With my collected previous knowledge of wind instruments I felt myself to be called in this direction and saw at a glance that very soon I would achieve something special in this field!" This youthful recollection of Wilhelm Friedrich Wieprecht, later to become Berlin's "Director of all music choirs of the corps of guards" refers to 1825 when the 23-year-old royal qualified musician had just published his first compositional contributions towards a new, artistically worthy form of cavalry music. At that time military music was in the throes of a stormy development. A few years earlier, in 1817, King Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia has issued a cabinet order for a selected collection of approved marches to be printed for the first time, "in order to assist the authorities in the army in choosing good military music". This collection encouraged the compilation of a first, unified repertoire which, as the result of Prussia�s dominant position, was to form the basis of all subsequent German march music literature. A disadvantage of these first printed scores for practical use was that hardly one of the contemporary historic music corps could provide the necessary complement of instrumentalists. In this respect the tradition going back to the time when the oldest trumpet and oboe corps were founded, with their regional differences, became noticeable for its obstructive effects.

The diversity of individual developments gave rise to Wilhelm Wieprecht's desire "to be able to travel through all countries with a military music score under ones arm without worrying about whether the compositions could not be performed here or there without a new arrangement". Wieprecht reached this goal with incomparable perseverance. The musician's son, born 10th August, 1802 at Aschersleben, early in life enjoyed the benefits of a hard fatherly apprenticeship as town fife-player, which he complemented as from 1819 with studies at the Dresden conservatoire. He already became a city musician in 1820 in Leipzig and was a member of the city theatre and Gewandhaus orchestras. In 1824, as a royal qualified musician, he went to Berlin where, under the influence of Spontini, he devoted himself intensively to the orchestration of wind instruments. One day the young trombonist interrupted the "daily round" of rehearsals with the royal orchestra and during a walk followed the sounds of infantry music at the guards parade. It was then that his "heart took the firm decision to dedicate itself from now on exclusively to military music". The first two pieces on this recording are early compositions by the young musician, published as printed scores around 1825 by the Berlin music publisher Adolf Martin Schlesinger. The reproduction in the original scoring is thus a military music rarity of the first order (side 1, 1st and 2nd numbers). One can understand that Wieprecht's increased demands up the wind players immediately attracted attention and that very soon nothing stood in the path of a career in the military music field. Development of brass instruments and the invention of valve trumpets (since 1820) had led to epoch-making innovations in conventional orchestral settings, while Wieprecht's collaboration with instrument maker Johann Gottfried Moritz (1777-1840) resulted in further progress. The selection of marches on this record, all first recordings based on the original scores by Wilhelm Wieprecht, graphically reflect this development. In 1835 Wieprecht, following joint construction of the tuba with J. G. Moritz, succeeded in solving the old problem of unsatisfactory bass scoring in wind music. In 1843 he was finally appointed director of all "music choirs."

Wieprecht undertook extensive journeys to study the organisation of South German military music and the structure of wind bands on the Prussian pattern in Turkey and South America. This culminated in the famous ministerial decree of 2nd October, 1860 in which Wieprecht's standardized orchestra scoring for military bands,his "normal instrumental tableau", was declared to be binding. The classification into the three historical genres of cavalry, hunting and infantry music was, it is true, maintained, but the appropriate basic instrumentations (trumpeter corps, horn music etc.) were expanded as the case required into a kind of "universal score" by wood wind instruments, trombones and drums as far as the grand janissary scoring for the infantry. Wieprecht's goal was achieved: he was now able to unite the most varied corps of music for all special occasions. 1867 saw the climax of his efforts when, with two united Prussian guards corps of music, he received the first prize at the Paris World Exhibition in a musical competition. Wieprecht was the much acclaimed great man of military music. Liszt, Meyer-beer and many other prominent composers entrusted their works to him for wind orchestra arranging. The present first recording of a series of Wieprecht's significant compositions and march arrangements documents the enhanced demands made upon artistic march music some one and a half centuries ago, symbolized by the central figure of its actual initiator.

By Anton Gresbauer taken from a record cover