Martial music or military music is a specific genre of music intended for use in military settings performed by professional soldiers called field musicians. Much of the military music has been composed to announce military events as with bugle calls and fanfares, or accompany marching formations with drum cadences, or mark special occasions as by military bands. However, music has been employed in battle for centuries, sometimes to intimidate the enemy and other times to encourage combatants, or to assist in organization and timing of actions in warfare. Depending on the culture, a variety of percussion and musical instruments have been used, such as drums, fifes, bugles, trumpets or other horns, bagpipes, triangles, cymbals, as well as larger military bands or full orchestras. Although some martial music has been composed in written form, other music has been developed or taught by ear, such as bugle calls or drum cadences, relying on group memory to coordinate the sounds.
Oslo: Gebirgsmusikkorps der Bundeswehr.
Bagpiper leads an advance during Operation 'Epsom', 26 June 1944.
Painting Spirit of '76 by A.M. Willard, 1857, showing fife and drums.
A musician of the Kosovo Security Force Band.
The Bundeswehr is the armed forces of the Federal Republic of Germany. The Bundeswehr is divided into a military part and a civil part, the military part consisting of the German Army, the German Navy, the German Air Force, the Joint Support Service, the Joint Medical Service, and the Cyber and Information Domain Service.
Generals Adolf Heusinger and Hans Speidel being sworn into the newly founded Bundeswehr by Theodor Blank on 12 November 1955
A Großer Zapfenstreich at the Federal Ministry of Defense in Bonn in 2002
The Federal Republic of Germany joined NATO in 1955.
Leopard 2 tanks