Fife in Opera
had a Drum-Major, ten drummers, a Fife-Major, and five fifers. Hogarth's famous picture of the March of the Guards, painted in December 1750, includes a drummer and fifer. The old fife calls are still preserved in the Guard regiments. In 1747 another Hanoverian was fife teacher in the first line regiment to adopt the fife—viz., the 19th Foot, popularly known as the Green Howards. Most of the drummers also played the fife. They were at first allowed only in the Grenadier company, and were paid by the officers. (Grose, Mil. Ant.) Fifers were also used in English cavalry regiments before the end of the eighteenth century.
The true fife, which was generally set in B♭, F, or C, was faulty in intonation; it disappeared about 1860, and its place was taken by small flutes of conical bore and fitted with keys. Prowse made a fife with eleven holes and no keys so late as 1825; I do not quite see how this could be fingered.
Handel, in his opera Almira (iii. 3), has a band of cymbals, drums, and fifes where Consalvo enters as Asia surrounded by lions. Meyerbeer, inFife in
Opera addition to the usual orchestra, has introduced a fife and drum band, and also a brass band (both on the stage), in his L'Etoile du Nord, all playing different tunes simultaneously: the effect is noisy but imposing. These are the only instances that I can recall of the introduction of the fife in orchestral or operatic music.[1]
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- ↑ The piccolo is used to imitate the fife in Macfarren's May Day.
