This coming Sunday and also next Monday, brass players up and down the land will be using their instruments for ceremonial use, ushering in the two-minute silence with The Last Post and concluding it with Reveille (also known as Rouse). Traditionally it is played on a bugle but it will theoretically work on any brass instrument as the notes used in both are the five main partials created by using the mouthpiece without using any valves to adjust the pitch.

I had the notion that I might volunteer to play this if needed at our new church as I haven’t come across a resident brass player. I looked up the notes on the simple but informative Last Post MIDI file page and typed the scores into Musescore so I could transpose them into the Eb tuba version of the partials I am used to.

To be honest, I think I’ll keep quiet on the volunteering front this year. Tuba, which I’m most familiar with, sounds sonorous but rather low. I also dug out the marching band euphonium, also based on an Eb fundamental but an octave higher. The pitch is better but it looks like a ridiculously oversized trumpet and, although I was pleased to find that I can get all the notes, the different embouchure required means I wouldn’t be confident of getting them under pressure and I can feel myself getting tired even halfway through The Last Post. I’ve also got a trumpet but I think that would multiply the challenge I face playing the euphonium (small instrument – more air resistance).

I’ll keep the score on my stand this week. Even though discretion advises me that I’m not quite ready to offer up respectable versions in public, the two pieces will be an excellent and seasonally appropriate opportunity to refine my technique and, one of these years, perhaps I will be ready.