Do you feel like 18th century music doesn’t have challenging rudiments? Or that you want more of a challenge from the beatings?

One of my greatest pet peeves is a prevailing belief that musicians of the past and specifically military drummers performed simple and plain music.

This misconception seems to come from a few places and I’d like to take a moment here to express my thoughts on why I whole-heartedly disagree with this sentiment and think it’s very damaging to future research.

Afterwards, I’ll discuss the kinds of challenging rudiments that do exist in historic music and how to perform them.

1. The Simplicity of the duty calls means drummers weren’t capable of Challenging Rudiments / Music.

This is the misconception I hear the most and it suggests to me a very shallow way of thinking about the information and music available to us.

It’s true that we don’t have a lot of music beyond duty calls for many 18th century armies and that limits what we really know about their drumming style and playing abilities.

It also means that we assume drummers didn’t have challenging rudiments, since duty calls use easier, basic rudiments.

But we should take time to consider the function of these duty calls before using them to judge these historic drummers.

Duty Music is meant to be simple, repetitive, and easy.

  1. New drummers have to learn to perform the entire duty music as quickly as efficiently possible.
  2. The drummer has to memorize dozens of beatings.
  3. The drummer has to perform any beating, at the drop of the hat, sometimes under great pressure.
  4. The musically uneducated soldiers must also memorize and instantaneously recognize the music.

Think about a commercial jingle – they are simple, repetitive, uncomplicated, and you can sing about 50 right now.

These duty calls aren’t simple because the musicians were incapable; they were simple because that was their function.

As someone who has had the opportunity to portray a military drummer all day, 5 days a week, for 5 months out of the year, I can tell you that I too can perform these beatings at a drop of a hat, without thinking about them. I can completely zone out and perform the tune without fault for fifteen minutes. I can perform a duty call I haven’t performed in a year with maybe a few notes hummed to me. I can perform it marching, out of breath, and hungover. I can play them with musicians I know really well and musicians I’ve never met before.

The point is: if the calls were any harder or faster or more complex – well, they’d be harder and everything I just said above would be difficult.

2. Drummers weren’t very musically trained and couldn’t read music.

I think this concept has evolved because of the unfortunate lack of written music and drum manuscripts. Since there weren’t drum manuscripts, we assume drummers couldn’t write music. This leads us to assume they couldn’t read music, which supports the need to teach everything aurally.

I want to start my commentary by saying, as of yet, I have done no research that would help us say one way or the other whether drummers could or couldn’t read music.

But neither has anyone else?

If you have done serious research or know of articles on this topic, I’d like to know about it. Contact me.

This is a dangerous opinion to continue holding until we know more. It perpetuates a belief that drummers were unmusical, uneducated, and probably couldn’t play anything particularly difficult.

General literacy in the 18th Century

The idea that most people in the 18th century were couldn’t read literature is also a myth.

There was an incredible boom of literacy throughout the century. Most Britons, with the exception of the very rural and very poor, could read by the end of the century.

My masters is in 18th Century British Literature. I’ll post some evidence for this when I have a chance.

Music Ability of Bandsmen

Though not hard research, I would like to point out a few things to ponder and consider for further research:

Many military musicians (bandsmen) were required to be able to play two instruments – an indoor and marching instrument. These musicians were technically solders, who played on the side. These musicians would need a fairly serious amount of music theory to have mastered two different types of instruments.

With that in mind, I content that a musician hired solely to be a musician (aka, the fifes and drums) would have the time, inclination, and perhaps need to learn how to play both instruments.

Also considering their role solely as musicians, I argue that fifers and drummers were both trained in some degree of music theory and sight reading.

Additionally, since fifers and drummers undoubtably were quickly trained in all the duty calls, what would they have spent the rest of their years in service doing? I would argue that of course they made some effort to become increasingly proficient at difficult music and perhaps the opposite instrument.

(This is true even for Americans during the Revolutionary War. Perhaps they began the war as poor musicians, but after playing 24/7 for 3+ years, they must have improved.)

3. 18th Century Drum Music and early-19th Century Drum Music is all lame / repetitive / Doesn’t Have Challenging Rudiments.

This statement isn’t entirely wrong. There is an incredible amount of overlap and common phrases if you look at enough music from this time period. This is what makes it easier to learn and memorize.

And certainly a lot of it doesn’t have challenging rudiments and it’s not as fast or as flashy as some modern music, or even mid- to late-19th century music.

The problem is that we know fancier, harder marches and drum salutes existed. But, because historic drummers didn’t write them down, we know nothing about them.

So now, as historic drummers, we have an awkward line to walk:

Do we stick to what few original beatings we have that have, even if they’re not as interesting?

Do we attempt to write our own beatings in the historic style that might represent their fancy marches?

It’s a hard balance.

I personally believe that writing new beatings in the historic style is not only acceptable, but very 18th century of us. This is true so long as one takes the time to learn the rudiments and patterns, and attempt to model their ideas of variations on existing themes in the original music.

To go the extra mile, you really need to know more about the virtuosic, challenging rudiments and 18th century rules for variations and embellishments.

How do add authentic Challenging Rudiments & virtuosity into our playing?

I will be sharing some rules and tips to make your playing more virtuosic and interesting, without making it modern or unauthentic.

This wil be based on what I observe in period music and their use of rudiments.

For French, check out:

For British / American, check out: