Stuart wrote: > The retreat march is not, as Stan suggests, necessarily a march time tune > which would be marched to - as often as not it was played as part of the > evening ritual in the military camp as day duties gave way to night ones. > It > was not linked to the military manoeuvre of retreating in or from battle > but > was linked to the idea of refuge and safety in the camp. Some contemporary > players, assuming that the retreat march is to be marched to, crank it up > to ...
This is from a note to a CD by the Household Division (they do the Changing of the Guard stuff I think): ----- The beating or sounding of Retreat has its origins in the sixteenth century when it was possibly the same ceremony as Tattoo, 'ye retrete to beat att 9 att night and take it from ye garde'. A book of 1598 says 'ye Drumme Major will advertise (by beate of Drum) those require for watch'. In the seventeenth century the Drummers are 'to beate the Retreat through the large street and to be answered by all the dummerrs of ye Gardes'. Nowadays the ceremony, usually at sunset, denotes the end of the working day and heralds the mounting of the Guard. ----- There you are then. My most memorable retreat was at Gleneagles during the 1977 Conference of Commonwealth Prime Ministers, when I watched the retreat being beaten with Pierre Trudeau. Derek Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music & Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
