Since this seems to be the season of New Books on Virginia, let me get my oar into the water.  Many of you already know of this, and I hope are encouraging your local bands to play the music.

"Martial Music in the Age of Lewis and Clark" - [ISBN 1-889663-95-6]

26 musical selections from the first decade of the 19th century, arranged for the military band of the time which - suprise, surprise - was not (1) fifes and drums or (2) brass bands, but a couple of clarinets, brace of horns and a bass line, often a serpent horn.  We know the US Marine Band organized along those lines in 1799, so this band is the type that welcomed those two Virginians L&C back, after they were dispatched by that Virginian Thomas Jefferson.  All tunes are authentic of the time and include such favorites at "Handel's March", "March of the Riflemen", "The Marseillaise", and another Virginia tie-in, this one from Yorktown: "March of the Royal Duponts Regiment."  Also includes a period re-creation of that favorite drinking song of the time, "To Anacreon in Heaven", which was obviously running through Francis Scott Key's mind when he penned the words to you-know-what.  Everything is very playable by anything from a trio to a woodwind quintet, and even drum parts are included.  It is well within reach of high-school-bands and some more advanced middle school bands.  Just the thing that anybody celebrating the Corps of Discovery needs to add zest to the event.  One of the suprises - to me at any rate - has been the reception of the CD in the back of the band book with recording of all 26 selections by the Band of the Piltdown Fusiliers.  But enough said.

Reply to [log in to unmask] for availability, prices, discounts, and/or a free brochure which includes a pocket (only 3 inches in diameter) audio CD which gives a synthesis of the sound, and sample audio clips.  A promise or a threat>>>>?   The  brochure also includes a photo of me wrapped up in an 18th-century serpent horn back in the glory days of 'The Musick of Turkey Run Farm'  -- yet another Virginia institution and a group which distinguished itself at the 1981 Yorktown Bicentennial Celebration.

Randy Cabell
Boyce, Virginia
Band of the 19th Virginia Heavy Artillery (The only set of Virginia Confederate Band Books which have ever been found) 

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "John Maass" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, September 03, 2004 4:42 PM
Subject: New Book on Virginia


> Speaking of a new book on Va., in Nov LSU Press will release "Sir William
> Berkeley and the Forging of Colonial Virginia," by Warren M. Billings [ISBN
> 0-8071-3012-5 ].
> The publisher includes this info on its website:
> 
> 
> Sir William Berkeley (1605-1677) influenced colonial Virginia more than any
> other man of his era. An Oxford-educated playwright, soldier, and diplomat,
> Berkeley won appointment as governor of Virginia in 1641 after a decade in
> the court of King Charles I. Between his arrival in Jamestown the following
> year and his death, Berkeley became Virginia's leading politician and
> planter, indelibly stamping his ambitions, accomplishments, and, ultimately,
> his failures upon the colony. In a masterly biography, Warren M. Billings
> offers the first full-scale treatment of Berkeley's life, revealing the
> extent to which Berkeley shaped early Virginia and linking his career to the
> wider context of seventeenth-century Anglo-American history. 
> 
> Under Berkeley's rule, Virginia increased trade with markets in North
> America, the West Indies, and Holland. Berkeley's plantation, Green Spring,
> served as a model for Virginia's planter aristocracy, and his creation of
> the General Assembly helped establish the origins of American political
> self-rule. But his increasingly questionable policies also precipitated
> Bacon's Rebellion in 1676, which prompted tighter control of Virginia from
> London and Berkeley's return to England in disgrace. 
> 
> Despite his central role in the development of Virginia, Berkeley has been
> as misunderstood by historians as he was by his contemporaries, his motives
> and character a source of contention for three centuries. Deeply informed
> and engagingly told, this biography offers the meticulous attention its
> remarkable subject has long deserved. 
> http://www.lsu.edu/lsupress/catalog/Fall2004/books/Billings_Berkeley.html
> 
> 
> John Maass
> Department of History
> The Ohio State University
> 106 Dulles Hall
> 230 W 17th Avenue
> Columbus OH 43210
> Ph:     614-292-4909
> Fax:    614-292-2282
> http://people.cohums.ohio-state.edu/maass2/
> 
>  
> 
> To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe, please see the instructions
> at http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html
> 
> 


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