Bandmaster's Vanity: By J L Carter (Kneller Hall) - Softcover

Inhaltsangabe

The term 'passive-aggression' was first introduced by US Army Colonel 'Will' Menninger in a war bulletin in 1945 and referred to soldiers who evaded their duties through wilful incompetence (Lane, 2009). Similar traits were prevalant at Vanity Hall in Victorian Times.

Originating in Italy during the Middle Ages, the novella was based on local events that were humorous, political, or amorous in nature; the individual tales often mustered into collections.

But it was in Late 19th Century Germany that ‘The Novelle'really flourished as did the recognition by individual British Army Regiments that Prussian Military Band Traditions demanded they recruit German Bandmasters.

On 24th September 1856; an officer was on an errand for the general commanding-in-chief of the British Army. Patrick had reached the Sixth Crossing at Hampton around noon. A gentleman approached on the best turned out mare he had seen this side of Horse Guards.

Prequel

The warm breeze carried the acrid scent of foreboding. Sprays of horseshoe vetch were bordering the chalky grasslands. Aglais io butterflies abounded. An estate worker grumbled to himself as he slammed the oak door shut before withdrawing the giant bitted key from the rusting tumbler lever lock. ‘What will become of this forsaken hall?’ he blasphemed to no one then crossed himself hurriedly before trudging mournfully up the path, overgrown with the failure of liberal evangelism, to Saint James’s, Whitton, for Mass. William Webb Ellis was becoming well known as a preacher. As a rector, in this low church associated with Vanity Hall, he gave a particularly stirring sermon on the subject of the Crimean War. He preached and laboured a theory about passive aggressive behaviour, as a way of expressing negative feelings through deliberately misunderstanding orders, instead of openly addressing them, instead of picking up the ball and running with it, if you will. Cold, bitter but an over eager Louis Nolan rushed to the front of the first line of light cavalry where the Seventeenth Lancers had drawn up next to the Thirteenth Light Dragoons. That was on the 25 October 1854.

Five months previously on 19 May 1854, there had been the Grand Military Review at Scutari, in the Crimea:

‘C’est magnifique, mais ce n’est pas la musique!’ had exclaimed Louis Phillipe in exasperation.

‘What the devil do you mean?’ thundered the Duke of Cambridge.

It was his cousin’s birthday and he had wanted to impress the Allies with the pageantry of his troops with the massed bands of his division.

‘Well,’ the unfortunate liaison officer, Paulus, began in that dandified English foreigners sometimes use:

‘The massed bands are very smart, naturally, but your national anthem.’ Geroge Adolphus glared.

‘Is not your cavalry playing a different arrangement than that of the guards, and the highlanders? And I suggest not even in the same key? It is a cacophony!’

Seniority as per Vanity Hall Roll Call
The Duke, George, of royal blood, commanding
Burroughs, John, a future major general, commandant
Biddulph, Patrick, a royal lancer
Schellenbaum, Heinrich, a bandmaster over promoted to director of music.
Sullivan, professor, son of a bandmaster
Camp Followers/Other Ranks
Gertrude, the commandant’s sister
Marie Florence, an actress
Marie Beatrice, her mother
Henri, a winemaker
Nuri, romany gypsy
Urmila, a sari
Musicians Nulli Secundus.
No one (a Narrator)

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