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By Larry Johnson

At any Civil War re-enactment, participants can readily be found who are knowledgeable of weapons, uniforms, and equipment of the period. Most infantry re-enactors can discuss the difference between Enfield and Springfield rifles, and those who do cavalry impressions can competently compare Sharps and Spencer carbines. There are even artillerists who have sorted out the various throw-weight, diameter, and caliber nomenclatures of guns well enough to make sense of the subject. Medical impressions are also generally well done because they are often presented by actual physicians who are professionally trained and know their subject. Civilian portrayals, on the other hand, sometimes go astray. An 1870’s Western gunfighter, for example, is an anomaly on an Eastern theater Civil War field. So is a California gold miner, yet such things are seen.

However, the most problematic presentations at most re-enactments are musical performances. These are often given by amateurs and hobbyists who are not schooled in music and lack adequate knowledge of the styles, repertory, literature, and performance practices of the period. Almost anything can be hem:d at re-enactments, little of which is truly authentic. (To wit: “Ashokan Farewell,” composed in 1986, is quite popular but definitely not authentic.) For the next few paragraphs, we shall discuss what would have been heard on a Civil War field, as well as what was not there.

In the 1860’s, there was either live music or none. There were no boom boxes, mp3 players, cell phones, or any mechanical reproduction devices. Neither was there any such thing as electronic amplification. The only music available was provided by the military bands or it was made by the soldiers themselves. And here is where so many sins are committed at re-enactments.

Camp music, which was made by soldiers when in camp, consisted primarily of group singing without accompaniment. Usually, one soldier with a strong voice led and the others joined. What few instruments that were present in the encampments were small, light, and portable enough that the soldiers could carry them while on the march. The most common instrument by far was the fiddle, which was present in large numbers in both armies. Second to the fiddle in popularity, and a distant second at that, was the wooden or folk flute. Other instruments included the concertina (squeeze box), harmonica, jaw’s harp, ocarina, and the banjo. Various percussion instruments, especially bones, were improvised.

Contrary to its popularity at modern re-enactments, the guitar was not present in period camps. For one thing, it was too large and bulky to be carried. For another, the guitar was not a popular instrument at that time and not very many people played it. Period photos do reveal guitars present at fixed installations such as heavy artillery forts and supply depots where the soldiers were stationary rather than actively campaigning. Guitars were also found one here and one there aboard ships. When seen, guitars appear in the photos as isolated, single instruments – never in multiples. But there is scant if any evidence that guitars were ever found in a period infantry encampment.

Whenever a re-enactment is being planned, an individual or committee is charged with selecting music for the event. This person may be a seasoned re-enactor, but in nearly every case, he has no knowledge of period music. In such circumstances, the results are always the same: the person in charge of music will select music he personally likes. Since Country and Western music is popular among re-enactors, the band most likely to be engaged to perform at events, particularly at dances, is one that sounds like a Country and Western band. While this style of music may be popular, it is anything but authentic.

Country and Western music originated in the 1930’s and with it came the idea of guitar bands. Prior to that time, guitars were used almost exclusively as single instruments to accompany singers. Civil War Era string bands, which were small, consisted of fiddles often supplemented by a flute. A cornet might also have been included. The tenor banjo, which was deeper sounding than the modern version, made frequent appearances as well. But guitars did not. Guitar bands, so common today, did not exist in the 1860’s.

The documentation for the composition of the period string bands comes from a collection of instrumental music written by none other than Stephen Foster and published by Firth, Pond, and Co. in 1854. This work, which was titled The Social Orchestra, was a compilation of pieces written for the ensemble which was in use at that time to play for social events (dances). Its instrumentation was a flute, two violins, and a bass instrument, preferably a cello. Foster wrote and arranged numerous pieces for this four part period dance band, then added others for three instruments. He went on to include duets for two players and finally solos for one instrument, which were obviously intended for single fiddle. All of these pieces could be used for dancing, even the solos, and indeed Mary Boykin Chestnut mentions balls accompanied by a single fiddler.

Corroboration  of the widespread use of the fiddle-flute combination lies in a notebook of sketches drawn by Confederate John Omenhausser while a P.O.W. at Point Lookout. One panel depicts prisoners staging a variety show accompanied by their ad hoc orchestra of flute, two fiddles, and a banjo. Attached was an improvised period percussion section of a tambourine, triangle, and the ubiquitous bones. The drum set, which developed concurrently  with silent movies, was unknown in the 19th Century and should be neither seen nor heard at a re­ enactment.

Thus far, we have shown that Civil War instrumental music relied on the fiddle as the primary instrument and that guitars were little used. Now, we shall take up the case of vocal music.

In the 19th Century, singers had to sing. Amplification was not available in those days and thin, breathy voices never made it to the concert stage. Successful singers were those whose who had studied with a voice teacher and had learned to project the voice. They could fill a concert hall with sound and be heard without microphones and speakers. When Jenny Lind toured the United States in 1850, she was booked into the largest venues available – auditoriums, concert halls, churches – and drew capacity crowds wherever she performed. In some instances, windows were opened so people who couldn’t get tickets could stand outside and hear her. And they could. Patrick Gilmore staged his monster National Peace Jubilee concerts in 1869 for which a special pavilion was constructed that housed 11,000 performers and an audience of nearly 40,000. He engaged a renowned European soprano named Madame Parepa-Rosa to sing at the event and contemporary accounts attest that her voice was equal to the challenge. Only Gilmore could upstage Gilmore and, in 1872, he produced his even larger World Peace Jubilee. This time, the coliseum housed nearly 100,000 performers and listeners. Several vocal soloists, including American Clara Louise Kellogg, were featured. They were heard, though faintly, in even the farthest seats. And all of this was several decades before the development of amplification technology.

Granted, there was far less noise pollution in those days and audiences were much better mannered than they are today. But singers still had to project their voices and only those who had been trained could succeed in any venue larger than that domain of amateurs, the parlor. Yet, re-enactments persist in featuring amateur vocalists singing “old”songs into a microphone and not to the audience.

“Old songs”- therein lies another problem. A quick glance at a song’s publication date will cut to the core of this issue in a hurry. Far too often, amateur singers who have done no research plug in their microphones, twang their guitars, and sing, what to them, are old songs; some of which date back as far as the 1920’s. Other performers draw material from movies, television, and recordings. The folly of that approach should be obvious, but apparently, it isn’t. One hears music from the folk revival of the 1960’s, old hits by the Sons of the Pioneers, and songs recorded by Bobby Horton, et al, being passed off as period. Some of these tunes actually are authentic, but care should be taken with the texts. Numerous songs became obsolete when the war ended and their words were altered or replaced entirely with the passage of time. (Aura Lee/Love Me Tender). Thus, before a singer performs what he thinks is period music, he should first research both the publication dates and the original texts.

And now, a special word of caution pertaining to hymns. As a general rule, the hymn writer composes only a poem; the tune comes from a variety of sources. One of these is preexisting melodies to which the poem was written to fit or with which it was eventually matched. But one must be discreet when selecting old hymns with tunes whose sources are not documented because some of these tunes have unholy pasts. To be candid, many were originally bawdy songs. Songs in this category flourished during Colonial times, thanks to the British, and their melodies were well known, especially in the taverns. One of them, Anacreon in Heaven, became our National Anthem. Many others wound up as hymn tunes and are still in use. Therefore, one should be wary of performing hymns whose tunes have vague origins because the words sung to those tunes in the 1860’s may have been, shall we say, “inappropriate for polite company.”

In recent years, there has been a proliferation of bagpipes at re-enactments. When questioned, the pipers invariably reply they “just know” that there were pipers among the Scottish and Irish troops. That statement is true. There were, in fact, soldiers who could play the bagpipes within various regiments of both armies. But they did not have their instruments with them. Bagpipes were not part of the American military traditions and American soldiers had no appreciation for them. Besides that, pipes were valuable. Some of them had been presentation pieces and/or family heirlooms, and the silver fittings which came with the more expensive sets of pipes made them a tempting target for thieves. In an environment that left bagpipers no role to play within a soldiery that had no regard for .pipes, pipers chose to leave their instruments at home rather than risk them being damaged or stolen.

The author of this article has been reading Civil War history {with an eye towards references to music) since the 1950’s and in more than fifty years, he has seen bagpipes mentioned exactly once. That one case involved the 79th New York. This was an early war short-term regiment formed from Scottish immigrants who wore bonnets, doublets, and kilts imported from Scotland. The 79th had pipes and frequently paraded with them. They fought one battle, First Manassas, (wearing ordinary blue uniforms at the time), and in it their colonel, James Cameron, was killed. Soon afterwards, their enlistment ran out and they all went home, taking their pipes with them.

While there is no historical mention of pipers on American Civil War fields except in the case mentioned above, it is certainly possible that lone, isolated pipers made unrecorded appearances at widely separated times.and places. But these were rare cases, if they happened at all. By and large, the presence of bagpipes at a re­ enactment is in the main an attempt to re-create something that was never actually there.

The most authentic musical groups that appear at re-enactments are the brass bands. They are composed of musicians with many years of training and a fair percentage of them hold degrees in music. They are not amateur hobbyists, but instead, are skilled performers whose musical knowledge is sufficient enough to avoid transposing the 21st Century on top of the 19th. They know the historical roles of the brass bands and re-create them well.

In their time, which was before electronic amplification, the brass bands had filled a definite need. Their predecessors, known as oboe bands, had served 18th Century armies in the same capacity as army bands today, but they were inadequate for the duties required of them. Military activities, for which the bands provided music, took place outdoors and this created a need for enough volume that the soldier could hear the music and march to its rhythms. It was just this quality of the brass bands, that is, the ability to play outdoors and be heard, that made them particularly suitable for military purposes. They were also adept at providing music for balls because their volume of sound could fill even the largest halls. True period dance orchestras, which relied on fiddles, could not project enough sound to be heard in the larger venues. Meanwhile, re-enactments continue to stage balls in large rooms which feature music provided by amplified guitars. These groups may be popular, but only brass bands are authentic in such settings.

And finally, a word about bluegrass bands. This type of ensemble is a variant of Country and Western bands which inserts and/or substitutes banjos and mandolins for some of the guitars. Bluegrass music was developed by Bill Monroe {1911-1996) who began his career in the 1930’s. This music has a quaint, happy, “old-timey” sound about it that makes it popular in some circles and also helps pass itself off as folk music. Unfortunately, Bluegrass is neither folk nor old. Such bands are heard – normally amplified – at re-enactments solely because the person or committee in charge of selecting music likes Bluegrass. It is not even close to being authentic.

This article was written in order to provide some guidelines as to what is and is not authentic in attempts to re­ create music from the 1860’s. It is hoped that event organizers will pay more attention to the considerable differences between popular and period music. Even better would be music planners doing research into the era rather than basing their decisions on personal tastes. After all, re-enactments are supposed to be first and foremost historically correct.