The 24-note melancholy bugle call known as "Taps" is thought to be a revision of a French bugle signal, called "Tattoo," that notified soldiers to cease an evening's drinking and return to their garrisons.
It was sounded an hour before the final bugle call to end the day by extinguishing fires and lights. The last five measures of "Tattoo" resemble "Taps."
The revision that gave us the present-day "Taps" was made during America's Civil War by Union General Daniel Adams Butterfield, heading a brigade camped at Harrison Landing, Virginia, near Richmond.
Up to that time, the U.S. Army's infantry call to end the day was the French final call, "L'Extinction des feux." General Butterfield decided the "lights out" music was too formal to signal the day's end.
One day in July 1862, he recalled the "Tattoo" music and hummed a version of it to an aide who wrote it down in music. Butterfield then asked the brigade bugler, Oliver W. Norton, to play the notes and, after listening, lengthened and shortened them while keeping his original melody.
He ordered Norton to play this new call at the end of each day thereafter, instead of the regulation call.
The music was heard and appreciated by other brigades, who asked for copies and adopted this bugle call. It was even adopted by Confederate buglers.
This music was made the official Army bugle call after the war, but was not given the name "Taps" until 1874.
The first time "Taps" was played at a military funeral may also have been in Virginia soon after Butterfield composed it.
Union Captain John Tidball, head of an artillery Battery, ordered it played for the burial of a cannoneer killed in action. Not wanting to reveal the Battery's position in the woods to the enemy nearby, Tidball substituted "Taps" for the traditional three rifle volleys fired over the grave.
"Taps" was also played at the funeral of Confederate Major General Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson ten months after it was composed.
"Taps" is now played by the military at burial and memorial services, to accompany the lowering of the flag, and to signal the "lights out" command at day's end.
