Introduction
It was 11 July 2021. Italy faced England in the 2020 UEFA Euro final at Wembley Stadium. Football fans across the Mediterranean island country of Malta decorated their balconies with Italian or English flags in support of their favoured team. Most of Malta was visibly divided, pro-Britain or pro-Italy, with nearly all Maltese people expressing their support of one or the other of the national football teams in any conversation they engaged in during the days leading to this grand match. Local online portals and newspapers noted this rivalry in comments such as:
The rivalry between English and Italian football team supporters in Malta is probably one of the oldest rivalries to date. The crux of this strife competition between them is not one to be taken at face value however, and definitely runs deeper than the issue of football. […] Our political and cultural history has close ties to both England and Italy, and it’s reflected in our undying support for their national football teams.Footnote 1
Observations such as this are best understood in the context of the strong influence that both Italy and Britain have had over the years on Malta’s cultural, social, and political history. For instance, even though the country had been a British colony since 1813, the cultural scene in Malta at the beginning of the twentieth century was dominated by Italian culture and the use of the Italian language, so much so that ‘the perception of most educated Maltese was that Malta was a Latin country only sixty miles away from southern Italy’.Footnote 2 Moreover, in the mid-nineteenth century, British Malta served as a refuge for Risorgimento liberals who fled the political upheavals caused by Italy’s unification process. This took place at the same time as the British colonial presence in Malta consolidated its place both militarily and institutionally. The cultural and political impact of the two cultures on the wind band tradition in Malta, a central cultural activity in Maltese life since at least the mid-nineteenth century, was both inevitable and considerable.
The setting-up in Malta of formally organized clubs with an affiliated wind band and premises from where they could operate goes back to the second half of the nineteenth century. These band clubs are known in Maltese as każini tal-banda. Footnote 3 It was during this time that such clubs flourished, so much so that by 1888, thirty-six band clubs were already established.Footnote 4 Prior to these bands, existing documents attest to groups of amateur wind players who were active as musicians during religious processions and at other events held in various villages and towns around the island.Footnote 5 Some of these musicians were eventually integrated into the band activity generated by these newly established clubs. Consequently, the proliferation of band clubs, and hence the demand for more wind players as well as increased interest in wind band playing, had an impact on the formation and activity of the small orchestras active at that time in Maltese churches. Indeed, as string players became scarce, some of those orchestras turned into wind bands and eventually established their own clubs.Footnote 6 Nevertheless, as early photographs of these bands indicate, the service of double bass players active in Malta at that time was required to strengthen the bass section of existing wind bands, particularly in formal concerts.
Maltese wind bands are found in almost all Maltese towns and villages and are still affiliated to their respective clubs. In relation to this, the latest survey, published by the Malta National Statistics Office in 2018 (referring to 2017), refers to a total of ninety active band clubs in Malta and on its sister island Gozo.Footnote 7 The same survey also reveals the active participation of 3524 band players and 1095 committee members in a population which at the time of the survey totalled 437,933. The composition of these amateur wind bands is primarily shaped by localism, in the sense that they aim primarily to attract both aspiring as well as trained musicians from their own locality.Footnote 8 Band clubs are recognized as secular centres of significant importance; they are formally constituted associations with elected committees, statutes that regulate their work, premises which they own or rent, and paying members drawn from all walks of life. The premises of these clubs are normally centrally situated in the village or town square close to the main parish church, as if to give visible evidence of mutual collaboration in the organization of the local festa (the Maltese for ‘feast’) (see, for example, Figure 1). In fact, an important role of these bands is their participation in the outdoor celebrations of the annual festa in honour of the village patron and, in some places, a secondary saint (see Figure 2). In these celebrations, the parish church has the ultimate say. For instance, when excessive rivalries between competing band clubs in the same locality escalated into serious fighting, outdoor festa celebrations were cancelled by the church authorities, to the huge disappointment and frustration of the villagers for whom a festa was a much-awaited event.Footnote 9 This should be understood in the context of the strong influence that the Roman Catholic Church in Malta has always held over the predominantly Catholic Maltese population.Footnote 10
The premises of the St Philip Band Club in Żebbuġ (Malta). Photo: Philip Ciantar.
A Maltese wind band parading during a village festa. Photo: © mauritius images/agefotostock.
As its first purpose, this article aims to discuss how the cultural sympathies and affinities of Malta with Italy and, at the same time, British colonialism contributed to the musical growth of wind bands in Malta between the mid-nineteenth and the mid-twentieth century. Therefore, while this article contributes to the global study of wind bands, its focus on Italian and British cultural interactions could be particularly intriguing for scholars engaged in Anglo-Italian studies. The co-existence of the political and cultural conflict brought about by the two vying cultures in Malta and, paradoxically, their confluence transpires in this article as central to the processes of musical growth that allowed Maltese bands to progress and aim higher in their musical endeavours. Such cultural impact was discussed by Giovanna Iacovazzi in her 2012 book titled Un Bruit pieux: Bandas, musique et fête dans un village maltais (Zabbar). Footnote 11 Iacovazzi provides a historically contextualized discussion on how tensions and rivalries between band clubs sharing the same locality are rooted in Malta’s cultural and political bonds with both Italy and Britain. The present article will principally focus on how this cultural tension and confluence served the musical growth of the band tradition; musical growth is considered here as highly dependent on the transmission and flow of knowledge through various means. In consideration of this, the discussion will engage with applicable theories concerning the transmission of knowledge and practices through which it circulates. At this stage, it is worth saying that historical knowledge regarding the two cultures and the impact of these on Maltese wind bands has a broad circulation among the local banda community. Related narratives that attempt to explain this duality, some of which will feature in this work, have for instance been narrated to me since I was a child, within my own family background that has always cherished local wind band activity and has participated in it deeply over three generations. Other narratives were recounted to me at band clubs when I was myself involved as a musician in such bands for fifteen years. Like me, many other band enthusiasts and musicians are acquainted with this historical knowledge as transmitted and retold to them over a drink at a band club, as well as among families who, like mine, have strong connections with the clubs.
The situations that kindled musical growth, as described in the forthcoming discussion, will mirror other situations from the global history of wind bands as well as resting on those particular to Malta. As regards the former, this article aims to generate further reflections on musical growth particularly in small island states that, like Malta, have looked beyond their boundaries to reach higher ideals of music-making, in spite of their insularity and all the constraints this implies. Viewed more broadly, processes of musical growth develop in response to networks of cross-fertilization that connect the local with the global. To date, the significance of these two aspects as contributors to the development of Maltese wind bands and their music has not received the scholarly attention it merits. Hence, as its second purpose, this article aims to address that aspect, at the same time substantiating the possibility signalled by Will Straw when he noted that ‘musical life has always been characterized by complex patterns of cross-fertilization and cultural hybridity’.Footnote 12
The global study of wind bands and brass bands has, in most cases, drawn attention to the complex patterns suggested by Straw. In most of these studies, transculturation, even if not directly referred to, emerges as vital for local bands to grow and adapt themselves to meet broader expectations. For instance, Trevor Herbert notes that ‘the major influence on British military bands came from Germany, which preceded Britain in the instigation of large-scale groups to replace the smaller wind bands that imitated the Harmoniemusik formations prevailing in some of the regiments’.Footnote 13 Conversely, he also notes the impact of the British military model on banding in the United States, in particular the performance of the Band of the Grenadier Guards at the Boston International Peace Festival in 1872. This influence was mainly demonstrated in the expansion of repertoire and instrumentation.Footnote 14 Other examples of influences on local banding emerged from late nineteenth-century Japan, when foreign band directors employed by the government there, as well as Japanese military musicians who had studied in Europe, elevated the standards of band performances and ‘contributed to [their] diversification through new compositions and arrangements of existing works for band’.Footnote 15 In addition to these, and perhaps more akin to the situation in Malta, one may also mention the impact of British military music on the tradition of the philharmonic bands on the Greek island of Corfu that, like the tradition in Malta, can be traced back to when Corfu was a British protectorate in the nineteenth century.Footnote 16 The discussion that follows, apart from bringing together the transmission of knowledge with transculturation, will complement and illustrate further Philip Bohlman’s credo that ‘music multiplies and enriches the stories about the nation’s past’.Footnote 17
In line with the above aims, the present study will commence by outlining some of the essential aspects of Malta’s British colonial past and the island’s cultural connections with neighbouring Italy. This serves as a basis for the discussion in the subsequent sections, which will further explore how these bands developed over time; eventually, this development gave rise to distinct repertoires and sonic trajectories. Both of these attest to the history of such progress as much as to the political and cultural rifts of the past that are still evoked in the present. The discussion will then focus on the formation of wind bands in Malta, with special attention to how these grew from small wandering ensembles to bigger bands. Furthermore, this section will also shed light on the diverse circumstances that led to such growth, with particular attention on the role of a number of exiled Italian maestri in Malta and their roles in these clubs. From the colonial point of view, this section will provide examples of how British colonialism gave rise to models of military banding and how colonial events enhanced the involvement and hence presence of these wind bands in Malta’s social and cultural life. The final section will then focus on how the historicity of this progress, which implies a great deal of intermingling even with local communal festive expressions, still resonates today.
British Malta and Italian Culture
Malta’s geographic position at the centre of the Mediterranean Sea, between southern Italy and North Africa, has historically given it great strategic importance, as attested by the succession of powers which have ruled the island over the years. Malta has been ruled by the Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Romans, Greeks, Arabs, Normans, Aragonese, the Knights of St John, the French, and the British. In 1813, it saw its status change from a British protectorate to a de jure colony.Footnote 18 Throughout the British occupation, Malta’s harbours served as a way station for naval ships and the headquarters of the British Mediterranean Fleet, in particular for operations in the Mediterranean and North Africa. Even though in World War I Malta was not directly involved in the fighting, the island became an important naval and aviation base, a central dockyard, a prisoner-of-war camp, and a provider of military manpower, as well as a Mediterranean hub for the provision of medical assistance and treatment for thousands of sick and wounded soldiers.Footnote 19 Fast-forwarding the historical timeline, Malta also played an important role in World War II as it was used as a base for Royal Navy ships and RAF aircraft. Indeed, ‘the British interest in Malta was primarily as a naval base’.Footnote 20 As such, in World War II, Malta was bombed so extensively by the Axis forces, especially by the Italian Fascists, that it was considered one of the most severely damaged places in Europe.
The political history of Malta throughout the British colonial period passed through several upheavals mainly caused, on the one hand, by the tension arising out of the social, economic, and political needs of the Maltese and, on the other hand, by the interests of the British Crown. Consequently, this resulted in the formation of local networks of opposition that over time grew into political parties that further kindled the thirst for liberation and led to independence. Malta gained independence in September 1964, with the Queen remaining the head of state, while some strategic places on the island remained occupied by the British military. Nevertheless, the 1964 independence constitution recognized Maltese as the official and national language of Malta, with English as the second official language. Ten years after independence, in 1974, Malta became a republic, with its own president as the head of state. Eventually, the remaining British troops present on the island withdrew completely in 1979. Malta has been a member state of the Commonwealth of Nations and the United Nations since independence and joined the European Union in 2004.
Due to its geographical proximity to Italy, especially to the neighbouring island of Sicily, Malta has always had strong cultural and commercial ties with that country.Footnote 21 The constant close ties with Sicily in particular are attested, among others, in the Maltese language, which is a Semitic language with a Romance (Sicilian and Italian) superstratum. These links with Italy are also extant in the artistic spheres, as documented, for instance, in the history of Maltese art music. The early history of music in Malta refers to Italian cantors who were active in the churches of Malta in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.Footnote 22 Moreover, in the sixteenth century, the Maltese Catholic Church assisted promising young Maltese musicians to further their musical studies in Italian conservatoires (such as those in Palermo and Naples). After finishing their studies abroad, these students were expected to return to Malta to serve as maestri di capella in local cathedrals and churches.Footnote 23 In this regard, from the seventeenth century, more of these trained Maltese musicians replaced the Italian maestri di capella who were still serving in Malta at that time.Footnote 24 These cultural ties were further enhanced in the nineteenth century, when, as has already been noted, Malta served as a refuge for hundreds of Italian exiles who fled the political turbulence caused by Italy’s unification. Many of these exiles were members of the intelligentsia, journalists and poets. Their presence in Malta contributed greatly to the cultural life of the island, as evidenced by the private schools that they set up and the convening of literary groups where poems were recited.Footnote 25 Furthermore, through their presence on the island, these exiles nurtured the spirit for civic and cultural association.Footnote 26
It was towards the end of the nineteenth century up until the mid-twentieth century when the debate on whether English or Italian should take precedence as Malta’s institutional language led to rifts between Maltese people favouring one or the other. When referring to this, the Maltese historian Henry Frendo notes that ‘until 1880, Italian was the language of education from primary school to university, while Maltese languished’.Footnote 27 For a long time, stretching back to before the British presence in Malta, Italian was the language used in the law courts, the Roman Catholic curia, in commerce, journalism, and among the literati.Footnote 28 In the nineteenth century, this language question was taken up by the local political parties: while the anti-reformist Partito Democratico Nazionalista promoted italianità, that is, ‘linguistic and cultural affiliation with Italy’, the Constitutional Party, led by Sir Gerald Strickland, pushed for the prominence of English.Footnote 29 Strickland ‘was fervently pro-British and [an] ardent imperialist, intent on his mission of anglicising the Maltese’.Footnote 30 Despite this linguistic controversy and the political divisions it caused, both languages were used in various instances of everyday Maltese life, as illustrated by Frendo:
If you went to the opera your libretto would almost invariably be in Italian, as would your missal, and prayer book, unless it was in Latin […] But if you had to make contact with the government or any of the British service establishments, which still dominated the economy, you would have recourse to English. Traces of such a mixed cultural baggage were discernible in everyday parlance in the 1950s, if not later, and even overlapped into Maltese. In the meantime, the Maltese on radio since the mid-1930s increased, and the Maltese press grew, but until 1940 you still had one daily in Italian (Malta) and another in English (The Times of Malta).Footnote 31
Paralleling this language issue and the concurrent use of both languages, Maltese and Italian maestri active in Malta at that time composed odes praising England but with Italian lyrics, such as ‘Viva l’Inghilterra’ (‘Viva England’) and ‘Inghilterra per sempre’ (‘England Forever’).Footnote 32 Both odes were premiered at the then Royal Malta Opera House during gala concerts in honour of newly installed British governors to Malta. Eventually, as more and more Maltese people learned English as the language of the colonialist, the exclusivity of Italian lessened, especially as Malta entered into war with the Axis powers in World War II.
Band Clubs: Formations, Encounters, and Growth
From their beginning, bands in Malta adopted a military-like set-up, or, put differently, British and other foreign military bands stationed in Malta served as a model for how these newly founded bands should look and sound. Military bands parading and expressing their superiority were seen by the local populace, and at the same time articulated the sound of technology as projected from their sophisticated musical instruments. When referring to the dissemination of military bands across the world as part of the European colonial project, Katherine Brucher and Suzel Ana Reily cite Rob Boonzajer Flaes’s notion of the European military band as a metaphor for European colonialism, and his claim that ‘such ensembles were dispatched to the colonies with the explicit aim of promoting a sense of amazement among the “natives”’.Footnote 33 Their ‘“terrible beauty” was able to unite, in a single formula, a clear hierarchy and labour structure, an orderly portrayal of power and military might, and dazzling modern technology in the form of bright, indestructible musical instruments’.Footnote 34 The military band style and its associated signification of power have even fused into the musical realm of colonized populations. Gregory D. Booth, for instance, relates the history of Indian wedding brass bands to British military music and to military-style bands as displays of power and prestige among colonial-era Indian nobles.Footnote 35 In a somewhat contrasting position to this, the military model adopted by early Maltese wind bands was very much in line with the spirit of the Orphéon movement that spread extensively in Europe between the 1850s and World War II. The Orphéon ideal considered bands with military-like attire as ‘harmonious soldiers of democracy’, asserting their love for order and social peace.Footnote 36 In line with the Orphéon spirit, Maltese band clubs provided free tuition to all students who wanted to learn an instrument; they even provided them with the free leasing of instruments to play with their band and others.Footnote 37
Actually, what was taking place in Malta in this domain echoed practices adopted in other parts of the world, such as in the Brazilian bandas de musica, which started to adopt military-like band practices following the Paraguayan War (1864–70).Footnote 38 In the Brazilian case, such practices became quite appealing both to local politicians, as they ‘drew attention to their political roles and ambitions’, and to the clergy, ‘since military practices gave the band an aura of discipline and respectability coherent with their ideals’.Footnote 39 Perceived broadly, early wind bands in Malta were active participants in this ‘global order’. This sense of discipline embraced by these early bands, and the military-like performance practices they adopted, became a benchmark for good banding. In line with these practices, the first formally organized wind bands in Malta marched in a military fashion playing on band instruments of international brands of the time, such as Boosey & Co, Cazzani, Jérome Thibouville-Lamy, W. Stowassers Söhne, and Pélisson Frères et Cie,Footnote 40 and dressed in second-hand military uniforms.Footnote 41 They also played foreign military marches, such as the ‘Royal de la Marine’ by the French composer Charles-Édouard Lefebvre (1843–1917) and the ‘La ritirata italiana’ by the Austrian composer Carl Wilhelm Drescher (1850–1925). Available music from that time suggests that some of this music was hand-copied from scores circulating locally, while other pieces appeared as printed sheet music. In all this, Maltese bandsmen may have felt more valued and participative in a colonial context quite akin, perhaps, to how Filipino brass band musicians felt under US colonialists following centuries of Spanish rule:Footnote 42
Brass band music in the Philippines shared the musical language of the colonizer and as such represented a familiar, pleasureable, and congenial exchange between Filipinos and Americans, momentarily relieving social tensions during the Philippine–American War and highlighting the benefits of benevolent assimilation in the early years of US rule. For Filipinos, military bands established by the US in the Philippines provided the space for band musicians to see themselves as valued, indispensable participants in the new colonial context, as they had been for centuries under Spanish rule.Footnote 43
Applied to the Maltese context, similar sentiments of value and participation could have been fostered further by the recruitment of local bandsmen into the Royal Malta Artillery (RMA) Band, which was set up in 1890. In time, the RMA Band became quite active in Malta’s cultural life, especially through its involvement in local public celebrations marking royal births, weddings, coronations, jubilees, deaths, and monarchical visits to Malta.Footnote 44 Both its status as a top-notch band and, by implication, that of its musicians grew considerably in the eyes of the local band community. This resulted in Maltese RMA musicians being entrusted with the musical direction of newly established wind bands. The involvement of local RMA musicians in the musical direction of these bands became more common as the presence of exiled Italian maestri serving in Malta began to dwindle further during the mid-twentieth century.
The setting-up of the first wind bands in Malta had occurred at the same time as the island was hosting more Italian expatriates, including maestri who hailed from the banda tradition. Through their involvement in Maltese bands, these maestri found a means by which they could continue with their musical activity in their host country. Some of them, as already indicated, were hired as musical directors by the Maltese bands and worked assiduously to establish proper band structures and good teaching practices modelled on those at home. They also contributed to the local wind band repertoire by composing festive and funeral marches, arranging orchestral works and operatic selections for wind bands, and composing hymns in honour of patron saints venerated in Maltese towns and villages. Band aficionados also claim that it was during the presence of these maestri in Malta that funeral marches from the Italian band repertory were introduced; one such example is the funeral march ‘Una lagrima sulla tomba di mia madre’ by the Sicilian composer Amedeo Vella (1839–1923), which remains popular in both Italy and Malta.Footnote 45 Most of these works are still housed in the music archives of these clubs and are even performed from what some archivists allege to be the original calligraphy of the composer. The compositions produced in Malta by these Italians greatly supplemented the rather limited repertoire performed earlier by these bands, which was mainly made up of locally composed polkas, contradanzas, and waltzes, among others.Footnote 46 The arrangements of orchestral works and operatic selections produced by the maestri provided the local populace with the opportunity to listen to and experience in their own town and village squares the music most associated with high social order as performed at the Royal Malta Opera House in the capital, Valletta, which was destroyed through direct aerial bombardment in World War II.
From their beginning, Maltese band clubs were embroiled in the political conflict described previously. The allegiances of these clubs to one or the other of the two cultures is evident even in the names they adopted. Some were named after British monarchs, such as the King’s Own Band Club, the Prince of Wales Own Band Club, the Queen’s Own Band Club, the Queen Victoria Band Club, the Duke of Connaught Band Club, the Imperial Band Club, and the Duke of Edinburgh Band Club. These contrast with others which sympathized with Italy and its culture, such as the Società Filarmonica Nazionale ‘La Valette’, the Società Filarmonica La Vittoria, the Società Filarmonica Vilhena, and the Società Filarmonica Rohan. In spite of this division, one notes instances where clubs with a strong allegiance to Britishness, as visually expressed in the inclusion of the British imperial lion in their emblem, still adopted Italian names.Footnote 47 Furthermore, such convergence was also expressed in bands with Italian sympathies participating in celebrations commemorating royal events. Citing reports in the Daily Malta Chronicle of 1 February 1901 and 17 March 1901, Rob. Mifsud Bonnici provides an example of such situations; he notes, for instance, that on Sunday 30 January 1901, the Società Filarmonica Nazionale ‘La Valette’ performed a programme of funeral marches in Valletta in honour of Queen Victoria following her death a few days earlier.Footnote 48 Instances such as these attest not only to the confluence that existed in this regard but also to the involvement of these bands in Malta’s colonial life and in the collective expression of national sentiments.
From the earliest years of their foundation, apart from participating in local patron saint feasts, Maltese bands undertook concert tours abroad. They performed in nearby Sicily and in northern Italy, as well as in other countries where there were Maltese communities, such as Tunisia and Algeria. It is reported, for example, that in 1875 the Queen’s Own Band Club sailed to Catania in Sicily to perform there. This was followed by other concert tours by the same band in 1903 in Floridia and three years later to Syracuse (both in Sicily).Footnote 49 Similarly, between 1891 and 1928, the Società Filarmonica Nazionale ‘La Valette’ toured on several occasions to perform in Sicily, northern Italy, Tunisia, and Algeria.Footnote 50 It is understood that the visits to Italy, especially to Sicily, made it more possible for these bands to establish new contacts with their Italian counterparts and bring back with them other models of band playing that they could put into practice locally. Moreover, these experiences abroad encouraged the growth of the Maltese festa tradition by facilitating the adoption and assimilation of imported ideas. In fact, patron saints’ feasts in Malta closely resemble those in Sicily in terms of structure, band participation, outdoor decorations, and festive band repertoire. Also, ‘like Italy, Malta developed a strong tradition of lay confraternities that operated as trade guilds and organized saint’s feasts’.Footnote 51
Between the mid-nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century, Maltese bands and their respective clubs were getting more involved in village festa celebrations, and hence models from nearby Sicily that helped them discover how they could fit into these communal celebrations and forge them to local appeal served the purpose well. This matches Tullia Magrini’s assertion that peoples of the Mediterranean ‘exchanged goods, studied the artworks and the monuments of neighbouring communities, spread religions, and developed the most diverse syncretisms’.Footnote 52 Certainly, the mobility of people within the region, for diverse reasons ranging from business to concert tours, was pivotal for such fusions not only to occur but, moreover, to multiply into other syncretisms. In the case of the Maltese wind bands, sounds, practices, and festa celebratory models from neighbouring Sicily encountered the sonorities of military sounds and practices already circulating on the island, and eventually merged into local customs to meet new celebratory demands and aspirations. Over time, Maltese wind bands flourished and gained more prominence not only in festa celebrations but also in other communal events such as, as already noted, through their participation in official visits by British governors and other dignitaries to villages or towns. Presumably, such events implied an ever more diverse band repertoire to match the spirit and the particular scope of these occasions.
Despite the continued influence of British military bands, the presence of Italian maestri directing these bands brought the wind band activity in Malta closer to that of Italy. Supporting all this was the participation of local bandsmen, members of the RMA band who, when allowed, performed with these bands. The presence of Italian maestri in Malta served to generate further developments among these bands that allowed them to be on a par with what was happening at that time in the European wind band domain, especially in Italy. A notable example is the service provided to the Società Filarmonica Nazionale ‘La Valette’ by a series of Italian maestri who directed this band between 1900 and 1935.Footnote 53 These included Gregorio Lucia, who directed the band between 1900 and 1910, Giuseppe Vitaliti between 1910 and 1919, Ettore Mattioli in 1920 and 1921, and Cardenio Botti, who served the band for twelve years between 1923 and 1935.Footnote 54 It is worth noting here that the time between Mattioli and Botti was filled for a few months by the renowned bandmaster of the time Alessandro Vessella (1860–1929). When referring to the contribution of Vessella to the development of wind bands in Italy, Armin Suppan notes that this bandmaster, who served as the director of the Banda municipale di Roma from 1885 to 1924, standardized the scoring of small, medium, and large bands, so much so that from the 1920s most Italian wind bands followed his model in scoring and repertory.Footnote 55 In this regard, Elisa Koehler observes that Vessella’s instrumentation was characterized by a unifying concept of homogeneous families of instruments that would include, for example, a full clarinet family, a complete saxhorn (flicorni, or conical brass) family, and a full set of saxophones.Footnote 56 This set-up ensured that only auxiliary instruments extended into extreme registers, allowing the middle instruments to function within their most ideal ranges, thereby enhancing the ensemble’s balance, blend, and intonation.Footnote 57 In sum, Vessella’s reforms had a significant impact in two key ways: firstly, they ensured that despite the varying sizes, the three band sizes referred to by Suppan maintained a consistent balance in timbre and register. Secondly, the restructuring provided composers and transcribers with a standardized instrumentation to write for.Footnote 58
During his work with the Società Filarmonica Nazionale ‘La Valette’ in 1922, Vessella introduced a new instrumentation for the band in line with his reforms. It seems that Vessella applied his principles to the new instrumentation of the Valletta band. In fact, in a 1959 concise history of the Società Filarmonica Nazionale ‘La Valette’, Mifsud Bonnici notes that Vessella transformed the sound of the band into one akin to an orchestra, with intriguing effects that had never before been achieved by a band but only by large, formal orchestras.Footnote 59 Such instrumentation was employed by Vessella in the transcriptions of classical and operatic music that he arranged for and/or performed with the Società Filarmonica Nazionale ‘La Valette’; these scores are still available in the musical archive of the band.Footnote 60 A comparison of the instrumentation in two available scores, one by Giuseppe Vitaliti composed in 1913 (see Figure 3a) and another by Alessandro Vessella produced and conducted by him in Italy in 1896 (see Figure 3b), reveals both similarities and differences. A common feature in both scores, and an indication that Maltese band instrumentation was modelled after the Italian banda, is the inclusion of flugelhorns (flicorni) in different ranges and the use of the entire clarinet family. Koehler considers both instruments hallmarks of Italian band instrumentation.Footnote 61 The substitution of the low trumpet in E♭ with the B♭ bass trumpet in Vessella’s instrumentation aligns with his own recommendation that ‘the large trumpets pitched in low E♭ be replaced by B♭ bass trumpets’.Footnote 62 Such a substitution was also adopted by Cardenio Botti (see Figure 3c) when he took over the musical direction of the same band after Vessella left Malta in 1922. It was Vessella who recommended his former student Botti to come to Malta and take over the musical direction of the band.Footnote 63
The instrumentation for Giuseppe Vitaliti’s composition Forti: Marcia per banda (1913). Photo: Società Filarmonica Nazionale ‘La Valette’, used with permission.
The instrumentation for Alessando Vessella’s composition Corteo nuziale (1896). Photo: Società Filarmonica Nazionale ‘La Valette’, used with permission.
The instrumentation for Cardenio Botti’s composition Venerdì Santo: Marcia funebre (1931). Photo: Società Filarmonica Nazionale ‘La Valette’, used with permission.
In Malta, Botti followed in the footsteps of his master by expanding the repertoire of the band he was entrusted with, through additional arrangements of orchestral and operatic works as well as the composition of festive and funeral marches. He also organized a good teaching set-up and dedicated himself to seeing his band grow in the quality of its performances.Footnote 64 Botti served as bandmaster of this band for twelve years until, in 1935, he was expelled from Malta under suspicion of espionage for the Italian Fascists.Footnote 65 The practices introduced by these maestri spread to other local band clubs that aspired to grow and become musical institutions of prestige in their respective localities. Such musical efforts went beyond cultural and, by extension, political allegiances. An example that corroborates this lies with the King’s Own Band of Valletta, which was pro-British but had a conductor from Trieste, Aurelio Doncich.Footnote 66 Another example is the Italian conductor Raffaele Ricci, who between 1897 and 1904 was bandmaster of the British-leaning Duke of York’s Own Band of Vittoriosa (see Figure 4); after the death of Queen Victoria in 1901, the band took the name Prince of Wales Own Band.Footnote 67 It was Ricci who conducted this band in April 1903 when it took part in the events in honour of King Edward VII’s visit to Malta.
The Prince of Wales Own Band of Vittoriosa (Malta) with its bandmaster Raffaele Ricci (second row, centre). Photo: Prince of Wales Own Band, used with permission.
Between the mid-nineteenth and the mid-twentieth century, wind bands in Malta displayed unprecedented development that in part resulted from the embracing of innovation and the seizing of opportunities for transcultural encounters, which in themselves led to further cross-fertilization and hybridity. Over the years, Maltese bands overcame the challenges of insularity and transformed both local and international politics into sources for further creativity and development. In addition, geographical proximity facilitated further the flow of musical knowledge, practices, and ideas as well as cultural material and human resources. Theories of innovation highlight the value of geographical proximity in the transmission of tacit knowledge; David Oragui defines tacit knowledge as ‘the knowledge, skills, and abilities an individual gains through experience that is often difficult to put into words or otherwise communicate’.Footnote 68 This contrasts with explicit (or codified) knowledge found in books and other documents and which, for sure, served Maltese wind bands as well. Commenting on the link between proximity, the transmission of tacit knowledge, and innovation, Natalia Irena Gust-Bardon notes that ‘tacit knowledge can be shared easier when actors of the innovation process are in appropriate distance to each other’.Footnote 69 This applies neatly to what occurred in the domain of wind band music in Malta. In their urge to expand and gain more prominence in the island’s social and cultural life, wind bands in Malta grew from groups of wandering musicians to fully fledged musical institutions. In the course of this, they extracted from the world around all that they considered as suitable to fitting their particular needs, including, most evidently, further access to tacit knowledge through transcultural encounters as eased by geographical proximity, and the international as well as local political situation of that time, including the colonial state of the country under the British Crown.
Colonialism emerges here as an equally expedient contributor to growth and to processes of extraction. In this sense, colonialism transpires both as a state of subordination and domination as much as an experience with the potential to propose and even forge zones of cultural encounter and transcultural activity. Referring to the latter aspect, Samantha Dieckmann and Jane W. Davidson cite Mary Louise Pratt when discussing the in-between spaces in colonial encounters and how this contests the discourse that such contact zones are exclusively sites of domination and subordination.Footnote 70 They note Pratt’s perspective when contending ‘that marginal groups may select from the materials emanating from the dominant culture, adopting and appropriating chosen elements for their own purposes’.Footnote 71 Apart from adopting and appropriating applicable festa practices from nearby Italy and, at the same time, capitalizing on tacit knowledge, Maltese bands extracted models and sonorities from the military culture of the colonialist in a kind of ‘benevolent assimilation’ similar to what Mary Talusan notes in the case of the Filipino musicians mentioned previously.Footnote 72 Nevertheless, all this intensified further processes of syncretism in the Maltese banding of the time.
Syncretic Resonances
As noted previously, Italian composers like Botti and others who were musically active in Malta extended the repertoire of these bands considerably. Festive marches by Botti still performed and loved by many band enthusiasts today include ‘Inno Marcia Fior del Carmelo’, ‘Marcia San Paolo no. 3’, ‘Marcia San Paolo no. 5’, and many others dispersed all over Malta. All these are reminiscent of Italian patriotic songs, marches, and hymns, with fanfares evoking militarism. In the marches just mentioned, these emerge in the same piece, alongside lighter festive musical gestures suggesting the enjoyment and amusement most fitting to communal celebrations such as the festa. Apart from this celebratory repertoire, Italian maestri also composed funeral marches, such as ‘Cipresso’ by Angelo Melilli, who lived in Malta between 1898 and 1912.Footnote 73 This and other funeral marches composed by local composers are performed during Good Friday pageants and at the opening ceremonies of Last Supper displays held annually in various locations around Malta, as well as during cortèges accompanying the funerals of club members.
Other works representing a legacy from this period and which are still central to the Maltese band repertory are the hymn-cantatas honouring village patron saints. These large-scale works, which normally take half an hour or so to perform, each known locally as L-Innu l-Kbir (‘The Grand Hymn’), merge bel canto singing with band playing. One example is the Inno a San Filippo (1906) by Melilli, which is played by the St Philip Band Club of Żebbuġ. Examples like this grand hymn and others were in line with music performed in major centres of the nineteenth century, when bands were playing an important role in the dissemination of music of all kinds, besides marches.Footnote 74 Compositions like those of Botti and Melilli were performed locally in the presence of British governors as well as during monarchic visits to Malta; they continued to be performed even after World War II when, as has already been pointed out, the English language and Britishness gained more prominence in Maltese daily life.
Festive marches by the Italian maestri are still performed, alongside others composed more lately by Maltese composers who were inspired by events in British history, such as the victory of the Allies over the Axis powers in 1945 and the ascent of the late Queen Elizabeth II to the throne in 1953. These mid-twentieth-century Maltese composers adopted the rhythms and musical gestures of military music and balanced them, as was done before by their Italian predecessors, with lighter sonorities to fit a festa ambience. This has led to a flourishing local repertory of festive marches, all aiming at kindling a marċ brijjuż Malti (a Maltese gaiety march appropriate to festa celebrations), as a well-loved Maltese march is described by band aficionados. A leading Maltese composer who contributed to the shaping of such marches was Vincenzo Ciappara (1890–1979) (see Figure 5), known locally as the ‘King of Maltese Marches’.Footnote 75 Interlocutors claim that Ciappara’s influence on the ‘Maltese march’ was extensive, in the sense that his style was so mimicked by other local composers that his marches became the model for what a Maltese march ‘should sound like’. These claims match those found by Simon Farrugia in the course of his research on continuity and change in Maltese wind bands.Footnote 76 When referring to Ciappara’s influence on local composers, Farrugia claims that his interviewees told him that several local band composers used to take their newly composed marches to Ciappara for him to advise them on possible improvements; sometimes they were so badly composed that Ciappara recomposed them afresh. Ciappara’s style was thus not only adopted but actually imprinted through his direct intervention. On how these marches sounded ‘popularly local’, Farrugia refers to statements made by his sources saying that occasionally, Ciappara asked band enthusiasts commissioning him to whistle a tune, which he would eventually transform into a march, making it literally come ‘from the people’s mouths’.Footnote 77 Even if anecdotes like these aim to justify Ciappara’s centrality in the composition of Maltese marches, it is generally unclear whether the attribution of him as the ‘King of Maltese Marches’ is due to his stylistic impact or to the large number of marches he composed, the number of which, he admitted in an interview on local radio in the mid-1970s, he could not remember.Footnote 78
Vincenzo Ciappara (1890–1979). Photo: St Philip Band Club, used with permission.
Regarding stylistic impact, Ciappara stands out locally as a composer with a strong ability in writing marches that, as noted earlier, merge the gestures of military marches with lighter sonorities more appropriate to festa. He is known by many in the banda community as the one who toned down the militancy in early Maltese festive marches. In relation to this, in marches such as ‘Victory’, which Ciappara composed following the victory of the Allies in World War II, the composer forges a clever balance between, on the one hand, the military tone of the introduction (see Example 1a) and the two subsequent strains (see Examples 1b and 1c) and, on the other hand, the amusing vein generated by the final trio section (see Example 2).Footnote 79 While the introduction and the two strains build on fanfares, the octave gravity in the low brass, and bugle-like calls on the trumpets, the trio is less militaristic, and hence aims for more cheerfulness through the employment of contrasting short calls and responses in the low and high sections of the band, with the responses stretched even further onto the cymbals to supplement the amusement. Delving further into the aesthetics of this march, one senses a kind of expectation for a lighter (or festive) tone, building up from the introduction and the strains; the expectation is fulfilled in the catchy and cheery trio. It is worth noting that many band enthusiasts consider the trio section in Maltese marches the most awaited section of a festa march, often matching words to it to tease a rival band club.
The introduction (in reduced score) of Vincenzo Ciappara’s ‘Victory’.
The first strain (in reduced score) of Vincenzo Ciappara’s ‘Victory’.
The second strain (in reduced score) of Vincenzo Ciappara’s ‘Victory’.
The trio (in reduced score) of Vincenzo Ciappara’s ‘Victory’.
Some Maltese towns and villages have a second band club, and sometimes even a third. On most occasions, internal disagreements between members in the parent club caused the dissenting members to leave and establish a new one. Such divisions could have resulted ‘from ambition or pique but could just as much have been caused by social, political, or religious factors, such as the institution of a second feast’.Footnote 80 Furthermore, rivalries sometimes arose among members of the same club, with some sympathizing with local political parties aligned with Italy and others inclined towards the British Crown. Echoes of these party allegiances, rooted in the cultural division just described, resumed even in the post-independence era through Malta’s main political parties, the Partit Laburista (Labour Party), historically tied to the anglophile Constitutional Party, and the Partit Nazzjonalista (Nationalist Party), with roots in the Partito Democratico Nazionalista. Up to the present, rivalries between band clubs in the same locality are expressed in all aspects of a festa, including in the matching of words, sometimes even vulgar ones, to catchy trio tunes.Footnote 81 The trio of ‘Victory’ has in some instances served this competing intent well.
In light of the fact that music is not an autonomous experience, a marċ brijjuż Malti such as ‘Victory’ goes beyond the music itself and the historicity that it enacts.Footnote 82 Indeed, it calls for a serious consideration of the overall festa ambience that this music embodies, such as the clamour of the people gathered in the village square on festa days, the church bells tolling, the street cries of nougat vendors, and the noise of aerial fireworks that sometimes outdo even the sound of the band. All this emerges as ‘an almost inherent extra-musicality’Footnote 83 that, together with the music itself, makes a marċ brijjuż Malti embody the local yet at the same time celebrates the present and bonds with the past. This intriguing collective sonority was even featured in a recent radio advert promoting a local property agency, Sensara Malta. In this jingle, a band march is heard fading into the archetypical sounds of a festa, such as the noise of fireworks, the cries of nougat vendors, and other sonorities from Malta’s soundscape, such as the street cries of bigilla (a traditional Maltese bean dip) vendors and cars honking, evoking the modern lifestyle. The overall effect embodies the local and, by implication, the intimacy essential for a friendly business.Footnote 84 Relating all this to what Georgina Born notes when referring to the mediating role of music in listening, the listener to a marċ brijjuż Malti is ‘entangled in a musical assemblage’ made up of ‘a series or network of relations between musical sounds, human and other subjects, practices, performances, cosmologies, discourses and representations, technologies, spaces, and social relations’.Footnote 85 All this interrelates with and embellishes historical narratives, as noted by Bohlman, mentioned above, at the same time reaffirming the paradoxical role music can play at uniting and at the same time dividing the ‘us’ from the ‘them’, ‘insiders’ from ‘outsiders’, and ‘ours’ from ‘theirs’. Through all this, music reaffirms its role as a central ‘participant in the sociopolitical changes we call history’ with, at the same time, an inherent potential to ‘represent history in different ways’.Footnote 86
Conclusion
In the urge to develop and to surmount all kinds of limitations, experiences such as those of Maltese wind bands exemplify ways by which musical traditions in colonized small-island countries like Malta have exploited a range of the resources at hand to reach higher transnational ideals of music-making, while making their tradition ever more central and sustainable within their community. The need to look at higher models of music-making seemed essential for these bands in their aspiration to grow. This should be understood in light of the fact that wind band music in Malta lived alongside the ‘highbrow’ music produced at the Royal Malta Opera House and the high prestige this held in Maltese cultural life of that time. Additionally, the accomplished foreign military bands marching through Maltese streets helped ingrain the belief that whatever is ‘foreign’ is superior and hence should be embraced as a model to follow. All this occurred at the same time that political and cultural tensions kindled rifts but also enabled processes of creativity that resulted in the creation of new compositions for local consumption, as well as the expansion of repertories, bigger bands in line with current international practices, and, above all, increased hybridity. Sonic markers of affinities with Italy and with military music merged in locally composed marches to boost consumption, reflect cultural confluences, and effectively recall history.
All this was possible through the transmission and diffusion of musical knowledge from diverse sources, whether through imitation or direct contact, locally offered or transculturally imported, and irrespective of political sympathies. In the context of constraints that ranged from limited opportunities for learning to a lack of human resources and geographical disconnection, the flow of knowledge knew no limits and in most cases was allowed to stream freely, especially when its value became ever more apparent and tangible to the community. Furthermore, the transmission of musical knowledge among Maltese wind bands was backed by the island’s proximity to Italy as much as by the international and local politics of the time. Consequently, these allowed syncretism to grow and to introduce new practices of music-making, at the same time nourishing confluence to balance tension, as perhaps demonstrated by Ciappara’s ‘Victory’ when understood within its social, political, and cultural network. All this is evoked and made audible whenever these bands perform for revellers, for whom, though, as in the case of the football supporters described at the beginning of this article, legacies from the past and all the implied processes these entailed might no longer hold the value and significance they once had, let alone being sensed in the music to which these same revellers jump and sing along during festa week.
Musical traditions like the one in question grow in order to serve their communities, from whom, conversely, they receive support to survive, including the collective recalling of the past and its reshaping in the present in a way that prompts one to question whether this is actually history or a different kind of present. The Maltese wind band tradition, as other world musical traditions, positioned itself very well in all this, and actually built on it so that it would remain relevant and able to regenerate its own sustainability. When viewed broadly, music emerges here both as an art able to mediate the local with the global and as a medium through which history and its recasting in the now meet sustainability and growth. This meeting area remains as fluid as ever and is strongly reliant on current world views and evolving events of many kinds, as much as on how musical knowledge flows, circulates, and is made audible in an attempt to evoke the past with all its tensions, convergences, and whatever results from both.
