This is a bespoke repertoire, so it is a perfect testimony of how well the band could play. D'Artney and the bandmasters would not have written music that was beyond the ability of their musicians; on the contrary, they would have wished to exhibit their strengths. The music illustrates the two main functions of the band. It was on the one hand a dance band which played all the main popular dances of the time, while on the other it had to function as a surrogate orchestra, playing the classics and the latest compositions, both light and serious, by the most presigious modern composers in Europe.

Arthur Sullivan's The Lost Chord achieved instant and sensational success. It was sung, as Hesketh Brown commented in his biography of Sullivan, by "everyone who could sing and thousands who couldn't". It was arranged many times, with varying degrees of success, for many different instrumental combinations. Few arrangements are as beautiful as this one, in which the solo line is performed on two unison keyed bugles.