John Philip Sousa (1854-1932)
Volume 2: At the Symphony
Sousa said a march
'should make a man with a wooden leg step out', and his surely did However, he
was no mere maker of marches, but an exceptionally inventive composer of over
two hundred works, including symphonic poems, suites, songs and operettas
created for both orchestra and for band. John Philip Sousa personified the
innocent energy of turn-of-the-century America, still a new nation, and he
represented America across the globe. His American tours first brought
classical music to hundreds of towns. While Sousa's fame as a bandmaster needs
little comment, far less is known about his formative years as an orchestral
composer, conductor and violinist.
Born in Washington
DC on 6th November, 1854, Sousa developed with startling quickness. Fame was no
accident Sousa's father was a trombonist with the United States Marine Band. By
the age of six, his musical talent had become apparent and he was enrolled for
a year of solfeggio with a local Italian teacher. The boy was found to have
absolute pitch, and thus deemed sufficiently gifted to begin basic training in
harmony and the study of the violin. These early school days coincided with the
great events of the American Civil War, then swirling around the Washington
area.
By the age of
eleven Sousa organized and led his own 'quadrille orchestra'. The rest of his
orchestra consisted of seven grown men and quickly became a popular dance
orchestra in the Washington area. The following year, 1886, he changed music
teachers, beginning studies with George Felix Benkert, who had trained in
Vienna with the famed theorist Simon Sechter, with whom Schubert planned
lessons and whose most famous student was to be Anton Bruckner. Benkert greatly
encouraged the young Sousa, allowing him the sort of sophisticated training in
composition, harmony, counterpoint and orchestration in Washington that was
generally presumed available only in Europe. At the same time, Sousa played
first violin for Benkert's Washington Orchestral Union, as well as performing
for regular Tuesday evening string quartet concerts at the home of the
Assistant Secretary of State William Hunter. Hunter was an avid classical
musical devotee, and for these sessions he imported numerous scores from
Europe. He warmly fostered Sousa's career and was to provide him an invaluable
entree into Washington's official community.
At the age of
nineteen, Sousa was already an active violinist in theatre orchestras,
including Ford's Theatre and the Washington Theatre Comique (vaudeville). Soon
his great talent, extensive training and natural leadership attracted notice,
and he assumed duties as an orchestral leader. Since these responsibilities
often required the preparation of special materials, he augmented the theatrical
productions with numerous incidental pieces and arrangements.
In 1875 Sousa left
Washington, touring the Middle-West for a season as the concertmaster and
leader for Noble's acting troupe. He arrived in Philadelphia just as the 1876
Centennial Exposition was beginning. Now 21 years of age, he promptly landed a
job in the first violin section of the official centennial orchestra playing
for guest conductor Jacques Offenbach. After the Exposition, he remained in
Philadelphia for the next three seasons, leading various theatre orchestras. In
1878 he was asked to provide orchestrations for an American performance of
Gilbert and Sullivan's Sorcerer. The
following year, he composed his first operetta Katherine,
and prepared the orchestrations for the American introduction of HMS Pinafore. Pinafore received its
Broadway premiere with John Philip Sousa conducting. The same year, at the age
of 25, he was chosen to become Director of the United States Marine Band in
Washington. He began leading the Marine Band in January 1880, beginning a
fabled 52 year career as a bandmaster.
Despite his success
with bands, Sousa never gave up his fascination with the musical theatre. It
was his goal to become an American version of Gilbert and Sullivan combined. In
all he composed fifteen operettas His El
Capitan of 1895 is believed to have been the first musical by an
American composer to enjoy a successful run on Broadway. In many ways, Sousa's
compositions were the equal of Sullivan's music, but his lyrics sadly never
matched the inspirations of Gilbert's, nor did his attempts at collaboration
ever produce a truly worthy librettist. By the turn of the century, his
popularity on Broadway began to be eclipsed by the musicals of Victor Herbert,
and later by those of Berlin, Kern and Gershwin Sousa, the classicist was
caught in the on-rush of the romantic era. Today, happily for us, the
classicist has left a legacy of enduring classics.
Sousa's
associations with the theatre music of Gilbert and Sullivan and with Offenbach
had became central to his musical thought. Like these European masters, he
fluently composed in the light music and dance styles of his day, using
existing classical frameworks. Mozart, however, was Sousa's ideal composer .His
biographer Paul Bierley notes that Sousa's personal scores of Mozart's operas
had obviously been read and re-read for pleasure Mozart's opera scoring
techniques are wonderfully evident in Sousa's orchestrations.
From 1880 Sousa's
career was dominated by his association with military bands. In other
circumstances he might have found a place in the theatre, with which he was
associated after his discharge in 1874 from the Marine Band at the age of
twenty. He had enlisted as a boy of thirteen and returned as a conductor of the
United States Marine Band in 1880, continuing there until 1892, when he left to
set up his own band, under his own name. With Sousa's Band he won an
international reputation, with regular tours throughout the United States and
visits to Europe. His band came to an end in 1931 and he died the following
year.
Many aspects of
Sousa's life as a bandmaster reflected his experiences in the musical theatre.
His 'potpourri' style of programming was based on the same structural ideas
that make a successful theatrical production. Superb programming was a hallmark
of his phenomenally successful forty years of band touring. Many themes from
his operettas found their way into his great marches and concert music. His
early days in the theatre also developed his unerring instinct for popular taste.
His band mimicked the sound of a symphony orchestra, and no finer band than
Sousa's was ever heard. Sousa modified the existing military band by decreasing
the brass and increasing its woodwinds, and by adding a harp to create a truly
symphonic sound.
Gleaned also from
the musical theatre was his musical salesmanship. Sousa pleasingly packaged
classical standards and orchestral treatments of popular fare, establishing a
standard style reflected today in the pops concerts of American symphony
orchestras. Sousa never spoke at his concerts, preferring non-stop music that
spoke for itself. His band played Parsifal excerpts
ten years before it was introduced at the Metropolitan Opera, yet combined it
with such fare as Turkey In The Straw, ultimately
doing more to champion good music than any other American orchestra of the era.
Throughout his career, much of Sousa's output was created simultaneously for
theatre orchestra as well as for band, including such marches as The Stars and Stripes Forever, El Capitan, Washington
Post, and Semper Fidelis, universally
acknowledged as the best of their genre.
Sousa astounded
Europe by introducing ragtime on his 1900 tour, touching off a fascination with
American music which influenced such composers as Debussy, Ravel, Stravinsky,
Grainger and Milhaud. The principal commodity Sousa sold, however, was pride in
America and American music. In the quarter century before radio, improved
electronic records, and finally, the miracle of talking pictures, Sousa and his
Band and Sousa and his music was America's greatest musical attraction.
Further reading John Philip Sousa, American Phenomenon, by
Paul E Bierley 1973; and Marching Along, the
autobiography of John Philip Sousa, edited by Paul E Bierley 1994;
both from Integrity Press, Westerville OH.
Overture to the
Irish Dragoon
Sousa's operetta The Irish Dragoon was composed in 1915 For
reasons still unknown, but likely having to do with libretto problems, Sousa's
fully scored operetta was withdrawn without ever being performed. The overture
is full of crackling Irish jigs and love-songs from the show. The present
writer conducted the premiere with the Utah Symphony Orchestra in July 1990.
March: Bullets and
Bayonets
The patriotic
fervour of the First World War inspired some of Sousa's greatest marches Bullets and Bayonets, written in 1918, was
dedicated by Sousa to the men of the infantry. It is heard as he performed it,
replete with gunshots.
Rêverie: Nymphalin
While in his early
twenties, Sousa was making his mark in the musical theatres of Washington and
Philadelphia as a concert master, orchestra leader, composer and arranger. It
is possible that the salon-like themes for Nymphalin
originated as background music for a theatre review. The music was
published in 1880. Alternating melodies for violins and cellos, and their final
joining in counterpoint suggest the coupling and entwining of two lovers Nymphalin was later re-scored by Sousa for
his band concerts. It became one of the Sousa Band's most frequently performed
violin solo encores.
March: Jack Tar
Sousa opened the
march Jack Tar by adapting two
melodies from his musical Chris and the
Wonderful Lamp. To this he added a lilting trio and the sailor's hornpipe refrain,
completing a nautical march. The scoring also calls for ship's bell and
whistle. The 1903 world premiere took place in the Royal Albert Hall in the
presence of the King and Queen. That evening, Sousa and his Band were augmented
with the bands of the Scots Guard, the Irish Guards, the Coldstream Guards, the
Himenoa of New Zealand and the Queen's Hall Orchestra.
Sacred Selection:
Songs of Grace and Songs of Glory
In 1892, Sousa
assembled a medley of popular religious melodies for his Sunday concerts. Songs of Grace and Song of Glory opens
with a section of Verdi's Requiem, and
continues with Rock of Ages (scored
as if for a parlour harmonium), Steal Away, a
Negro Spiritual made popular at that time by the Fiske Family singers, Mary and Martha, The Psalm, Nearer My God to Thee in
a stirring setting composed earlier by Sousa for the Marine Band to play at
President Garfield's funeral and concludes with Stainer's Sevenfold Amen. This medley was performed
in May 1896 at the world première concert of The
Stars anti Stripes forever at Philadelphia's Academy of Music On
that evening, the trombone solo in the Psalm,
was declaimed by the renowned Arthur Pryor.
March: The Power
and the Glory
The march The Power and the Glory was crafted in
1922 as a homage to Thomas E Mitten. Mitten was Director of the Philadelphia
Rapid Transit Company, who owned and managed Willow Grove Park where Sousa's
Band appeared every summer. The ingenious composition contains Mitten's
favorite hymn, Onward Christian Soldiers, of
which the melody appears in the midst of Sousa's own trio melody.
Suite: Dwellers of
the Western World
T-his
three-movement descriptive concert suite Dwellers
of the Western World was composed in 1910. It was one of Sousa's
major band compositions Each movement depicts a race that populated the New
World, in the order in which they arrived The
Red Man is characteristic of what was then thought to be
American-Indian music The White Man includes
a long concert waltz, a touching chorale based on Sousa's earlier composition O Thou America, Messiah of Nation", and
a sequence of musical ideas evocative of the building of railroads, the
clearing of forests and square dancing. The final movement, Black Man is a sprightly cakewalk. The
suite was scored for orchestra by Otto Merz, one of Sousa's staff arrangers. It
was presumably arranged under the composer's supervision.
March: The
Invincible Eagle
Sousa believed The Invincible Eagle would become one of
his most popular marches. Events have at least proved it is one of his finest.
He called it his “Sunshine March”. One of his singers observed him writing it
one night on the train from Buffalo to New York City in 1901. She remembered
him fingering an imaginary violin as he set down the notes.
Humoresque on
Gershwin's "Swanee"
Sousa took great
delight in composing his fourteen humoresques. These are elegant statements of
the genre and certainly predate, but complement the later musical humour of
Spike Jones, the Hoffnung concerts and Peter Schickele. His humorous variations
on Swanee from Gershwin's first
hit, Sinbad, was composed in 1920.
Sousa obviously had a great deal of fun producing sly musical comments on the
lyrics of this then contemporary hit song, popularized by AI Jolson.
Semper Fidelis
After Sousa had
been brought to tears by the singing of the Marine’s
Hymn, Semper Fidelis was composed
in a burst of inspiration one night in 1888 at Quantico Virginia The
contrapuntal build up from the trio's drum solo and bugle-call through the
stirring ending is uniquely famous in the march literature.
Humoresque on
Kern's Look for the Silver Lining
This
tongue-in-cheek setting of one of the first great modern Broadway ballads,
Kern's Look for the Silver Lining includes
a parody of drunken musicians playing There
is a Tavern the Town. There follows a series of imaginative scorings
of the ballad, beginning with the cranking, starting and motoring of a model T
Ford - complete with interrupting "Keystone Cops" police whistles,
then a classic soft-shoe scoring of the tune followed by a big band jazz
setting. As a finale, the song is set in a most remarkable manner, with every
note of the melody assigned to a different instrument, much like Webern's use
of the technique of "klangfarben".
March: The
Daughters of Texas
Sousa's title The Daughters of Texas is apt. This late
march, composed in 1929, is surely one the most gracefully feminine of all his
marches and one of his most beautiful It was dedicated to the women of Texas
Women's University in Denton, Texas.
March: The Stars
and Stripes Forever
Premièred in 1896, The Stars and Stripes Forever has become
Sousa's most famous march. While it is known the world over, in America it has
become the official march of the United States and serves as a signature piece
for every American band and orchestra.
About This
Recording
In 1980 the
question "Where is Sousa's audience today?" gave rise to Keith Brion
's Sousa orchestral concerts. Brion reasoned that in modern America, Sousa's
most natural audience was now attending symphony orchestra pops concerts rather
than band performances. Next wondering if a symphony orchestra could perform a
band concert, he recalled that Sousa had scored more than eighty of his major
band compositions for orchestra. In addition, most of the other music used by
Sousa was really orchestral music transcribed for band. So Brion's "Sousa
at the Symphony" concerts were born. For almost two decades now these
programmes have been a flourishing attraction on the large circuit of American
symphony orchestras that present "pops" concerts. Dozens of
orchestras have presented them three times or more. This recording features
many of the favourite items heard on these popular concerts.
The Overture to the Irish Dragoon and Nymphalin are performed in their original
settings. The two humoresques and Song of
Grace and Songs of Glory are performed in arrangements by Keith
Brion. The marches have been enlarged by Brion from their original Sousa
versions (for small theatre orchestra) to full symphony orchestra status. The
model for these adaptations has been Sousa's own unpublished concert arrangements
for his large symphonic band.
Special thanks to
Loras Schissel, Music Division, Library of Congress and to Sousa's biographer,
Paul E Bierley, author of John Philip Sousa, an American Phenomenon and >The Works of John Philip Sousa, Integrity
Press.
Slovak Radio
Symphony Orchestra
The Slovak Radio
Symphony Orchestra (Bratislava), the oldest symphonic ensemble in Slovakia, was
founded in 1929 at the instance of Milos Ruppeldt and Oskar Nedbal, prominent
personalities in the sphere of music. Ondrej Lenard was appointed its conductor
in 1970 and in 1977 its conductor-in-chief, succeeded recently by Robert
Stankovsky. The orchestra has given successful concerts both at home and
abroad, in Germany, Russia, Bulgaria, Denmark, France, Spain, Italy, Great Britain,
Hong Kong and Japan. For Marco Polo the orchestra has recorded works by
Glazunov, Gliere, Miaskovsky and other late romantic composers and film music
of Honegger, Bliss, lbert and Khachaturian as well as several volumes of the
label's Johann Strauss Edition. Naxos recordings include symphonies and ballets
by Tchaikovsky, and symphonies by Berlioz and Saint-Saens.
Keith Brion
Conductor Keith
Brion has frequently led his Sousa revival concerts with orchestras throughout
America. He has also appeared as a symphony conductor in Europe, Canada, and
New Zealand. He tours regularly with his own New Sousa Band. His Sousa
concerts, like the Strauss evenings which inspired Sousa, consist of familiar
light classics and virtuoso vocal and instrumental solos. These programmes are
interspersed with Sousa's own marches and orchestral compositions.