Last Post and Reveille on Wilfred Owen's Bugle

Principal of the Royal Academy of Music, Jonathan Freeman-Attwood CBE, was invited to play a bugle belonging to Wilfred Owen as part of events marking 100 years since the end of the First World War.

Freeman-Attwood recorded The Last Post and Reveille – a military call synonymous with acts of remembrance – for BBC Radio 4’s Today programme ahead of a commemorative ceremony in Ors, northern France, to mark the centenary of the celebrated poet’s death.

The Academy’s Principal commented that the German-made instrument, which he was invited to play by the Wilfred Owen Association and Glen Art, ‘gives a full sound’ and has ‘a wonderful degree of craftsmanship’.

It differs from a British Army bugle in its shape and tuning: ‘It’s shorter so is pitched a minor third higher, in C sharp,’ says Freeman-Attwood. ‘The effect in the field would have been very different to a British bugle which is pitched in B flat. The intervals are incredibly pure and the top notes truly ring out.’