The main bands contained 15 to 30 amateur players each, fluctuating according to the fortunes of the band at any one time, the regulation ‘competition band’ being 25 plus conductor. Their instruments were the standard brass combination of cornets, trombones, baritone and tenor horns, euphoniums, Bþ and Eþ basses, and percussion, played by members of many different ages and, in most of the bands, of both sexes. They made frequent public appearances (far more often than the choirs and orchestras) – highly visible performances, because of the loudness of brass instruments, the tradition of playing in the open, and their distinctive uniforms.
Brass band players were exceptionally articulate about their traditions; ‘it’s a world on its own’, I was constantly told, ‘a whole world’. Among all the musical spheres in Milton Keynes, it was the brass bands and their players that most emphatically made up a self-conscious ‘world’ with its own specific and separate traditions.
This perception was partly moulded by the popular publications about brass bands, the activities of national brass associations and the strong if unwritten traditions that have grown up round brass bands since the last century. This too was how outsiders often regarded them. The image was of bands as essentially working class, following their own autonomous musical style and repertoire separate from the elitist high culture, and composed of (male) players who were either self-taught or had learnt within the family or the band itself. In the past, so went the tradition, it was the heavy manual workers like miners who formed the brass bands: their work-hardened hands could not cope with stringed instruments, but they had one sensitive part left to them – their mouths and tongues. The brass bands were also assumed to be closely linked to their local community, which they supported both through local performances and through carrying the band’s name forward in the glamorous brass competitions.
Band members in Milton Keynes were well aware – indeed proud – of this long brass band tradition which itself shaped their understanding of present-day activities, as well as influencing their repertoire and mode of performance. What is more, several of the brass bands in the area did indeed date back to the turn of the century or earlier, a continuity which added to their sense of historic tradition. The Wolverton Town and British Rail Band was started in 1908 and had even earlier antecedents, the Great Horwood Band was formed in the 1880s, and the Woburn Sands Band in 1867 (though it had lapsed for many years until its refounding in 1957), while the Bradwell Band dated its foundation precisely to 15 January 1901, since when it had had a continuous existence as the Bradwell Silver Prize Band, Bradwell United Prize Band, United Brass Band, then Bradwell Silver Band. Even the younger Boys’ Brigade Bugle Band in Bletchley had continued without break since 1928, while the Heath and Reach Band was approaching its fiftieth anniversary. Others, like the old Bletchley Brass Band or the Newport Pagnell Town Band, had not survived but still left their traces in personal memories and in the music stamped with their name now used by other local bands. Inherited band resources like instruments inscribed with earlier players’ names or the music library, as well as memories of glorious exploits in competition or of contacts with leading local families, also brought home the length of tradition. Some bands had documentary records going back fifty years or more, with newspaper cuttings recording their festivities and successes; these often documented the strong family tradition characteristic of brass bands, fathers being followed over the generations by sons, grandsons and nephews. No other named local musical groups (with the possible exception of a few church choirs) had as long a continuous existence, so that though there had been both demises and new foundings, brass band members were in fact correct to see their tradition as a long-established and vigorous one.
Awareness of their proud history thus played a part in local activities, and to some extent this continuity was striking. The tradition of informal learning was also still influential, and there were still many family links and loyalties within the bands. The competition world was sometimes another continuing context for performances and aspirations, while the tradition of service to ‘the community’ and appearances at local events remained a valued one, and at least some players still spoke of the ideal of bands as essentially made up of ‘ordinary working lads’.
This traditional image of the ‘brass band movement’ was thus of real relevance, influencing repertoire, mode of training, self-image and family and community links. However, as even some players themselves admitted, the picture was also changing, and local brass band practice often did not fit with the traditional image.
For one thing the playing of brass instruments was becoming more assimilated to the ‘classical’ music model, and the modes of learning and performance were changing. Brass instruments were energetically taught in the schools by peripatetic teachers on the same basis as other classical instruments, supplementing the bands’ own youth training schemes and informal teaching. Partly as a result, more girls were learning. Milton Keynes brass bands included female players, and in some of the younger bands girls were actually in the majority – very different from the past. New groups were founded which, unlike the older bands, drew their models not just from inherited tradition but from televised performances and classical instrumentalists.
Brass bands were also part of the high-profile cultural developments promoted by the MKDC. One of the first ensembles off the ground in the show-piece Stantonbury Education Campus was Stantonbury Brass, a youth band run by the Stantonbury Music Centre – an effective choice given the shorter lead time for training up a viable brass than string group. This successful young band was invited to perform at MKDC and BMK-sponsored events and to represent Milton Keynes abroad. Again, the Milton Keynes brass band festival, though building on established local bands, was directly encouraged by the new city’s administration (which happened to include some influential brass enthusiasts). For many, therefore, brass bands were not a separate world of lower-class or ‘popular’ as against ‘high’ culture, but a recognised part of official cultural events in the city. The links with classical music were also increasingly accepted by players and audiences generally, not just because of school brass teaching but through the widely watched BBC ‘Young Musician of the Year’ competition, in which brass instrumentalists always formed one section. One recent winner was claimed as a ‘local boy’ (he came from Bedford and had played as soloist with local brass bands); this added new prestige to brass band playing, and the number of children (or rather parents) interested in brass lessons immediately jumped. There was thus contact between brass band and the classical music worlds, with some overlapping membership between brass bands and classical ensembles (like the Woburn Sands Band and the Sherwood Sinfonia).2
Another way the older image no longer really applied was in band membership. The ‘working-class’ picture may have influenced people’s perceptions, but by the 1980s hardly fitted the Milton Keynes bands. The new bands (the Bletchley Band and the Stantonbury Brass) were mostly young people of very mixed backgrounds, many still at school, and had girl players as well as boys; and even the older bands included a fair mix. This, furthermore, was how at least some bands in practice saw themselves, even if they also relished the nostalgic flavour of the earlier image. One long-established band, I was told by its secretary, included political commitments ‘across the whole spectrum’ and a cross-section typical of local brass bands generally: postmen, teachers, telephone engineers, a motor mechanic, personnel manager, master butcher, university teacher, train driver, and schoolchildren from state and independent schools. Another band (partially overlapping in membership with the first) was less varied, with a larger proportion of jobs like clerk, labourer, storeman, or shopworker, but also including computer engineers, a building inspector, a midwife and several schoolchildren; as their musical director summed it up, ‘the old cloth cap and horny hand image is dying out’.
The bands also contained players who had learnt their craft in several different modes. Some had indeed learnt in the traditional way from brass players within their own families or bands, then perfecting their skill through actual band playing. Others had been taught in the formal classical mode which stressed reading music and being able to play in classical music ensembles. Others had combined the two. This mixed experience did not seem to undermine the communal loyalty of the bands, and was indeed exploited by the bands, who used a variety of methods in their own youth sections.