Robert Browne Hall
Composer and cornetist (1858-1907)
Robert Browne Hall (30 June 1858 Bowdoinham, Maine – 8 June 1907), usually known as R. B. Hall, was a leading composer of marches and other music for wind bands.
Life and career
A principal American composer of marching music, Hall 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 "Tenth Regiment March", 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 UK, under the title "Death or Glory".
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.
Hall 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.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Robert Browne Hall” is composer and cornetist (1858-1907). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Robert, Browne and Hall, not as a finished interpretation.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1656420. VIAF identifies the subject as 22332682. The Library of Congress control number is no92013018. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1858, 1907, 1895 and 1902.
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This entry incorporates text from “Robert Browne Hall” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.