Highlights of John Philip Sousa's life
John Philip Sousa's Favourite Recipe
A Brief Life History of Our Hero
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"To reach every heart by simple stirring music... This was my mission. I wanted to make music for the people, a music to be grasped at once."
Sousa's father, Antonio, played trombone in the U.S. Marine Corps Band. When Philip was around the age of six, his father began to enroll him in a variety of musical studies, including the study of voice, violin, piano, flute, cornet, euphonium, trombone, and alto horn.
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Like many members of the Ballard Sedentary Sousa Band, Philip attempted to run away from home and join a circus band when he was 13 years old. His father retrieved him, however, and enlisted the boy in the Marines as an apprentice in the U.S. Marine Corps Band.
In 1872, at the age of 18, our hero published his first composition, Moonlight on the Potomac Waltzes. By 1875, he had left the military and began performing on violin, touring, and eventually conducting theater orchestras. Sousa conducted the orchestra for Gilbert & Sullivan's H.M.S. Pinafore on Broadway. He met his future wife, Jane van Middlesworth Bellis, at rehearsals for this production.
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It was 1880 when our hero returned to the military to become the leader of the U.S. Marine Corps Band. He is credited with raising this band to the highest standards of musical performance. He led the band for more than ten years until resigning to organize a civilian concert band called Sousa's Band.
Sousa became a superstar, the Elvis of his time. Sousa's Band was the most popular band in the world and included many of the world's finest wind players. The band toured for 30 years and traveled over one million miles. They toured the United States many times, Europe four times, and it was the first American group to go on world tour. The adulation received by Sousa and his band was possibly even greater than the accolades that are today poured on the Ballard Sedentary Sousa Band for its thrilling, spectacular performances.
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Did we mention Sousa's prolific writing career? The man composed 136 marches for band, including the famous Semper Fidelis (1888), which became the official march of the U.S. Marine Corps, The Washington Post (1889), The Liberty Bell (1893), and The Stars and Stripes Forever (1897). The Liberty Bell later attained fame as the British music hall style theme song for the TV show, Monty Python's Flying Circus.
And that's not all! Our hero composed 15 operettas, such as El Capitan (1896). He wrote at least 70 songs, 11 waltzes, 12 other dance pieces, 11 suites, 14 humoresques, and 27 fantasies. In the 1890s, Sousa also redeveloped a type of tuba called the helicon, made to his specifications by J.W. Pepper. It was later called the sousaphone.
Could there possibly be even more that this man accomplished? We hope you're sitting down as you read this (few people are standing in front of their computers, we realize), because our hero also wrote five novels, an autobiography Marching Along, and numerous articles. He was an accomplished trap-shooter and horseman, and an outspoken advocate for musicians and composers.
In 1932, Sousa left this world to join and direct a hugely popular marching harp band in heaven. Here on earth, he is justly remembered as the March King.
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