American March Music - Instrumentation

Instrumentation

A general instrumentation setup used originally for American marches would be very difficult to explain, as most bands were extremely varied in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As stated before, most of the standard march music was written for the composer's band. Whether that be the Sousa, Ringling Bros., or Gilmore, every band typically had marches written by their conductor in repertoire. With that said, most marches were also written in a very specific instrumentation. For example, many composers simply wrote a piano version of the march, and it was up to the publisher to arrange separate parts for concert band, orchestra, etc.