On stage are six young Mädchen, the trumpeters or Fanfarenbläser of the Damen-Trompeter-Corps „Alpenveilchen”, who stand at the ready and await their conductor's cue. Their trumpets have no valves and are actually long bugles complete with fanfare flags.
The Alpenveilchen Damen-Trompeter-Corps und Gesangs-Ensemble, or Ladies Trumpet Corps and Vocal Choir, were under the direction of J. Reinstadler, shown in this next postcard standing at the back with his baton and medals. His brass band and singers number 9 women and three men, as presumably Herr Reinstadler also sometimes played lead cornet. The musicians (except for the drummer) have rotary valve brass instruments and include an impressive bass helicon arranged in front on the floor. The young ladies wear the same uniform with a generous sash belt as in the first postcard but they sport a large white cap. The gentlemen are in formal evening dress minus the hat.
The postcard was sent on August 24, 1903 from Leipzig to someone in Eschenbach, Germany.
Herr Reinstadler produced another postcard with the Alpenveilchen ladies trumpet corps but economized with a cheap printer who used blue paper. The band here has only 11 musicians, 4 men and 7 women. Were they related? Brothers and sisters? Cousins? Perhaps married?
Unfortunately such questions will never have an answer.
This postcard was send from Markersdorf, Germany on Christmas Day, December 25, 1901, and postmarked at 6-7 in the evening.
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| Cyclamen purpurascens Source: Wikipedia |
The European Alpenveilchen (Cyclamen purpurascens) is the German name for the purple cyclamen, an alpine flower. Can you guess the color of the ladies uniform of the Alpenveilchen Damen-Trompeter-Corps?
This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday
where other ladies turn trumpets into bullets.
13 comments:
The hair styles on the top photo are all unusual and the same. I liked seeing those bands of the past.
Purple?
I very seldom see women with trumpets in a band. I enjoyed these photos of bands from a hundred years back.
Hazel
Great take on the theme : what a better world it would be if people always picked up musical instruments rather than guns and bullets.
Those are quite remarkable. I'm wondering at what sort of occasions they would be playing.
Fascinating photographs and I was especially taken with the hair styles in the first photo.
I’m picturing them now in that vivid clour. My daughter learned the trumpet as a girl and played in some youth orchestras. Sadly she did not continue.
The ladies in the first photo must have all gone to the same hairdresser ;-)
Those were huge sashes on some of those uniforms.
If the gowns were the same colour as that cyclamen they would have been really beautiful.
I was thinking that those cards reminded me of the "Twelve Days of Christmas" song and Christmas concerts, so it is fitting that the last card was actually sent on Christmas.
Those sashes do resemble aprons.
The colour must have been stunningly beautiful. And the hairstyles in the first photo are magnificent.
Agree with the others, how stunning those purple uniforms must have looked.
I have a cyclamen of exactly that colour in a pot which makes its way onto my kitchen window every autumn.
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