The American Reveille: A British Origin?

The Reveille was the wake-up call for the British and American armies.

Performed at dawn – or really as soon as it was light enough to see – the Reveille instructed the soldiers to rise, dress, and prepare for morning Roll Call.

More importantly, Reveille signaled to the guards to cease challenging. The Sergeant of the Guard raised the flag. After all this, the military day formally began.

The American Reveille Sequence

Beginning as early as Hulbert’s 1807 Fifer’s Museum, the American Reveille has involved a long sequence of tunes. The sequence is variable over time and across manuals, but overall falls into familiar and consistent patterns.

In general, we see a sequence that begins with the English Reveille (Three Camps) and ends with a refrain of The Points of War (the beginning of the English Reveille).

Also included is the Austrian Reveille, the Hessian or the French Reveille, the Scotch Reveille, and the Dutch Reveille.

Often, a Double Drag, a Scotch Repeat, and a Quickstep are also included.

Most importantly, what we see are the utilization of other countries’ reveilles to provide the Americans with their own.

Within many drumming communities, musicians assume that this sequence of challenging drag and roll beatings is a uniquely American sequence with an elusive – almost mythical – origin. However, I would like to challenge this assumption and attempt to provide an origin for the sequence.

Commonalities Across Sequences

The sequence is rarely identical across manuals and time. However, there are significant trends across that suggest a common origin much earlier than Hulbert’s 1807 manual.

The logical response would be that the sequence, or an early variation, was agreed upon during the American Revolution. During the war, American musicians were highly interactive and obligated to maintain a degree of uniformity. That is one possible answer to the origin of this sequence.

But we are still left to puzzle out why the sequence was created the way it was. The English and Scotch Reveilles seem obvious, considering the British origin of most of the American music. The French were allies with the Americans. The Hessians, however, fought against the Americans for the British; the Austrians and Dutch had no significant role.

Why adopt their reveilles? And, after performing a series of Reveilles, why insert a quickstep and a double drag? This origin theory opens too many additional questions. Most importantly: why would a new army, already struggling to train and standardize their musicians, chose an elaborate string of tunes for a Reveille?

A British Origin

Instead, I propose a theory that the reveille sequence begins within the British army during the War of Spanish Succession (1701-1714).

During this time, the British (English and Scottish) fought alongside the Austrian monarchy, the Dutch Republic, the Holy Roman Empire (largely made up of Austria and Prussia), Piedmont-Savoy (with Swiss troops), Prussia, Habsburg Spain, and Portugal.

The combination of nations offers an explanation for most of the tunes in the American sequence and suggests an answer for the sequence’s origin.

If the British had adopted a sequence of reveilles during this war, then the sequence would undoubtedly have become a standard concept by the French & Indian War. At this time, the American provincials were trained by the British. This learned sequence would have been well-known by the time of the American Revolution while the American musicians were standardizing their music.

why this is most likely

This origin is far more logical than a randomly developed system during the American Revolution. If standardization was such a concern, then an unprecedented and complex sequence would have been unnecessary and distracting from real problems.

If I’m correct that the British adopted this sequence in the 1740s, then why don’t we see evidence of the sequence in British manuals?

Why is the Reveille Sequence Not In Fife Tutors?

The fife was not in use during the War of Spanish Succession.

The earliest fife tutors were issued in the 1750s to fulfill a need to train these fifers. It’s possible that the sequence doesn’t appear in these tutors because the Reveille sequence was still too causal to be included for publication. Or perhaps because few fifers were involved in the development of the sequence and fife music was unavailable.  It’s therefore not a surprise that we don’t see the sequence, even as it became possibly more solidified.

Why is the Reveille Sequence Not In Drum Manuals?

British 18^th century drum manuals are far sparser, with only The Young Drummer’s Assistant (c. 1780), Drum Beatings (c. 1770-1790), and Potter’s (1815) to base our knowledge off of. The sequence does not appear in The Young Drummer’s Assistant (YDA) or Drum Beatings. This may indicate that the sequence was not in use by the 1780s, or it may confirm the casual, unregulated use of the sequence.

If these assumptions that the sequence was simply not written because it was casually known and understood seem like a far stretch, we might recall how poorly explained and detailed the function of other major duty calls – like the Troop, the Retreat, and the Tattoo – appear in these tutors.

So long as the regulation is printed (in this case, the English and Scotch Reveilles), the rest seems to be up to the discretion of the Drum Major and the vague concept of “tradition”.

examples in British manuals

There are two examples of the sequence’s existence in the British tradition: Samuel Potter’s 1815 and 1817 manuals and the Buttrey manuscript (c. 1797 to 1814).

Throughout this section I want to explore two things:

1. The relationship between the Buttrey MS’s sequence of reveilles and the American reveille sequence. And explain how these sequences still have relevance in Potter’s manuals.

---

2. The origin of these particular reveilles and beatings, as a means of confirming the British were exposed to them throughout the War of Austrian Succession.

Ultimately, I want to prove that the British created the concept of a Reveille Sequence. Secondly, I want to outline a rough sense of how to perform an 18^th century version of the sequence.

To begin, read my Introduction to the American Reveille to see an in-depth study of how the American Reveille sequence functions in the early-19^th century.

After that, continue on to the section on the Reveille Sequence in British Sources to see my initial defense of the relationship between the American sequence and British sources.

An Introduction to the American Reveille

Before we can consider an earlier, British origin, we first want to confirm that the American Reveille contains such persistent and strong overlap that the sequence must trace its origin back to the American Revolution.

To the best of my knowledge, these are all the American sources still accessible which contain a Reveille sequence:

• Hulbert (1807)
• Robbins (1812)
• Ashworth (1812)
• Robinson (1818)
• Lovering (1819)
• Rumrille & Holton (1819)
• Woburn (c. 1807-24)
• Scott’s (1833)
• Klinehanse (1853)
• Henke-Moore MS (c. 1856-59)
• Keach (1861)
• Howe (1861)
• Hart (1861)
• Howe (1862)
• Nevins (1862)
• B&E (1862)
• Simpson & Canterbury (1862)
• Strube (1869)

This list represents seven 1812-era manuals, three interwar manuals, and eight Civil War-era manuals.

Sue Cifaldi has scanned copies of the original certificates of completions on her blog.

These resources provide us significant information about the general structure and tradition of Reveille used by American musicians.

Rumrille (1817) and Ashworth (1812) appear to establish the standard structure that dominates the US military throughout the century. Most of the 1812-era resources depict a slightly fuller structure and some of these traditions carry well into the mid-19^th century.

Download a pdf charting all Reveille sequences.

“Rules” of the American Reveille Sequence

We actually find a very predictable and stable Reveille sequence across time. What follows are “rules” and observations after a close study of the above Reveilles.

The Three Camps

The Three Camps, also known as The Mother and Three Camps or as the English Reveille, always begins the sequence. No matter what year or style of publication (MS, fife manual, drum manual, drum certificate), the sequence must always commence with The Three Camps.

The Scotch Reveille

In earlier versions, this is simply called “The Scotch Reveille.” By Scott (1833), it’s consistently known as “The Slow Scotch.” Despite the name difference, every manual includes this tune.

Hart’s version is the only exception, using instead a March. Like B&E, he offers alternative marches to insert in its place. 

Originally known as “A Scotch Reveille,” it was included in several British tutors as seemingly an alternative to the official Scotch Reveille. Potter (1815; British) chooses this tune as the official Scottish Reveille.

The position of the Slow Scotch changes over time. In several earlier fife manuals (Robbins, Hulbert, Woburn, and Robinson), it’s at the end of the sequence, just prior to the Points of War. In Ashworth and Rumrille, it’s placed second, as it will be from Scott forward.

The Austrian

The Austrian tune, accompanied by a fairly simple Single Drag beating, always appears in the sequence. In earlier versions, it’s the second tune. By Scott, it’s taken its place as third and remains in this position very consistently.

An interesting deviation occurs in Hart. While about half of Hart’s sequence is atypical, he does include the Austrian. Strangely, he calls this tune “The Hessian”. We’ll return to this curiosity later.

In both certificates of achievement, the second tune is called the “Hushion” or “Hessian”. While we might assume that the second tune is The Hessian of other reveilles, these lists also name “The French,” which is certainly the American “The Hessian” (see below).

Instead, the Hushion or Hessian probably refers to the tune The Austrian in those same manuals. This would be consistent with Hart’s odd naming, suggesting perhaps a regional oddity common to these three or a common intermixing of names.

If we accept this assumption is true, then Percival and Thompson begin their sequence: Three Camps – Austrian – Hessian. This sequence is the most common sequence seen in the earliest reveilles (Hulbert, Robbins, Robinson, and Woburn) where the Scotch comes later in the sequence.

The Hessian

The Hessian tune appears in the majority of sequences, with the exception of Hulbert, Robbins, and Lovering, and later Hart.

The beginning of the Hessian’s tune is originally the 18^th C. French Reveille, La Diane. A tune called “The French Reveille” appears in Brown’s MS (a NJ fifer; c. 1777). This tune is significant because it matches the actual French Reveille, but then includes the third part, which is unique to the American “The Hessian”. This third line of the Hessian is essentially just variations on the French Reveille.

Interestingly, the Henke-Moore MS labelled the first half (the French Reveille) as “Tin Kettle” and the second half as “The Hessian”, as if they were two different tunes.

The position of this tune varies somewhat. The Hessian almost always follows the Austrian. In Ashworth and Rumrille, the sequence is flipped – Austrian, Dutch, Hessian. This reverts back in Scott and then most manuals following, except Klinehanse and Howe.

The Dutch  

While The Dutch has the most complex history of any other in the sequence, it always appears in the sequence, with Robinson the only exception.

The tune The Dutch, or The Quick Dutch, always appears. Originally, the Quick Dutch (fife tune) was paired with The Dutch beating. In later manuals (B&E, Howe, Keach, and Simpson, and Strube), the Quick Dutch is paired with a 3/8, Troop-style beating.

Hart is the only exception, though he does include a Troop Step (3/8) which he calls a Dutch. This might reflect the shift in beating – rather than playing The Dutch, drums are beating a troop-style beating.

The Dutch beating survives in some of these later manuals by being paired with a new fife tune. Howe, Keach, and Simpson also include “Kinloch”, a new fife tune in the Reveille sequence but paired with the original Dutch beating. “Kinloch of Kinloch” was a popular tune found in Britain and North America. It was first published in 1800 in Niel Gow’s Fourth Collection under the title “Mrs. Kinloch of Kinloch’s Favorite”, attributed to George Kinloch. It appears in early American fiddle manuals, as early as 1812. The tune “Kinloch” may be a much older tune set as a variation on “Over the Water to Charlie”. This tune was a very popular Jacobite tune that also became very popular in the British army around the mid-1700s and variations on Charlie appear quite prolifically.

The position of The Dutch also moves around, but generally the Dutch follows the Austrian or the Hessian. In earlier manuals, the Dutch appeared near the end of the sequence, just prior to the Scotch. In Ashworth and Rumrille, and later Klinehanse and Howe, the Dutch settles between the Austrian and the Hessian.

The Quick Scotch

Known in earlier manuals as The Scotch Repeat, the Quick Scotch always appears in the sequence (with the exception of Robinson) and nearly always is the final tune (in Robbins and Hulbert, the tune comes in the middle of the sequence, with the Slow Scotch ending the sequence).

In earlier manuals, the Quick Scotch is a variant of “The Scotch Reveille” – or the original Scotch Reveille in British manuals. The tune is transposed up in Hulbert, Robbins, and Woburn. In Rumrille, the tune is in the same key. While the tune has sustained several variations from the original tune, it is still recognizable. The same tune in Rumrille is used for B&E’s Quick Scotch.

Quick Scotch’s Relationship to Surgeon’s Call / Church Call

As an interesting note, the transposed version in Hulbert, Robbins, and Woburn becomes the Surgeon’s Call / Doctor’s Call in Klinehanse, Henke-Moore, and 1860s manuals. This tune is also Potter’s British version of Church Call; the same tune appears in Buttrey’s MS for Church Call. Many American manuals suggest that Surgeon’s Call and Church Call are the same. A distinct American Church Call appears in Klinehanse and Henke-Moore, which suggests that one was adopted by the US Army in the 1850s. Its exact origins are unknown, but may still have roots in the original Church Call.

With the exception of B&E, every manual beginning with Klinehanse (1853) uses a different tune called “Fairy Dance”. Scottish composer and fiddler Nathaniel Gow wrote the tune “Fairy Dance” and published it as “Largo’s Fairy Dance” in 1809. “Fairy Dance” was a very popular fiddle tune in Britain, America, and Quebec, and remains very popular to today. The tune also goes by the name “Fisher Laddie” which seems to be closer to the fife “Fairy Dance”. Most likely its popularity and distinct Scottish character made it an ideal alternative to the original Quick Scotch.

Perhaps, as the original Quick Scotch had its use as Surgeon’s Call and Church Call, musicians preferred to use an alternative Scotch reveille in the sequence to avoid confusion (or overuse). Even though B&E use the older Quick Scotch, B&E allows substituting alternative Slow and Quick Scotches, which might suggest a longer tradition of using alternative Scotches. This may be confirmed by Scott’s Quick Scotch. His is two bars of an unknown tune, very different from all the other Scotches available. This may mark the point when the original Quick Scotch was being abandoned, before Fairy Dance became the popular substitution.

The Points of War / Three Camps reprisal

Although not stated in every manual, reprising the Three Camps is almost universal. In the manuals that don’t specifically state it, we can probably assume the practice was common enough to be understood.

Summary: “The Basic Seven”

The 7 tunes listed above seem to represent the simplest version of a Reveille sequence and is generally agreed upon by the US Army manuals – which I would argue are Ashworth, Rumrille, Scott, Klinehanse, Henke-Moore, and Strube. To a lesser extent, I would include Nevins and B&E.

Additional Variations

A few other tunes or beatings appear in addition to the Basic Seven tunes. While a deviation from the U.S. army regulations, we still see clear and persistent rules across time and manuals for the use of these other tunes.

The Double Drag

The Double Drag appears in nearly every Reveille sequence, except most of the US Army manuals. The same Double Drag appears in Hulbert and Robbins. A different one in Robinson. Another appears in Woburn, which is the same as Keach and Simpson. Howe includes the “Fifer’s Delight” in his 1861 and 1862 manuals. B&E includes the tune “Dusky Night”. Hart includes “Bonny Doon”.

While there is no rule about which specific tune should be used, there is a clear tendency of including some kind of Double Drag beating.

A Quickstep

Most manuals, not including the US Army manuals, include a quickstep. Much like the Double Drag, there appears to be no consensus on what tune should be performed or what style of drum beating works best.

Single Drag

Possibly drummers performed a Single Drag beating. Woburn included a Single Drag version of “Yankee Doodle” in his sequence. Murphy’s fife MS (1790) has a version of Yankee Doodle called “A Yankey Revily”, suggesting the inclusion of this patriotic air was a popular fad around the turn of the century. B&E includes The Prussian, a single drag beating. Percival’s (1821) certificate of achievement indicates that, in addition to the “Basic Seven” and a Double Drag, there should be a Single Drag (slow) and a Single Drag (fast).

Side Drag

Alternatively, drummers may have played a “Side Drag”, or general flamacue-based quickstep. Howe (1862), Keach, and Simpson include “Larra O’Brien” QS, while Howe (1861) includes “Prince Eugene”. While there’s no drum music, Howe refers to this as a “Side Dragg”. It’s unclear what he means by this.

B&E’s beating for this same tune is a Flamacue & Flamadiddle based tune, similar to the beating for “Larra O’Brien” in Howe, Keach, and B&E. Hart includes what he calls “The Austrian,” but the tune listed (and labelled) is actually “The Girl I Left Behind Me”. He offers three alternative quicksteps instead of Girl: My love is but a lassie yet, Roving Sailor, and Soldier’s Joy.

The drum beating offered is a simple, flam-based tune, with some flamacue-esque notation and some Lesson 25s. Beatings for the listed tunes tend to be Flamacue and Flamadiddle-based in this era. This suggests Hart’s use of a quickstep largely fall in line with Howe, et al. Importantly, while Hart’s labelling is odd, the 4 tunes he offers in this place speak to the tradition of including a quickstep and to the variability that quickstep can have.

For Further Research

To determine the character of these earlier quicksteps, it would help to learn more about the unidentified quickstep in both Hulbert and Robbins and another in Robinson. If we can trace them to typically Single Drag style beatings, this would suggest a mid-century transition from Single Drags to Flam-based 2/4s.

The Dawning of the Day

While this tune is not used in earlier sequences, it appears in nearly every 1860s manual. B&E remarks that it is not officially part of the duty, and its omission in the Henke-Moore MS confirms this, but it’s later inclusion by Strube highlights its popularity.

We should note that the tune Dawn of the Day was first published in 1847 in Irish Popular Songs by Edward Walsh. Most likely its popularity in the mid-century was what spurred its inclusion around this time in the Reveille sequence. This tune should not be considered an original part of the reveille sequence, nor really an official part. However, its popularity in the 1860s cannot be denied and it shouldn’t be thought of as “inappropriate” to perform (unless, of course, your impression is pre-1847).

Rather, we should take the use of this tune to tell us a few things: 1) the reveille sequence continued to be malleable over time and 2) the overall American sequence was changing in a fairly uniform manner. Just like the switch to Fairy Dance, many published changes show surprising consistency across the manuals.

Conclusion: The American Sequence

Beyond the 10 (sort of 11) tunes discussed above, there are no other tunes found in Reveille sequences. As I said at the start, we see an extremely consistent list of tunes and rules that govern the construction of these sequences.

The major deviations occur between what might be considered “US regulation” and what might be considered the extended militia version. The militia versions still follow the regulation version, just with some added pieces.

It should be noted that, while Hart’s manual is the most distinct, he still obeys the rules as outlined in multiple other manuals. While B&E’s manual indicates that other Scotches can be substituted, Hart’s is the clearest that Scotches, Dutches, and QS can be substituted at will.

For this reason, Lovering’s Reveille sequence is an interesting and important one to note. His sequence follows the rules laid out by the “regulation” sequence – Three Camps, Scotch, Austrian, Dutch, and ends with Points of War. He notes: “After the Dutch Reveille and before the Points of War any other tune may be played giving three cheers between each tune” (23). In the militia manuals that do add on extra tunes, we see that they generally agree with Lovering: performing the essentials, then adding a double drag, a quickstep, an additional Scotch, etc. as they see fit.

What’s Next?

The strong correlation between 19^th century American manuals tells us that the American sequence almost certainly began during the American Revolution.

In the follow section, I will discuss how this similar sequence has significant overlap in Potter’ Reveille and Buttrey’s Reveille tunes. 

Check out this pdf of a full chart of all the American Reveille Sequences.