Music student Melissa Venema plays Il Silenzio by trumpet composer Nini Rosso. It is an Neapolitan cavalry call from Italy (see p. 540 in the article “The Trumpet in Camp and Battle” from The Century Magazine, vol. 34, 1898 (very interesting article online). tinyurl.com It also shows how the US call Tattoo (now to be played 15 minutes before Taps as a warning call), the longest US call in the book, is actually a combination of the British and French calls for “lights out” with a distinctly American tag or coda at the end. It is interesting to note that this particular article does mention Taps (but not by name), a relatively new call in 1898, as it was supposedly composed by Union General Dan Butterfield one night during a lull in the fighting during the Civil War. He dictated/sang it to his bugler and his adjutant wrote down the musical notation. www.tapsbugler.com The truth is, nobody seems to really know exactly where taps came from.