Military music

Martial music or military music is a specific genre of music intended for use in military settings. Much of the military music has been composed to announce military events as with bugle calls and fanfares, or accompany marching formations with drum cadences, or mark special occasions as by military bands. However, music has been employed in battle for centuries, sometimes to intimidate the enemy and other times to encourage combatants, or to assist in organization and timing of actions in warfare. Depending on the culture, a variety of percussion and musical instruments have been used, such as drums, fifes, bugles, trumpets or other horns, bagpipes, triangles, cymbals, as well as larger military bands or full orchestras. Although some martial music has been composed in written form, other music has been developed or taught by ear, such as bugle calls or drum cadences, relying on group memory to coordinate the sounds.

The notion of march music began to be borrowed from the Ottoman Empire in the 16th century. The Ottomans were believed to have introduced the first military bands in the thirteenth century, called mehter or Janissary bands. The music is characterized by an often shrill sound combining bass drums, horns (boru), bells, the triangle and cymbals (zil) and several other traditional instruments. The sound associated with the mehterân exercised an influence on European classical music, with such composers as Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Ludwig van Beethoven all writing compositions inspired by or designed to imitate the Ottoman music. See also: American march music.

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