Bugle Resounding: Music and Musicians of the Civil War Era.

Bugle Resounding: Music and Musicians of the Civil War Era. Edited by Bruce C. Kelley and Mark A. Snell. Shades of Blue and Gray. (Columbia and London: University of Missouri Press, c. 2004. Pp. xii, 260. $44.95, ISBN 0-8262-1538-6.)

Bugle Resounding: Music and Musicians of the Civil War Era is a collection of ten essays by as many authors on a wide variety of topics relating to music of the Civil War era. With the exception of the first essay, "'Old Times There Are Not Forgotten': An Overview of Music of the Civil War Era," by coeditor Bruce C. Kelley, all had their beginnings as papers presented at either the 2001 or 2002 National Conference on Music of the Civil War Era. These conferences were organized by the editors and held at Shepherd University (then Shepherd College), where both are members of the faculty.

The individual authors are a more or less even mixture of historians and musicologists, but the tenor of the pieces is decidedly more social historical than musicological. In his introductory piece, Kelley identifies ten categories into which current research on music of the Civil War has fallen: music personalities; European art music; popular song and dance; music and culture; African American music and musicians; military and civilian bands; innovations; music publishing; collection and description; and new beginnings. He provides brief discussion of extant work that falls into each of these categories. Not all of the other nine essays in the book fall neatly into these categories.

Deane L. Root's piece, "Music and Community in the Civil War Era," is an expanded version of his keynote address from the 2002 conference. In this essay, Root discusses the ways in which popular songs--specifically the songs of Stephen Foster--helped build communities during the era of the Civil War. Then follows Lenora Cuccia's essay, "They Weren't All Like Lorena: Musical Portraits of Women in the Civil War Era," in which she examines different images of women in songs of the time.

Richard C. Spicer gives an account of the Hilton Head Post Band and its predecessor, the New Hampshire Third Regimental Band. The history of this band is exceptionally well documented through the survival of the complete set of the manuscript books of music from which it played. David B. Thompson explores the largely unknown world of solo piano music of Confederate composers, while Walter L. Powell explores the postwar life and career of Henry Clay Work, one of the most prolific and popular songwriters during the war.

Kirsten M. Schultz offers a detailed look at the publication of pocket songsters in "The Production and Consumption of Confederate Songsters," an essay drawn from her dissertation research. A useful, chronologically arranged listing of known Confederate songsters is appended to her article.

"Across a Great Divide: Irish American Music and Musicians of the Civil War Era," by Michael Saffle, is a valuable look at Irish contributions, but it is not without some problems. In surveying the available printed sources of Irish American music he overlooks numerous instrumental collections that contain melodies that might have helped him "identify characteristic features of antebellum and Civil War-era Irish American melodies" (p. 179). He misidentifies Sergeant James O'Neill, a collaborator of music collector and editor Captain Francis O'Neill, as Francis O'Neill's father; the two men were unrelated (p. 180). He uses the terms tipping and popping to describe certain aspects of Irish melody, but gives no indication of their derivation (p. 182). I have not encountered them elsewhere in literature on Irish music.

An essay by Eric A. Campbell on the wartime experiences of an individual musician, Charles Wellington Reed, and one by Mark A. Snell entitled "Music Inspired by the Battle of Gettysburg, 1863-1913" round out the anthology.

In general, the essays are solidly researched and well written. Taken as a whole they provide good descriptions of some of the trees of the music of the era but do little to illuminate the forest that is the broad history of American music.

PAUL F. WELLS

Middle Tennessee State University