1 - Music in Britain, 1914

Summary

Provides the context of how and why military music was coordinated in the period immediately before the outbreak of the Great War. It will briefly trace the beginnings of Royal Marines Divisional Bands in the Royal Navy during the late eighteenth century, as well as the founding of the Royal Military School of Music at Kneller Hall, and the Royal Naval School of Music at Eastney Barracks, explaining how bandsmen were recruited, trained and deployed, and why music was a vital element of the services’ daily, ceremonial and wartime operations. This chapter will also engage with pre-war concerns expressed about the lack of music in Britain’s armed forces, and the wider debates about the quality and direction of British music in the Edwardian period.