and flashing lightning, down the St. Quentin road. Many fell from fatigue, and having fallen continued to sleep. . . . In the case of some of the men the collapse was so complete that it was almost impossible to get them on. Major Tom Bridges, of the 4th Royal Irish Dragoons being sent to round up and hurry forward 250 stragglers at St. Quentin, found them nearly comatose with fatigue. With quick wit he bought a toy drum, and accompanied by a man with a penny whistle he fell them in and marched them, laughing in all their misery, down the high road towards Ham." When he stopped he found that the men stopped also, so he was compelled to march and play the whole way to Roupy.

In Sir Henry Newbolt's Song of the Great Retreat (The Times, Dec. 16, 1914), this triumphant success is described:

"Cheerly goes the dark road, cheerly goes the night,
Cheerly goes the blood to keep the beat:
Half a thousand dead men marching on to fight,
With a little penny drum to lift their feet."

This song ought to be especially interesting to our Society, because the effect of a small drum and a penny whistle is roughly the same as that of the pipe and tabor, and these are the traditional instruments for English Folk Dances. It is perhaps worth noting that they must in old days have been used in war, for there is an illustration in an ancient manuscript of a taborer piping at the head of a body of troops marching out from a town.

Man is a social animal, and his natural strength lies in community of action with his fellows. It is this which gives music its power over masses of men, the pulsation of the drum, the blare of the answering trumpets, or the strident voice of the bagpipe cry to them in tones which cannot be misunderstood, binding them into a brotherhood of courage and obedience. But a society of Morris Dancers does not need to be reminded of the noble effect of human movement controlled by music. The word 'caper' has somewhat ridiculous associations, but we have learned to respect it for what it implies: the finely ordered strenuous movement of strong bodies leaping in rhythmic dance. It suggests something pagan and prehistoric, a physical religion of astonishing beauty. Some of our Morris men are now giving all the vigour of their young bodies to a great and just cause. Let us wish them a victorious home-coming.

NOTES:

{195} Dictionary of Music, ed. I., s.v., March.

{198a} Dictionary of Music, s.v., March.

{198b} Dictionary of Music, s.v. Sergeant Trumpeter. When the office was revived in 1858 it was given to a clarinet player and then to a bassoonist. Before this date it was not even necessary to be a musician to hold the office. The salary is £100 per annum.

{199} The British Campaign in France and Flanders, 1914, pp. 117 and 118.

[The end]
Francis Darwin's essay: War Music

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