Sousa, John Philip, 1854-1932

<p> John Philip Sousa was born in Washington, D. C. on November 6, 1854. His father, John Antonio Sousa, was born in Spain of Portuguese parents, and his mother, Marie Elizabeth Trinkaus, was born in Bavaria. </p>

<p> Sousa received his early education in Washington public schools, while simultaneously studying music at a private conservatory. At age 13, he enlisted in the U.S. Marine Band as a "boy" (apprentice) musician, but he also continued his private music studies. His most important teacher was George Felix Benkert, with whom he studied violin, harmony, and composition. After serving seven years with the marines, he was discharged. Thereafter, he performed as a violinist and conductor in various theater orchestras in Washington and Philadelphia. </p>

<p> By 1880, his fame as a conductor, composer, and arranger had been established. He was appointed leader of the U. S. Marine Band and held this position for 12 years, eventually molding the band into the finest military band in the world. </p>

<p> Sousa resigned from the Marine Corps in 1892 to form his own civilian band. In a matter of months this band assumed a position of equality with the finest symphony orchestras of the day. It was a concert organization, not a marching band. The finest available instrumentalists were engaged, and among the celebrated soloists to perform with the band over the years were Herbert L. Clarke (cornet), Arthur Pryor (trombone), Simone Mantia (euphonium), Estelle Liebling (soprano), and Maud Powell (violin). Numerous other artists of international fame performed with the band at one time or another.</p>

<p> People throughout the world flocked to see "The March King" during his many American and worldwide tours. He employed a principle that endeared him to the public: Everything was played to perfection, whether it was a classical masterpiece or a popular song. </p>

<p> Sousa was a man of considerable self-discipline and extraordinary talent. He excelled in everything he undertook, yet he was unassuming, approachable, tolerant, and in possession of an almost saintly disposition. To all who knew him, he was a man of incredibly high moral standards. From his childhood, he was determined, and industrious, and in command of such an unbounded optimism that nothing seemed impossible to him. Foremost in his mind was how best to please his audiences. </p>

<p> Sousa's musical compositions represent a heritage that belongs not only to Americans, but also to vast numbers of music lovers around the world. His influence on American musical tastes was remarkable, and much of his influence spread abroad. The Sousa band traveled the world in 1910-1911, made four additional tours of Europe, and annual tours of America. </p>

<p> Although Sousa is stereotyped as a march composer, he composed music of many forms, including 15 operettas. Among his many original works for band are suites, humoresques, fantasies, descriptive pieces, and dances. In addition to the over 200 songs of his operettas, he composed 70 other vocal works, and many of these vocal works wee transcribed for use with the Sousa Band. </p>

<p> The musical philosophy, which stimulated his composing, ("I would rather be the composer of an inspired march than of a manufactured symphony.") is reflected in all of his works. Basically a humble, deeply religious man, he composed only upon genuine inspiration and repeatedly stated that his melodies came from a "Higher Power." </p>

<p> Sousa was an indefatigable worker, proclaiming that, "When you hear of Sousa retiring, you will hear of Sousa dead." This prediction came true; he died suddenly following a rehearsal of the Ringgold Band in Reading Pennsylvania on March 6, 1932. He is buried with other family members at Congressional Cemetery in Washington. Among hundreds of honors he received during his lifetime and posthumously, was election to the Hall of Fame for Great Americans. Only 102 persons have been so honored. </p>

<p> John Philip Sousa (/ˈsuːsə/;[a] November 6, 1854 – March 6, 1932) was an American composer and conductor of the late Romantic era known primarily for American military marches.[1] He is known as "The March King" or the "American March King", to distinguish him from his British counterpart Kenneth J. Alford who is also known as "The March King". Among his best-known marches are "The Stars and Stripes Forever" (National March of the United States of America), "Semper Fidelis" (official march of the United States Marine Corps), "The Liberty Bell", "The Thunderer", and "The Washington Post". </p>

<p> Sousa began his career playing violin and studying music theory and composition under John Esputa and George Felix Benkert. His father enlisted him in the United States Marine Band as an apprentice in 1868. He left the band in 1875 and learned to conduct. From 1880 until his death, he focused exclusively on conducting and writing music. He eventually rejoined the Marine Band and served there for 12 years as director, after which he organized his own band. Sousa aided in the development of the sousaphone, a large brass instrument similar to the helicon and tuba. </p>

<p> Upon the outbreak of World War I, Sousa was awarded a wartime commission of lieutenant commander to lead the Naval Reserve Band in Illinois. He then returned to conduct the Sousa Band until his death in 1932. (In the 1920s, he was promoted to the permanent rank of lieutenant commander in the naval reserve, but he never saw active service again.) </p>

<p> 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 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. </p>

<p> Born in Washington DC on 6 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. </p>

<p> 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, 1866, 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 entrée into Washington’s official community. </p>

<p> 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. </p>

<p> 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 he American Introduction of HMS Pinafore. Pinafore received its Broadway première 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. </p>

<p> 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. </p>

<p> 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. </p>

<p> 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. </p>

<p> 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 that 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. </p>

<p> 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 Fidells, universally acknowledged as the best of their genre. </p>

<p> 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. </p>

<p> Unequalled by his predecessors, John Philip Sousa is responsible for bringing the United States Marine Band to an unprecedented level of excellence: a standard upheld by every Marine Band Director since. Sousa grew up with the Marine Band, and his intimate knowledge of the band coupled with his great ability provided the ideal medium to showcase the marches which would earn him the title, the "March King." </p>

<p> Sousa was born Nov. 6, 1854, at 636 G Street, SE, Washington, DC, near the Marine Barracks where his father, Antonio, was a musician in the Marine Band. He received his grammar school education in Washington and for several of his school years enrolled in a private conservatory of music operated by John Esputa, Jr. There he studied piano and most of the orchestral instruments, but his first love was the violin. John Philip Sousa gained great proficiency on the violin, and at the age of 13 he was almost persuaded to join a circus band. However, his father intervened and enlisted him as an apprentice musician in the Marine Band. Except for a period of six months, Sousa remained in the band until he was 20. </p>

<p> In addition to his musical training in the Marine Band, he studied music theory and composition with George Felix Benkert, a noted Washington orchestra leader and teacher. </p>

<p> After his discharge from the Marine Corps, Sousa remained in Washington for a time, conducting and playing the violin. He toured with several traveling theater orchestras and moved, in 1876, to Philadelphia. There he worked as a composer, arranger, and proofreader for publishing houses. Sousa was fascinated by the operetta form and toured with a company producing the musical Our Flirtation, for which he wrote the incidental music and the march. While on tour in St. Louis, he received a telegram offering him the leadership of the Marine Band in Washington. He accepted and reported for duty on Oct. 1, 1880, becoming the band’s 17th Leader. </p>

<p> The Marine Band was Sousa’s first experience conducting a military band, and he approached musical matters unlike most of his predecessors. He replaced much of the music in the library with symphonic transcriptions and changed the instrumentation to meet his needs. Rehearsals became exceptionally strict, and he shaped his musicians into the country’s premier military band. Marine Band concerts began to attract discriminating audiences, and the band’s reputation began to spread widely. </p>

<p> Sousa first received acclaim in military band circles with the writing of his march "The Gladiator" in 1886. From that time on he received ever-increasing attention and respect as a composer. In 1888, he wrote "Semper Fidelis." Dedicated to "the officers and men of the Marine Corps," it is traditionally known as the "official" march of the Marine Corps. </p>

<p> In 1889, Sousa wrote the "Washington Post" march to promote an essay contest sponsored by the newspaper; the march was soon adapted and identified with the new dance called the two-step. The "Washington Post" became the most popular tune in America and Europe, and critical response was overwhelming. A British band journalist remarked that since Johann Strauss, Jr., was called the "Waltz King" that American bandmaster Sousa should be called the "March King." With this, Sousa’s regal title was coined and has remained ever since. </p>

<p> Under Sousa the Marine Band also made its first recordings. The phonograph was a relatively new invention, and the Columbia Phonograph Company sought an ensemble to record. The Marine Band was chosen, and 60 cylinders were released in the fall of 1890. By 1897, more than 400 different titles were available for sale, placing Sousa’s marches among the first and most popular pieces ever recorded, and the Marine Band one of the world's first "recording stars." </p>

<p> The immense popularity of the Marine Band made Sousa anxious to take his Marine Band on tour, and in 1891 President Benjamin Harrison gave official sanction for the first Marine Band tour, a tradition which has continued annually since that time, except in times of war.</p>

<p> After the second Marine Band tour in 1892, Sousa was approached by his manager, David Blakely, to organize his own civilian concert band, and on July 30 of that year, John Philip Sousa resigned as Director of the Marine Band. At his farewell concert on the White House lawn Sousa was presented with a handsome engraved baton by members of the Marine Band as a token of their respect and esteem. This baton was returned to the Marine Band by Sousa's daughters, Jane Priscilla Sousa and Helen Sousa Abert, in 1953. The Sousa baton is now traditionally passed to the new Director of the Marine Band during change of command ceremonies. </p>

<p> In his 12 years as Leader of the Marine Band, he served under five Presidents, and the experience he gained with the Marine Band would be applied to his civilian band for the next 39 years. With his own band, Sousa’s fame and reputation would grow to even greater heights. </p>

<p> Sousa’s last appearance before "The President's Own" was on the occasion of the Carabao Wallow of 1932 in Washington. Sousa, as a distinguished guest, rose from the speaker’s table, took the baton from Director Captain Taylor Branson, and led the orchestra through the stirring strains of "Hands Across the Sea ." </p>

<p> John Philip Sousa died on March 6, 1932, at Reading, Pa., where he was scheduled to conduct the Ringgold Band. His body was brought to his native Washington to lie in state in the Band Hall at Marine Barracks. Four days later, two companies of Marines and Sailors, the Marine Band, and honorary pall-bearers from the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps headed the funeral cortege from the Marine Barracks to Congressional Cemetery. </p>

<p> His music was not the only memorial to John Philip Sousa. In his native city on Dec. 9, 1939, the new Pennsylvania Avenue Bridge across the Anacostia River was dedicated to the memory of the great American composer and bandmaster. More recently, Sousa was enshrined in the Hall of Fame for Great Americans in a ceremony at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in 1976. </p>

<p> In a fitting tribute to its 17th Leader, in 1974 the Marine Band rededicated its historic band hall at Marine Barracks as "John Philip Sousa Band Hall." The bell from the S.S. John Philip Sousa, a World War II Liberty ship, is there. </p>

<p> Perhaps the most significant tribute to Sousa’s influence on American culture, "The Stars and Stripes Forever" was designated as the national march of the United States on Dec. 11, 1987. A White House memorandum states the march has become "an integral part of the celebration of American life." </p>

<p> In 2004, 26th Director Colonel Timothy W. Foley opened the season with a Sousa-style concert in honor of the Director's sesquicentennial (150) year. This rousing performance has since become an annual tradition of opening each concert season in early January, and is reminiscent of Sousa and his sold-out concerts. On Nov. 6, 2004, "The March King's" 150th birthday, "The President's Own" and 33rd Commandant of the Marine Corps General Michael W. Hagee dedicated the new band hall at Marine Barracks Annex John Philip Sousa Hall. </p>

<p> "The President's Own" concluded his sesquicentennial year on Nov. 5, 2005, by unveiling an eight-foot bronze statue of Sousa outside the band hall. The statue, funded by the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation, private donor Mickey Gordon, and the John Philip Sousa Foundation, is the only one of its kind. Sculpted by artist Terry Jones, the statue is an enduring testament to Sousa's contributions to the Marine Band. </p>