Background
A principal American composer of marching music, he was born in Bowdoinham, Maine and seldom left his native state during his lifetime, dying in Portland.
A principal American composer of marching music, he was born in Bowdoinham, Maine and seldom left his native state during his lifetime, dying in Portland.
His music though has traveled around the world. He is particularly popular in the United Kingdom, so much so that many lovers of brass band music there mistakenly imagine that Hall is an English composer. His celebrated march "Death or Glory", written in 1895 and dedicated to the Tenth Regiment Band in Albany, New York, is a well-known staple of brass band concerts and competitions all over the United Kingdom. Hall was famous during his lifetime as a particularly fine player on the cornet and served for a time as conductor of the Bangor Band.
As soloist, conductor, composer and teacher, Hall is still remembered in Maine.
The last Saturday in June every year is officially Robert Browne Hall Day in the State of Maine. Having suffered a stroke in 1902 from which he never recovered, he died in poverty in Portland as a result of nephritis five years later and was buried in Evergreen Cemetery in Richmond, Maine.
His widow sold the manuscripts of many compositions. Unscrupulous publishers assembled and realized from fragments works they passed off as genuine Hall compositions.
He left over a hundred marches and other compositions, including such classics as:
Officer of the Day March
Independentia March
New Colonial March
Tenth Regiment March (Death or Glory)
Gardes du Corps March
Albanian March
American Cadet March
Charge of the Battalion
Colonel Fitch March
Colonel Philbrook March
The Commander March
Commonwealth March
Dunlap Commandery March
Fort Popham March
Greeting to Bangor March
Hamlin Rifles March
Marche Funebre
Norembega March
South.I.B.A. March
Second Regiment P.M. March
Veni, Vidi, Vici March
West.M.B. March
The trio from Hall"s New Colonial March provides the music for Stanford University"s official fight song, Come Join the Band.