Mounted band
The use of timpani, trumpets, and bugles in these bands played an important role in the middle of the 15th century, when they were deployed to the front lines to motivate the mounted cavalry in battle and in parade.
The Cyclophonica Bicycle[3] Orchestra, founded in Rio de Janeiro in 1999, is the only civilian professional mounted band in the Americas.
The group is directed by its founder Leonardo Fuks, an oboist, multi-instrumentalist and professor of music acoustics at Rio de Janeiro Federal University.
Only the Military Police of São Paulo State maintains a traditional small mounted band section.
All three of these bands whether mounted or dismounted feature cavalry trumpets, bugles, kettledrums and marching percussion, as well as other one-handed instruments.
It began this tradition in 2013 and became fully active in 2016, becoming Germany's first military-styled civilian mounted brass band.
Based in Apeldoorn, the band consists of reservists and part-time musicians who work on average 2 days a week.
Currently, there are only two civilian mounted bands in the world:[12] Crescendo and the Brazilian Cyclophonica Bicycle Orchestra.
Its military counterpart is the Fanfare Orchestra of the Royal Netherlands Army Cavalry, which can also play while mounted on bicycles and wearing uniforms of the 1940s.
In 2008, Sultan Qaboos bin Said al Said of Oman requested Kilmarnock-based McCallum Bagpipes design some specialized pipe tubes, due to the ones at the time having a history of leaving gaps in the pipers' teeth.
It was established in 1905 along with the formation of the regiment, was disbanded in 1987 and remained inactive until 2012, when it was reactivated by Ollanta Humala, the President of Peru.
It reports directly to the President as the official presidential mounted band with operational control under the commander of the 3rd Infantry Division (Army).
The National Republican Guard (GNR) maintains a mounted band, known in Portuguese as the Charanga a Cavalo.
In Russia, Mounted Bands (Russian: конный оркестр) existed in the Red Army in the early twentieth century.
Their history dates back to the era of the Russian Empire, majority being all-brass following Imperial German precendence.
[18] During the latter half of the Soviet Union, jubilee parades on Red Square in honor of October Revolution Day featured historical Bolshevik cavalry led by a mounted band with a drum major at the front.
[21] The band has been a participant in te Spasskaya Tower Military Music Festival and Tattoo[22] in Moscow and the Capital City Day celebrations in Kazakhstan.
Only the Spanish Royal Guard and the Civil Guard retain mounted bands (Banda de caballeria), which are very unique in this country that these are composed mainly of cavalry fanfare trumpets, which there are more similar in size to bugles but play differently owing to their historical role as signalling instruments for the cavalry and artillery in the Spanish Army and in the cavalry units of the Civil Guard and the current National Police Corps.
The United States Armed Forces does not currently have mounted bands in its ranks, but in the first 100 years of the country's existence, they were not uncommon.
This was partly due few band recruits knew how to ride a horse, and fewer still how to play a musical instrument.
Mounted bands in the United States Army were ultimately disbanded in the '30s and '40s as mechanized vehicles such as tanks replaced horses.
The Ohio-based 2nd Cavalry Brigade Band, made up of American Civil War re-enactors, played bugles and brass at its first public parade on May 29 and in 2022 completed a three day run, opening Fantasia at the Equine Affaire held in Columbus Ohio.
