The music presented by the 1st Brigade Band is selected from extant books of Union and Confederate bands, from manuscripts and from original sheet music of the period. The library includes, in addition to the expected martial and patriotic airs, transcriptions and adaptations of operatic, orchestral and vocal literature, as well as a rich treasury of worship and dance music.
The music is edited to make it playable – constructing scores, correcting obvious errors and filling in missing parts. There are more than 250 completed selections in the Band’s rehearsal and performance books, with extensive additional material available on microfilm and in the files. The 1st Brigade Band concentrates on music not played and recorded by other organizations. (Much of the music from the Brass Band Journal and Dodworth’s School For The Brass Band, for example, is performed and has been recorded by numerous professional brass ensembles). A special project for the 1st Brigade Band is to revive the music of the original 1st Brigade Band from their original books which were discovered in 1980. About two-thirds of their approximately 60 selections are now in the active repertoire.
A complete listing of the Band’s performing repertoire, indicating sources and authorship, is available at performances and by mail. An online version is now available and located at the bottom of this page.
The Brass Band that was characteristic of the Civil War, continued as the pattern for “town bands” well into the 1880’s. The Bb band instrumentation that evolved later provided the basis for the modern band repertoire. The Eb Band repertoire was not, by and large, carried into the literature of the turn-of-the century town and touring concert bands. Neither has any substantial portion of it been reworked so that it can be played effectively by modern organizations. The Band’s members, therefore, often feel a sense of mission as they give audiences an opportunity to hear music that has been buried and unheard for more than a century.
Select a link below to see the song titles from that source