Monday, June 25, 2012
Who Wrote the Bugle Call Taps?
HISTORY
The 24 notes of the hauntingly mournful bugle call we call Taps are heard frequently across
For many years after the Civil War, legend had it
that Gen. Daniel A. Butterfield composed this call in 1862, which means its 150th
birthday is coming up next month.
Writing about bugle calls in the August 1898 issue
of The Century Magazine, Gustav Kobbé stirred up a hornet’s nest among
Civil War veterans with his article, "The Trumpet in Camp and Battle ." Kobbé was a respected music critic and opera
expert.
After tracing many of the U.S. Army’s bugle calls
to the French army of Napoleon, Kobbé admitted, "In speaking of our trumpet calls I purposely omitted one with
which it seemed most appropriate to close this article, for it is the call
which closes the soldier's day, Lights Out. I have not been able to trace this
call to any other service."
In order to profit from the battle experience
gained in the Civil War and faced with a downsized army, in 1866 the War
Department had assigned Lt. Col. Emory Upton to head a board of officers at West Point charged with creating a new tactical manual.
Upton, the Army’s most brilliant strategist, asked
Major Truman Seymour to compile a system of bugle calls to be incorporated into
the new tactical manual to be published in1867.
Referring to the “Lights Out” call, Kobbé
concluded, "If it seems probable it
was original with Major Seymour, he has given our army the most beautiful of
trumpet-calls." Taps was still called "Lights Out" in the
post-Civil War Army.
Kobbé's article prompted a letter from Oliver W.
Norton, who said he knew the origin of the bugle call and claimed he was the
first to play it.
Writing from Chicago, Norton, a successful
businessman who would later found the American Can Company, said in his letter,
"Mr. Kobbé says he has been unable
to trace the origin of the call now used for Taps, or ’Go to Sleep,’ as it is
generally called by soldiers. During the early part of the Civil War, I was
bugler at the headquarters of Butterfield’s Brigade.
“Up to July,
1862, the Infantry call for Taps was that set down in [Gen. Silas] Casey’s
Tactics, which Mr. Kobbé says was borrowed from the French. One day, soon after
the seven days battles on the Peninsular, when the Army of the Potomac was
lying in camp at Harrison's Landing, General Daniel Butterfield, then
commanding our brigade, sent for me, and showing me some notes on a staff
written in pencil on the back of an envelope, asked me to sound them on my
bugle.”
Norton's letter continued, “I did this several times, playing the music as written. He changed it
somewhat, lengthening some notes and shortening others, but retaining the
melody as he first gave it to me. After getting it to his satisfaction, he
directed me to sound that call for Taps thereafter in place of the regulation
call. The music was beautiful on that
still summer night, and was heard far beyond the limits of our brigade.”
Oliver Norton went on to describe how the next day
he was visited by buglers from neighboring brigades who wanted copies of the
music. The call was gradually taken up throughout the Army of the Potomac . Later the tune was carried by buglers to troops
fighting with Gen. Ulysses S. Grant in Tennessee .
Rapidly making its way through the entire Union Army, it eventually became
accepted as a regulation U.S. Army bugle call.
Acting on a suggestion in Norton’s letter, the
editor of The Century Magazine wrote to General Butterfield. Replying
from his home "Cragside" in Cold
Spring , N.Y.
“I recall,
in dim memory, the substantial truth of the statement made by Norton about
bugle calls. His letter gave the impression I personally wrote the notes for
the call.
“The call of
Taps did not seem to be as smooth, melodious and musical as it should be, and I
called in some one who could write music, and practiced a change in the call of
Taps until I had it suit my ear, and then, as Norton writes, got it to my taste
without being able to write music or knowing the technical name of any note,
but, simply by ear, arranged it as Norton describes. I did not recall him in
connection with it, but his story is substantially correct.”
Butterfield may not have written the bugle call we
now know as Taps, but he certainly deserves credit as the arranger of today’s version of the call.
The first time the Butterfield version of Taps was
sounded at a military funeral may have been when Union Capt. John Tidball
ordered it played at the burial ceremony for a cannoneer killed in action. Not
wanting to set off return fire from edgy Confederate troops nearby, Tidball
substituted Taps for the traditional three rifle volleys fired over the grave.
Taps was
also played at the funeral of Confederate Gen. Stonewall Jackson nearly a year
later. By 1891, Army infantry regulations required Taps to be played at
military funeral ceremonies, and the tune is still used to signal "lights
out" at the end of the day.
According to a widely circulated account, the tune was born in 1862 when Union Capt. Robert Ellicombe heard a soldier moaning on a battlefield near Harrison's Landing,
In the light of his lantern, Captain Ellicombe
discovered to his horror that the dead soldier was his son, who had been a
music student in the South and had enlisted in the Confederate Army without
telling his father.
He found in his son's jacket a scrap of paper on
which a staff and 24 music notes had been penciled. Captain Ellicombe's request
that his son be given a full military funeral was denied. Instead of a military
band, he was allowed one musician, a bugler, who played his son's song at the
funeral. Thus the bugle call Taps came into being, and the tradition of playing
it at military funerals and memorial ceremonies began.
This touching story has become an intriguing urban
legend--but it's just that, a legend. Like so many legends, it has no basis in
fact. No evidence exists that a Captain Robert Ellicombe ever served in the
Union Army of the Potomac . Ironically,
cartoonist and author Robert L. Ripley died on May 27, 1949, after filming a segment
on the 13th episode of his TV program, "Believe It or Not." The
subject was a retelling of the Ellicombe story.
Still Another Version of the Taps Story
Another account claims the song was indeed written by a Butterfield--Milton Butterfield, a Confederate soldier from
Spoilsports may point out that Vicksburg did not surrender until July of
1863, by which time General Butterfield’s
version of the call was being played regularly by buglers on both sides.
Milton Butterfield rejoined his unit, which was
sent to Chickamauga , Tennessee
During this meeting, he told General Butterfield
of his "burial music." When the general expressed interest in it, he
wrote the simple tune on the back of an envelope and gave it to him.
Milton Butterfield, who was attached to a scouting
party, was killed during the siege of Atlanta
and is buried at Stone Mountain ,
Georgia Chickamauga ,
were conveniently lost during the family’s frequent moves after the war.
Research Reveals the True Story
Musicologists familiar with military music have traced the European roots of the 24-note bugle call we know as Taps.
Taps actually existed in an earlier version of the
Tattoo call used to notify soldiers to stop the evening's drinking and return
to quarters. Tattoo was sounded about an hour before the final call of the day
to extinguish all fires and lighting devices such as candles and lanterns. The
words Tattoo and Taps are alterations of the obsolete word "taptoo,"
derived from the Dutch "taptoe." Taptoe was the command meaning to
shut the tap of a keg.
The mournful melody predates the Civil War. The
melody of Taps is close to the last five and a quarter bars of what was called
the Scott Tattoo (after Gen. Winfield Scott), a call included in many tactical
manuals published well before the Civil War.
Daniel Butterfield never claimed credit for the
bugle call that was sometimes called “Butterfield’s Lullaby.” He may not have
written the bugle call we now know as Taps, but he certainly deserves credit as
the arranger of today’s version of
the call.
Who wrote the bugle call Taps? Like so many cultural mysteries, the identity of the original
composer of Taps and the date of its creation are today lost in the mists of
history.
