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As passengers and crew headed to the stern, where Father Thomas Byles was hearing confessions and giving absolutions, Titanic's band played outside the gymnasium. Titanic had two separate bands of musicians. One was a quintet led by Wallace Hartley that played after dinner and at religious services while the other was a trio who played in the reception area and outside the café and restaurant. The two bands had separate music libraries and arrangements and had not played together before the sinking. Around 30 minutes after colliding with the iceberg, the two bands were called by Captain Smith who ordered them to play in the first class lounge. Passengers present remember them playing lively tunes such as "Alexander's Ragtime Band". It is unknown if the two piano players were with the band at this time. The exact time is unknown, but the musicians later moved to the boat deck level where they played before moving outside onto the deck itself. Part of the enduring folklore of the Titanic sinking is that the musicians played the hymn "Nearer, My God, to Thee" as the ship sank, but this appears to be dubious. The claim surfaced among the earliest reports of the sinking, and the hymn became so closely associated with the Titanic disaster that its opening bars were carved on the grave monument of Titanic's bandmaster, Wallace Hartley, one of those who perished. Violet Jessop said in her 1934 account of the disaster that she had heard the hymn being played. In contrast, Archibald Gracie emphatically denied it in his own account, written soon after the sinking, and Radio Operator Harold Bride said that he had heard the band playing ragtime, then "Autumn", by which he may have meant Archibald Joyce's then-popular waltz "Songe d'Automne" (Autumn Dream). George Orrell, the bandmaster of the rescue ship, Carpathia, who spoke with survivors, related: "The ship's band in any emergency is expected to play to calm the passengers. After Titanic struck the iceberg the band began to play bright music, dance music, comic songs – anything that would prevent the passengers from becoming panic-stricken ... various awe-stricken passengers began to think of the death that faced them and asked the bandmaster to play hymns. The one which appealed to all was 'Nearer My God to Thee'." According to Gracie, who was near the band until that section of deck went under, the tunes played by the band were "cheerful" but he didn't recognise any of them, claiming that if they had played 'Nearer, My God, to Thee' as claimed in the newspaper "I assuredly should have noticed it and regarded it as a tactless warning of immediate death to us all and one likely to create panic." Several survivors who were among the last to leave the ship claimed that the band continued playing until the slope of the deck became too steep for them to stand, Gracie claimed that the band stopped playing at least 30 minutes before the vessel sank. Several witnesses support this account including A. H. Barkworth, a first-class passenger who testified: "I do not wish to detract from the bravery of anybody, but I might mention that when I first came on deck the band was playing a waltz. The next time I passed where the band was stationed, the members had thrown down their instruments and were not to be seen."