Bands of America

Résumé du livre

"The June breeze stirs the leaves overhead, the laughing, straw-hatted, corseted-and-bustled crowd drifts across the village square, the crickets chirp ... one long, clear trumpet call, an oom-pah-pah, and the concert has begun. Once upon a time, every town worth its salt had a weekly band concert in the village square, and band music stood high among the nation's best-loved entertainments. The bands of those days were splendid and gaudy and they performed with pride and virtuosity. Chief among the giants of America's golden age of band music: Monsieur Antoine Jullien, 'The Mons.,' a true P. T. Barnum-ite. Before conducting Beethoven 'The Mons.' donned immaculate white kid gloves, picked up a jeweled baton presented to him on a silver platter. He played a panic-making rendition of the Fireman's Quadrille that featured a flaming ceiling and three companies of firemen. Patrick Gilmore, a master impresario whose band was unique in its sobriety. He masterminded the National Peace Jubilee toward the end of the Civil War, gave concerts in a 50,000-seat coliseum, conducted his ensemble (1000-piece band, accompanying a chorus of 20,000 children) with a six-foot baton. During his rendition of the Anvil Chorus, 100 firemen beat lustily on 100 anvils, cannons fired in tempo, and every bell in Boston rang. Creatore, a Svengali who hypnotized not only his orchestra but his audience as well by his athletic antics on stage. Kryl, the superb cornetist whose playing was surpassed in extravagance only by his hair-dos. John Phillip Sousa--so young when he attained his great fame that he had to grow a beard--who, despite his years, had the courage to organize the first independent band, free of military support. Bands of America catches the lusty tempo and the brassy rhythms of a more relaxed age, and brings upstage a cast of characters as colorful and beguiling as the music they played."--Dust jacket.