Signal (i), §1

A piece played on a musical instrument to transmit information, commands or encouragement, or to embellish ceremonial occasions.

1. Military signals.

2. Hunting signals.

3. Other signals.

4. Use by composers.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

WILLIAM BARCLAY SQUIRE, H.G. FARMER, EDWARD H. TARR/PETER DOWNEY

Signal (i)

1. Military signals.

Musical instruments have been used to convey information, commands or encouragement to an army during battle or in camp, to a navy during engagement or on voyage, and to royal and noble households; they have also been employed on ceremonial occasions. Trumpet and horn signals were used in the West by the ancient Egyptians, Israelites, Greeks and Romans, and also by the Celtic and Germanic tribes. Their use continued after the fall of the Western Empire. Five single-note trumpet signals (nodseinn) were recognized in 8th-century Ireland: fricath (for battle), friscor (unyoking), fri imthect (for marching), fri sroin (for victory), and [fri]comairli (for council). A ‘tuba’ was used by the Avars (Notker Balbulus, De Carlo magno, c884), and the military employment of the horn and trumpet (horn ond byman) in Scandinavia and England is described in the 10th-century epic Beowulf. The existence of these indigenous practices suggests that from the time of the crusades (late 11th century) there may have been a complex interaction between medieval European and Saracen military instruments and practices. Later medieval Irish and Scottish war practices included the use of bagpipes and the simultaneous sounding of single-note horns of different lengths.

Johannes de Grocheo (c1300, Ars musicae) indicated that the medieval trumpet sounded no higher than the 4th harmonic. Engelbert of Admont (before 1325, De musica) described the sound of the trumpet and horn as a ‘tremulous voice … which is indicated in books by the neume called the quilisma’; he was probably referring to the dran (see below). The names and functions of the medieval trumpet signals became standardized, and they suggest a French origin: mit se selles, s'armast, montast à cheval, retraite and assaut. These bastures or mots also began to find a place in the daily routine at the Franco-Burgundian courts.

Swabian and Swiss foot soldiers were using fife and drum signals by the late 15th century and these were imitated across Europe by the 16th century. Kettledrums were introduced from the East, initially in Hungary. The kettledrummer was stationed with the general staff, the trumpeters with the cavalry troops. At sea, where signals had been given on conch shells, trumpeters were stationed with the officers on the poop deck, fife and drum players with the foot soldiers on the main deck.

New, standardized, monophonic ‘Italian style’ trumpet signals were introduced during the 16th century. The earliest surviving notated sources are by Magnus Thomsen, a German who worked at the Danish royal court (MS, 1596–1612, DK-Kk), Cesare Bendinelli (Tutta l’arte della trombetta, MS, 1614, I-VEaf), Marin Mersenne (Harmonicorum libri, 1635–6, and Harmonie universelle, 1636–7) and Girolamo Fantini (Modo per imparare di sonare di tromba, 1638). Names of signals (but no music) are also given in Caspar Hentzchel’s Oratorischer Hall and Schall … der Trommeten (Berlin, 1620). Thomsen supplies the signals in their purest form and the others attest the gradual curtailment and deterioration of the style. (Schünemann's transcription of Thomsen's music is unsatisfactory.) There were five principal signals. According to a letter that accompanied the (now lost) earliest notated source of these signals, three were for setting out (the aufblasenn): Sateln (‘Boots and Saddles’), Aufsitzen (‘The March’) and zur Fahne (‘To the Standard’); and two were for assembly (the einzüge oder Reittmassenn): Pfertruckenn (‘Mount-Up’) and auf der wache (‘The Watch’). The German terms given here (with modern English equivalents) are those used in the letter. (Name forms used in the most important early sources are listed in Table 1.) The trumpet signals Boots and Saddles, Mount-Up ‘in the French manner’, To the Standard and The Watch were old four-sectional French pieces more-or-less confined to the second and third harmonics. Boots and Saddles shows the signal Pottesella as notated by Thomsen (f.174) in the French manner: in four parts, and preceded and followed by an Ingangk (tucket). Mount-Up ‘in the Italian manner’ (which replaced the French version), and The March were new five-sectional Italian signals set one harmonic higher, as notated by Bendinelli (ff.3v–4). The type of tucket that was sounded before and after the French signals (ex.1) was only played before the Italian signals (ex.2). The March was sometimes termed ‘Tucquet’ since it often prefaced other signals instead of a tucket (see Tuck, tucket). These signals had characteristic motifs which employed long-term pan-European employment and recognition. A recurring figure was the dran in which the basic interval of a signal was articulated ‘hardly touching the first note and passing to the other with a kind of accent’ (Bendinelli; see ex.1). A third group of signals, including ‘Alarum’ and ‘Charge’, was added before 1600. They were primarily employed to warn of impending danger, featured an al arma motif, and were prefaced by a Chiamata. Alarm signals were occasionally termed Chamade or Chamado due to the latter association. Separate ceremonial chiamatas, tuckets and sennets (see Sennet) were also introduced.

Bendinelli and Fantini added syllabic underlay to the signals as an aide-mémoire and to guide articulation (ex.2). Gervase Markham (The Souldiers Exercise, 1639) advised that cavalry soldiers should sing the signals or express them in words (lanquet). Unofficial titles resulted: for example, the 17th-century English naval trumpet signal for disembarkation was often called ‘Loath-to-Depart’. The use of mnemonics has continued to the present day.

English cavalry trumpet signals were mentioned in The Rules and Ordynaunces for the Warre (1544). Gervase Markham listed them: ‘Butte Sella’, or Clap on your Saddles; ‘Mounte Cavallo’, or Mount on Horsebacke; ‘Al'a Standardo’, or ‘Goe to your Colours’; ‘Tucquet’, or March; ‘Carga, Carga’, or an Alarme, Charge, Charge; Auquet, or the Watch; and ‘other Soundings … as, Tende Hoe, for listening, a “Call for Summons”, a “Senet for State”, and the Like’. English infantry fife and drum ‘soundes’, such as ‘Marche’, ‘Allarum’, ‘Approach’, ‘Assaulte’, ‘Battaile’, ‘Retreate’ and ‘Skirmishe’, were listed by Ralph Smith (c1557). Arbeau (Orchesographie, 1588, 2/1589) gave the basic drum pattern of the ‘Infantry March’ as five sounded beats followed by three silent beats. Francis Markham (Five Decades of Epistles of Warre, 1622) advised that ‘it is to the voice of the Drum the Souldier should wholly attend, and not the aire of the whistle’, and listed the infantry signals:

First in the morning the discharge or breaking up of the Watch, then a preparation or Summons to make them repaire to their colours; then a beating away before they begin to march; after that a March according to the nature and custom of the country … then a Charge, then a Retrait, then a Troupe, and lastly a Battalion or a Battery, besides other sounds which depending on the phantasttikenes of forain nations are not so useful.

The codification, modification, elaboration and proliferation of military signs continued over the next two centuries, although the principal motifs proved enduring. Other signals – proclamations and signals for bivouac and mealtime, for example – were used, but enjoyed local application only. There was a vogue for signals in two-, three- and four-part homophony during the 19th century.

In France, government orders from the time of Louis XIV onwards regulated the trumpet and drum signals. In 1705 Philidor l'aîné assembled a manuscript volume containing some cavalry trumpet signals together with accompanying chiamatas (termed Preludes), as well as an array of batteries that he, Lully, and others had composed for French and foreign infantry regiments. Each of the batteries includes five drum signals (La Generalle, l'Assemblée, la Marche, la Descente des Armes and la Retraitte) complete with alternative ‘airs’ written for oboe band rather than fifes. The increasing diversity of the French signals may be noted in Lecocq Madeleine's Service ordinaire et journalier de la cavalerie en abrégé (1720) and Marguery's Instructions pour les tambours (1754). During the first half of the 19th century successive French governments adopted new and revised ordonnances by David Buhl for trumpet, drum and fife; these still form the principal body of French army signals. The extent of his revision can be seen by comparing the beginning of Philidor's and Buhl's versions of A cheval, a signal still extant in England as ‘To horse’ and ‘General parade’ (ex.1). (See also Sonnerie (i), (1).)

The earliest surviving sources of notated trumpet signals originated in areas under German influence, but such sources are less evident there during the late 17th century and the 18th. However, the occasional inclusion of trumpet signals in composed music and the information found in J.E. Altenburg (Versuch einer Anleitung zur … Trompeter- und Pauker-Kunst, 1795), show that similar developments to those found in England and France also occurred in Austria and Germany. Kastner’s Manuel général de musique militaire (1848) records contemporary military signal practices from all over Europe (including Germany), as well as many of the earlier European trumpet signals dating from the early 17th century onwards, but gives no German signals from the 1820s. Other 19th-century publications from German-speaking lands include the Austrian Andreas Nemetz's Allgemeine Musikschule für Militär Musik (1844) and the Prussian H. Sussmann's Neue theoretisch practische Trompeten-Schule (1859).

In England the fife was replaced by the oboe band at the close of the 17th century but reintroduced in 1745–7. Horse regiments used trumpets; marching regiments (and occasionally cavalry) now used fife and drum (horse grenadiers, dragoon guards and foot regiments formerly used side drums only). A Compleat Tutor for the Fife (c1750–55) and R. Spencer's The Drummers Instructor with English and Scotch Duty (c1760) include fife and drum signals. Distinct English and Scottish systems were followed until 1816, when the uniform system set out by Samuel Potter in Art of Playing the Fife and Art of Beating the Drum (1815) was adopted.

Trumpets replaced side drums in the horse grenadier guards and dragoons in 1766. Light dragoons adopted semicircular bugles in 1761, and the light infantry, artillery and regiments of foot followed. James Hyde revised ‘the trumpet and bugle soundings’ for The Sounds for Duty & Exercise, published by the War Office in 1798; he then corrected errors in the original work with a publication of his own, A New and Complete Preceptor for the Trumpet and Bugle Horn (1799). Bugle signals also appeared in James Gilbert's Bugle Horn Calls for Riflemen (1804) and T.R. Cooper's Practical Guide for the Light Infantry (1806).

The bugle gradually replaced the drum and fife. Drum signals were used in the artillery until 1856, but the fife was reserved for a few routine signals as late as the 1890s. Regimental trumpet calls were introduced by Sir Hussey Vivian in 1835. The separate sets of signals for the different divisions of the army were assimilated into a single manual, The Trumpet and Bugle Sounds for the Army, in 1902, which however maintained an old anomaly – that rhythmically identical trumpet and bugle signals were often harmonically different because of their scales (ex.2). There are now three categories of signal: regimental, field and routine.

The Continental Army of Revolutionary America was organized after British military custom; Friedrich von Steuben's Regulations for the Order and Discipline of the Troops of the United States (1778) lists the American signals: ‘The General’, ‘The Assembly’, ‘The March’, ‘The Reveilly’, ‘The Troop’, ‘The Retreat’, ‘The Tattoo’, ‘To Arms’ and ‘The Parley’. Regiments of foot included drummers and fifers; light dragoons used trumpeters and fifers; companies of riflemen included a drummer or a trumpeter; and light infantry units used the bugle. William Duane's Military Dictionary (1810) specified that ‘the trumpet is … the principal military instrument … belonging to the line; the bugle horn to riflemen and detached parties’. Drum and fife tutors include The Fifer's Companion (1805), J.L. Rumrille and H. Holton's The Drummer's Instructor (1817), the Fife Instructor … to which is prefixed Instructions for the Drum including the Principal Duties of the Camp (c1830) and Strube's Drum and Fife Instructor (1870). The bugle replaced fife and drum towards the end of the 19th century, initially deriving its signals largely from the French. Truman Seymour revised and assimilated the signals in 1867 and laid the foundation for the present system, which retains reminders of both British and French signals: e.g. ‘Boots and Saddles’ is French, but ‘Stables’ is British.

Signal (i)

2. Hunting signals.

Signals have been sounded at various stages of hunting to convey information, give instruction and for rejoicing. Medieval depictions of hunting scenes often include curved organic and metal horns. Early references to hunting horns occur in Le dit de la chace dou cerf (c1260), Guyllame Twici, L'art de venerie (1315) and Henri de Ferrieres, Le livre du roy Modus (1330). Hardouin de Fontaines-Guérin's Tresor de vènerie (1394) includes 14 single-note signals which are distinguished by their rhythms, as are those in Turbervile's Noble Art of Venerie (1575). Lingual and labial articulations were probably employed. Jacques du Fouilloux (La vénerie, ?1561) used the syllable tran, indicating articulation similar to that of the trumpet dran figure. One example shows a signal indicating that the stag is at bay. The sounding pitch was ‘whooped’ from below with the effect of a rise of as much as a 4th, and the true pitch may have been quavered.

The large hooped hunting horn was developed at the court of Louis XIV during the second half of the 17th century. Philidor transcribed the signals for horn in C alto in 1705 (Premier appel, Pour le Chien, Pour la Voye, Le Defaut, La Fanfare, La Retraitte and La Soureillade) and added a set for horn in C basso. The signals are in triple or compound duple metre and include tuneful fragments, triadic passages, lingual and labial articulations and the tayauté, or ‘jerked note’. Two- and three-part signals followed later. Hunting signals were included in mid-18th-century horn methods, in Diderot and d'Alembert's Encyclopédie (1751–80) and in Dampierre's Recueil de fanfares (1778).

The coiled horn was used in the English hunt, but a more enduring instrument was the short straight horn developed during the 16th century and made of copper by the middle of the 17th. English hunting signals have been printed in many sources, including Tubervile’s The Noble Art of Venerie (1576), Thomas Cockaine’s A Short Treatise of Hunting (1591), Nicholas Cox’s The Gentleman’s Recreation (2/1677) and L.C.R. Cameron's The Hunting Horn (1905). For a time the German hunt employed the bugle and had a military-derived signal repertory. The bugle was replaced by the coiled ‘Prince Pless’ horn during the 19th century. German hunting signals have been published by Kastner, among others. Single-note horns were developed in Russia in the late 18th century, initially to permit concordant signalling. They later formed a large musical band, which spread to other countries and lasted until the second half of the 19th century (see Horn band).

Tons de chasse encourage the hounds, give warning, call for aid and indicate the circumstances of the hunt; best known are Lance and Hallali sur pied. Fanfares distinguish between the animals hunted, with several for the stag; the Royale is used for a stag of ten points, the petit Royale for the boar. Musical airs are performed for rejoicing after successful hunting. The Fanfare de St Hubert is associated with the feast (3 November) of the patron saint of the hunt. These terms have been employed since the 18th century and are still in use today wherever hunting with coiled horns is practised.

See also Jagdmusik.

Signal (i)

3. Other signals.

Signals have long played a part in religious ceremonial. Such signals include the peal of church bells before Christian services, the call to prayer of the muezzin in the Islamic mosque, the sounding of the shofar in the Jewish synagogue and the use of bands of shawms and trumpets in Tibetan Buddhist monasteries. Trumpets featured in religious processions in the West in medieval times; they were used in Venice from the 12th century. During the 15th and 16th centuries many cities maintained trumpet ensembles to embellish important religious and civic ceremonies, including processions, elections, banquets and the announcement of judicial deliberations. The repertory was the same as that of the military trumpeters.

From an early period proclamations and bans were announced by town criers to the sounding of trumpets, or horns. Horns, and later trumpets, were employed by tower watchmen to warn of internal dangers, such as fire, as well as external, such as attacks. According to Froissart (c1337–c1405), they sounded trahi! on such occasions. Bakers and butchers played horns to announce their wares and pilgrims purchased ceramic horns.

With the beginning of mail services in the 15th century postal couriers sounded signals on small horns, initially using the 1st and 2nd harmonics only. Higher harmonics were added as the horns were lengthened, and the 1st and 2nd harmonics had vanished from the signals by the 19th century. Published Post horn methods with signals include the Prussian Anleitung zum Trompetblasen für die Königl. Preussischen Postillione (1828) and the English Complete Tutor for the Coach Horn, Post or Tandem Horn, Bugle and Cavalry Trumpet (1898).

The herder's horn, or Alphorn, was used in rural communities and survives today in Switzerland, Norway, Sweden, the Baltic States and parts of Russia, Hungary, the western Slav countries and Romania. They were used for communication, to summon and drive the herds and to gather people together for defence. Many of the traditional signals survive in folk music collections.

Signal (i)

4. Use by composers.

Composers have often incorporated references to signals into their music. Janequin's chanson La guerre includes cavalry trumpet signals, and his La bataille de Mets imitates the sound of fifes and drums. Trumpet signals form the bass parts of a Symphonia nobili frenetur organo (MS, c1504, D-LEu 1494) and a Laudate Dominum (c1548, DK-Kk Gl.kgl.saml.1842). Among the ‘battle’ pieces imitating the sounds of the trumpet, kettledrum, fife and drum are Andrea Gabrieli's polychoral Aria della battaglia (1590), Byrd's virginal suite The Battle, Tobias Hume's The Souldiers Song (1605) and various pieces in Monteverdi's Madrigali guerrieri et amorosi (1638). Trumpet signals are included in Christoph Straus's Missa ‘Veni sponsa Christi’ (1631), Joseph Haydn's Symphony no.100 ‘The Military’, Beethoven's Wellingtons Sieg, Berlioz's La damnation de Faust, the overtures to Suppé's Die leichte Kavallerie,(1866) and Auber's Fra Diavolo (1830), Tchaikovsky’s Capriccio Italien (1880), and Bizet's Carmen.

The sounds of the hunt are found in Gherardello da Firenze's Tosto che l'alba (for illustration see Caccia, ex.1), J.-B. Morin's divertissement La chasse du cerf (1708), Carl Stamitz's symphony La chasse (1772), and Joseph Haydn's Symphony no.73 ‘La chasse’ and oratorio The Seasons. Watchman's signals presumably inspired the Tagelieder by the Monk of Salzburg (late 14th century): Nachthorn, Taghorn and Trumpet. Alphorn music is quoted in a Sinfonia pastorella by Leopold Mozart, in Beethoven's Symphony no.6, Rossini's Overture to Guillaume Tell, Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique, Brahms's Symphony no.1, and Wagner's Descendons gaiment la courtille wwv 65. For usage of post horn signals by composers, see Post horn.

Signal (i)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

PraetoriusSM, ii

PraetoriusTI

C. Bendinelli: Tutta l'arte della trombetta (MS, 1614; Eng. trans., 1975); facs. in DM, 2nd ser., Handschriften-Faksimiles, v 1975)

F. Markham: Five Decades of Epistles of Warre (London, 1622)

G. Fantini: Modo per impare a sonare di tromba (Frankfurt, 1638/R; Eng. trans., ed. E.H. Tarr, 1975)

G. Markham: The Souldiers Exercise: in Three Books (London, 1639/R)

A.C. Bûchon, ed.: Les chroniques de Sire Jean Frossiart (1337–1470) (Paris, 1837)

J.-G. Kastner: Manuel général de musique militaire (Paris, 1848/R)

J.-B. Weckerlin: Musiciana (Paris, 1877)

C. Lang, ed.: Vegetius:Epiloma rei militaris (Leipzig, 1885)

J.A. Kappey: Military Music (London, 1894)

H. Riemann: ‘Der Mensural-Codex des Magister Nikolaus Apel’, KJb, xii (1897), 1–23

G. Kobbe: ‘The Trumpet in Camp and Battle’, Century Magazine, lvi (1898), 537–43

E. Buhle: Die musikalischen Instrumente in den Miniaturen des frühen Mittelalters(Leipzig, 1903)

H.G. Farmer: The Rise and Development of Military Music (London, 1912/R)

M. Brenet: La musique militaire (Paris, 1917)

G. Schünemann, ed.: Trompeterfanfaren, Sonaten und Feldstucke, EDM, 1st ser., Reichsdenkmale, vii (1936)

P. Panoff: Militärmusik in Geschichte und Gegenwart (Berlin, 1938)

Trumpet and Bugle Sounds for the Army, with Words: also Bugle Marches (Aldershot, 1941)

W.C. White: A History of Military Music in America (New York, 1944)

H.G. Farmer: Handel's Kettledrums and Other Papers on Military Music (London, 1950, 2/1960)

H.G. Farmer: Military Music (London, 1950)

E. Halfpenny: ‘Tantivy: an Exposition of the “Ancient Hunting Notes”’, PRMA, lxxx (1953–4), 43–58

E.H. Tarr: ‘Monteverdi, Bach und die Trompetenmusik ihrer Zeit’, GfMKB: Bonn 1970, 592–6

D. Altenburg: Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der Trompete im Zeitalter der Clarinblaskunst 1500–1800 (Regensburg, 1973)

G. Chew: ‘The Night-Watchmen's Song as Quoted by Haydn and its Implications’, Haydn-Studien, iii/2 (1974), 106–24

A. Baines: Brass Instruments (London, 1976/R)

R.F. Camus: Military Music of the American Revolution (Chapel Hill, NC, 1976)

P. Downey: ‘A Renaissance Correspondence concerning Trumpet Music’, EMc, ix (1981), 325–9

P. Downey: The Trumpet and its Role in Music of the Renaissance and Early Baroque (diss., Queen's U. of Belfast, 1983)

A. Hiller: Das Grosse Buch Posthorn (Wilhelmshaven, 1985)

P. Downey: ‘The Danish Trumpet Ensemble at the Court of King Christian III: some Notes on its Instruments and its Music’, Årbog for musikforskning, xix (1991), 7–17

K. Hofmann: ‘“Grosser Herr, o starker König”: ein Fanfarenthema bei Johann Sebastian Bach’, BJb 1995, 31–46

I. Woodfield: English Musicians in the Age of Exploration (Stuyvesant, NY, 1995)

P. Downey: Sir Tristams Measures of Blowing, Jacques du Fouilloux and Other Excursions in Historical Brass Hyperreality (forthcoming)

For further bibliography see Band (i) and Military music.