Question received October 9, 2005
“I’m working on a Broadway production of a Eugene O’Neill play that takes place in Boston in 1828, featuring Irish immigrants, called “A Touch of the Poet.” The main character (Gabriel Byrne) took part in the battles in Spain and Portugal with the Duke of Wellington. Where would I find drum cadences that might have been played by the British Army during the Napoleonic Wars in the early 19th century?”
Dear_______,
Wellington was in Portugal and Spain from 1809 to about February of 1814 when he defeated Marshall Soult at Orthez. Your play takes place in Boston in 1828, so I assume Irish immigrants are reminiscing about their roles in the Peninsula Campaign during the Napoleonic War. Any drum beatings at this point in the play reflect, as you suggest, a British army drum beating from 1809-1814 and not a beating from the mid 1820’s.
If I am correct in this assumption, I suggest you find a copy of “The Young Drummer’s Assistant”, published in London, England probably in the 1780s. (The New York Public Library or the Library of Congress may have copies for perusal or in micro-film. If not, I can send you a photocopy of mine.) The notation is in the traditional Two Line, the left hand above and the right below with a mid line for hard and Poing strokes.
This drum manual – one of the earliest known in the West – contains 13 strokes and rudiments: Faint Stroke – Hard Stroke – Poing Stroke 1– Faint Flam – Hard Flam – Double Stroke – Draggs (sic)– 7 Stroke Roll – 9 Stroke Roll – 10 Stroke Roll – 11 Stroke Roll – Roll Continued (Long roll). (Please keep in mind that any drum beats you attempt to compose in the style of this period, should not contain: Triple Ratamacue, Drag Paradiddle #2, the 13 Stroke Roll and the Flamacue. These ‘rudiments’ do not appear in drum manuals from the era under discussion.)
Then follows the Drummers Call, Mother and Three Camp Reveilles, General, Troop, Grenadiers March, Foot March Pioneers March Rogues March, Adjutants Call, Serjeants Call, Recruiting Call, Retreat, Tattoo and finally some Scotch Duty Beatings. None of these “calls” are accompanied by tunes, only the drum beatings are given.
The beatings for Mother and Three Camp Reveilles (The Three Camps) is, without its melody, as we know it today, as are the Troop, Grenadiers March, Pioneers March and Rogues March, the latter for drumming miscreants out of service. If you are only concerned with drum beatings or cadences, I’d simply compose as many as necessary using the appropriate rudiments and strokes listed above whilst keeping in mind the issues of tempo and context or use during the early 19th c. For instance, the general tempo for marching or drilling in camp during the Napoleonic period was around 76 beats per minute. (Given the execrable condition of 19 c. roads, drums were rarely played for troops on the march.) In battle, tempos could rise to 120 beats or more for a charge-usually within 150 to 100 yards or less of the enemy line, but this was not sustained, rather only played to get the troops moving. Of course all these beatings were played on rope tensioned side drums approximately 18″X16″ having gut snares and skin heads. (Civil War Drums were almost always smaller, 16″X14″.)
The Colonial Army of Gen. Washington borrowed its music and drum beatings primarily from the British, but also from the French and Prussian military tradition – except for some New England music by composers such as Wm. Billings (Chester)- and this lineage can be seen as late as Bruce & Emmett’s “Drummer’s & Fifer’s Guide” of 1862; Strube from 1869 and even today.
I strongly suggest you obtain a copy of Raoul François Camus’ (1930- )”The Military Band in the United States Prior to 1834″ – New York University, Ph. D., 1969 – and thoroughly study Chapter IX, page 226. I’m sure this book will be in the New York Public Library, but if not, you can get a copy from UMI Dissertation Services in Ann Arbor, Michigan- 1-800-521-0600 or WWW.umi.com
Although the above chapter pertains to colonial American army music, its tunes and drum beatings, you may safely reference those tunes and beatings as being indicative of British Army practice at that time and during the specific period of your interest. Camus quotes almost all ‘Calls’ and Melodies in “The Young Drummer’s Assistant”. Military historian George Carroll transcribed the drum beatings from contemporary sources. Having said that, I do encourage you to write your own beatings, within the guidelines mentioned above.
If I can be of further help, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Kind regards,
Robin
1.Hazeltine, David: “Instructor in Martial Music”, Exeter, New Hampshire, 1810. “Poing Stroke, is beat by giving a light flam and strike each stick nigh to the hoop of the drum, lightly touching the hoop at the same time”. This is a lovely stroke with a wonderful sound on a rope drum. It can “poing”, but it is difficult to execute particularly when marching
Copyright©2009, Robin Engelman
Robin Engelman 
The Impossible H. L. Mencken
A letter to Michael Enright, C.B.C. Radio host
January 27, 2003
Dear Michael,
I was delighted to hear H. L. Mencken’s voice on your Sunday Edition broadcast of January 26th. I too was born in Baltimore, Maryland and like Mencken have fond memories of that city, although unlike Mencken who was 57 years old at the time of my birth, I never had to worry about typhus, malaria or a lack of sewers. The miserable heat of a Baltimore summer remains to this day.
Baltimore and the state of Maryland has a distinguished list of natives: among them, Babe Ruth, Eubie Blake, Francis Scott Key, and Edgar Alan Poe. Well, O.K., Poe was born in Boston, but he went to his alchohol crazed Romantic death in Baltimore, his grave is there, and Baltimore claims him. However, my particular favorite son has always been H. L. Mencken.
One of the best books about him is “The Impossible Mencken”, a selection of his newspaper stories, edited by Marion Rogers with a forward by Gore Vidal. To read Mencken at his best is to realize that Political Correctness is the real terrorist of our times. It has reduced our journalistic debates to shouting matches between rating seekers and too often, our already cowardly politicians to blithering idiots.
No one revealed better than Mencken the disingenuousness, greed, superficiality, stupidity and hubris of our politicians and captains of industry. What he wrote is valid today. But today, alas, no one could write about Presidents, “Babbitts” and “Pecksniffs” as Mencken did without being branded a traitor, being fired, or buried under a mountain of shibboleths by people Mencken called “Homo Neanderthalensis”.
He did rant, but he knew what was going on and woe be to those who dared to take him on.
I’m enclosing an audio tape of an interview with Mencken at The Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. on 30 June, 1948 conducted by Donald Howe Kirkley of the Baltimore Sun newspaper. The tape may prove to be more than you ever wanted to know about Mencken, but a snippet every now and then is refreshing. The interview begins with some interesting comments that precede the excerpt you played on Sunday Edition and a little further along, Mencken brands people stupid who write to newspapers or radio broadcasters – although he does say that people of intelligence do write once in awhile.
This is my first letter to a broadcaster.
All best wishes,
Robin Engelman
Copyright©2009, Robin Engelman
Posted by robinengelman on January 8, 2009 in Articles, Commentaries & Critiques
Tags: Babe Ruth, Baltimore, C.B.C., Edgar Alan Poe, Eubie Blake, Francis Scott Key, H. L. Mencken, Homo Neanderthalensis, Michael Enright