Volunteers, salvationists and committees: Consensus versus regulation in amateur Victorian brass bands

The article looks at three types of Victorian brass band organisations: the 'secular' brass band movement (that is, those bands for whom banding was a recreational and competitive activity), the bands of the '1859 Volunteers, ' and the bands of the Salvation Army. The focus is on the structures and p rocesses of control and regulation to which these bands were subject, and t he extent to which, largely through the demands of the contesting framework , the secular brass band became an example of consensus and self-government . It is suggested that this example became a point of reference for the oth er two spheres of banding activity. Volunteer bands were drawn from the wid er band movement, and their experience of self-regulation made it impossibl e for them to accept military discipline. The Salvation Army owed the succe ss of its mission to a strict, military-style central control, and the self -government of the secular brass band was seen by leading Salvationists as a threat to be guarded against.