Yet when it rings out at the burial of an American soldier or veteran, Taps reverberates with the weight of every national conflict since the Civil War, when it first resounded in Union camps to signal lights out at the close of day.

Last week, out of concern that the playing of Taps could fade away in an era when fewer and fewer people take up musical instruments, the Pennsylvania House of Representatives voted to urge that students across the state have the opportunity to learn the mournful bugle call.

"Every day we lose many of our World War II veterans; they have earned the right to be buried with full military honors - including the playing of Taps," said Rep. Bryan R. Lentz (D., Delaware), an Iraq war veteran who sponsored the resolution.

The nonbinding measure, which passed 203-0 on Wednesday, addresses a problem - finding the manpower for proper military burials - that veterans groups have wrestled with for years.

By the late 1990s, it was becoming harder and harder for many VFW and American Legion posts to find a professional musician - or even a high school trumpet student - to play at a funeral. The Defense Department began to issue kits to funeral directors that included a compact-disc recording of Taps that could be played on a boom box - if a live bugler couldn't be found.

Kit Watson, adjutant of the Pennsylvania American Legion, said that hearing a boom-box recording at the cemetery was disheartening - for families and veterans groups alike.

But in 2002 came the invention of an electronic bugle.

The brass instrument also uses a recording, but it looks - and sounds - like the real thing, Watson said. Anyone can hold it to his lips. It is sometimes employed even at national military cemeteries.

"It's a real bugle with an insert in it that's programmed to play Taps perfectly," Watson said. "It runs on two nine-volt batteries. If done right, people can't tell if the guy's playing or not."

Watson said that if a veteran's family cannot find anyone to play Taps - and some still can't - it's the result of the funeral director's not having good contacts in the veterans community.

"We used to have [a shortage]; we don't anymore," he said.

Yet there's nothing like a real playing of Taps, which the military still prefers.

Robert Goodman, a bugler who runs a Yahoo.com discussion group for buglers, said that use of a ceremonial bugle is a "viable alternative" to no Taps at all.

"Anything would be better than silence," Goodman said. "However, live performance imparts special emotional content to it. There's a very strong connection between the performer and the grieving family that I believe transcends what a mere recording is capable of rendering."

Goodman, an associate member of a VFW post in Harrisburg, works as a civilian employee for the Department of the Navy.

He graduated from Philadelphia's Northeast High School in 1968 at the height of the Vietnam War, but never served in the military.

"I've been trying to make up for that," he said.

That, in part, is why he often performs Taps at military ceremonies.

The music isn't hard to play, he said, "but it takes real musicianship to make it special."

Another experienced Taps bugler, former Air Force Band member Jari Villanueva, disputes the common notion that live buglers are in short supply.

Villanueva said the problem is a lack of coordination among funeral directors, veterans groups and individual buglers willing to volunteer for funerals.

"There is no shortage; we have been led astray by this idea," said Villanueva, a retired Air Force master sergeant who now helps provide buglers for military burials in Maryland.

Still, he applauded the sentiment behind the House resolution, which called on the state secretary of education to direct school districts to provide training to students in the playing of Taps.

"It's terrific to have something like this to encourage students to learn what Taps is, to get them involved in community service," he said.

Villanueva - who said, "I learned Taps being a Boy Scout" - operates a Web site, www.tapsbugler.com, devoted to the history and perpetuation of Taps.

Of all bugle calls in the military, Taps is the only one that isn't "nice and bright and martial-sounding," he said.

"When it's played slow and with emotion," he said, "it is really something."