ABSTRACT
Over the course of the long nineteenth century, the status and identity of the musicians in British army bands changed fundamentally in terms of the backgrounds from which they came and the professional standards to which they rose. This chapter looks at the consequences in terms of the identity and status of those people. Bands were formed in response to a number of factors including Hanoverian influences in military music, and the relatively recent creation of a standing army, which provided an infrastructure within which common practices and traditions could take root. As one might expect, bands played in such explicitly military contexts as parades and troopings of the colour. In the face of geopolitical factors, and particularly the French Wars (1793-1815), the early nineteenth century saw a huge expansion of both the regular army and the auxiliary forces.
