Musik militer

Martial music or military music is a specific genre of music intended for use in military settings performed by professional soldiers called field musicians. 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.

Marching songs, typically with patriotic and sometimes nostalgic lyrics, are often sung by soldiers as they march. The songs invariably feature a rhythm timed to the cadence of the march. There are many examples from the American Civil War, such as "Marching Song of the First Arkansas" and "John Brown's Body". "P'tit quinquin" was popular during the Franco Prussian War of 1870. The Boer War generated numerous marching songs among which "Marching to Pretoria" is well known. "It's a Long Way to Tipperary" was a marching song of World War I that became a popular hit. One of the most enduring marching songs from that war is probably the "Colonel Bogey March", which was popular in World War II as "Hitler Has Only Got One Ball"; the tune found later fame as part of the soundtrack for Bridge on the River Kwai.

The bugle call is a short tune announcing scheduled and certain non-scheduled events on a military installation, battlefield, or ship. These short music pieces are played from an instrument called the bugle, it has been used by militaries as means of communication. This instrument can be heard from afar and in very noisy environments (during battle). It is a very effective way of giving orders and communicating. Although no longer required by armies for communicating, these music pieces are still played for tradition and during ceremonies. Well-known bugle calls include "Taps", "The Last Post", and "Reveille", and also El Degüello.