TAPS WHERE DID THEY COME FROM... It was the custom in The Civil War an era of poor battlefield communications for each brigade commander to commission an easily identified bugle call to signal his intentions to his men. Often these officers were involved in choosing these signals or bugle calls and Brigadier General Daniel Butterfield, commanded the Third Brigade of the Fifth Army Corps in the Union Army was no exception. He had his own distinct bugle call. Butterfield also did not particularly like the existing bugle call instructing men to go sleep at the end of the day. The Army was using an older piece of music from the Manual of Infantry Tactics. Butterfield called in his young bugler, Private Oliver W. Norton and together they adapted the last 6 ¼ measures of No. 8 Tattoo, stretched and slowed the notes to Butterfield’s satisfaction, and created Taps, one of the most familiar tunes in human history. Played in the active services as a signal for the end of the day, beginning almost immediately in that depressing summer of 1862, it entered the bugle repertoire of both northern and southern armies. Ever since the deeply sad and moving twenty-four notes of Taps has been used in military funerals and at the burials of those who have with distinction served their country.
Posted on: Fri, 09 Jan 2015 18:07:24 +0000
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