John Philip and his gang plunged through the weeds and briars along the
muddy bank of the Potomac!
“Come on! It’s a band on the avenue!” cried Philip, dashing ahead.
“Let’s hurry!”
This was a common occurrence in those exciting days. The War between
the States was just beginning, and Washington, D. C., the headquarters
of the Union Army, was a thrilling place to be.
The boys were kept busy watching the many activities. They saw officers
on horseback galloping importantly in all directions. They saw men
working furiously building large frame barracks for the soldiers or
huge corrals for the thousands of horses and mules.
And now Philip’s father, Antonio Sousa, had quit his place as trombone
player in the Marine Band and joined the Navy to do his part in
fighting the war.
Bands were playing everywhere, but Philip was so fond of music he never
grew tired of hearing them. He couldn’t keep away from a band or keep
his feet from stepping in time when he was near one. Every day Philip
Sousa slipped out of the house and attached himself to the first line
of blue-clad soldiers he could find. He ran alongside them until he
found the band. Sometimes he followed them all day long.
During the next few years the young boy saw many unusual sights. He saw
people gay over some battles and sad over others. And then one awful
morning Philip awoke to find the streets filled with crowds weeping
instead of laughing. He saw the Capital city draped in black and all
the flags hanging down low. When he asked about this, he was told that
the flags were at half-mast because President Lincoln had been shot.
It was at Lincoln’s funeral that Philip first realized how sad music
could be. The mournful sound of the muffled drums and the solemn,
minor strains of music played by the bands marching in the procession,
touched his young heart.
But the war scene that made the deepest impression upon Philip was
the grand parade of the victorious armies. Hundreds of thousands of
soldiers and countless bands marched in a procession so long that it
took two days to pass the White House. Young as he was, the boy made up
his mind that some day he would lead a marching band like these.
The war was ended. Antonio Sousa had come home and returned to his
place in the Marine Band. The family went back to their normal way of
living.
Antonio Sousa was of Portuguese parentage although he had been born
in Spain. When a young man he had come to America, to New York City.
He met and married Elizabeth Trinkhaus from Bavaria, who was visiting
relatives in Brooklyn. The young couple went to live in Washington, D.
C., and in a small brick house at 617 G Street, S.E. John Philip Sousa
had been born. There he grew to manhood “in the shadow of the Capitol,”
to use his own words.
The out-of-doors appealed to Philip; he liked to play with other boys
and go hunting and fishing with his father. But above everything else
the boy loved music. He was happy when he was allowed to visit the
nearby Marine Barracks during rehearsals. The bandsmen liked him and
often let him play the triangle or the cymbals.
When he was very young, Philip had begun to study the violin with an
old Spanish friend of his father. Later he studied in an Academy of
Music conducted by a son of his first teacher.
“I overheard the teacher ask my father to send me to his school,” said
Sousa. “I was terribly insulted when he said, ‘Even if he doesn’t learn
anything it will keep him off the street.’
“Although I neither answered a question asked by the teacher nor spoke
a word in school, I learned all he taught. I won all the medals he
offered in the examinations.... I have them yet, little gold lyres.”
Philip’s violin teacher found fault with his manner of bowing and they
had a fiery argument. Angry and disgusted, the boy decided to give up
music. He went to work at night in a bakery. His parents insisted that
he continue going to school in the daytime, but he could not carry
on such a sleepless, strenuous schedule. He gave up the bakery job
and returned to the Academy after his father had made peace with the
professor.
Although only thirteen years old, Philip organized his first band--a
quadrille band he called it. He played the first violin. Seven men,
all much older than he, played respectively: the second violin, viola,
bass, clarinet, cornet, trombone and drum. They became quite a famous
dance orchestra until young Sousa, urged by the other members asked
for an increase in pay. When the manager refused him, Philip quit. The
other members played on without a raise, but Sousa had lost his job.
Feeling very blue and despondent, Philip was quite in the mood to
accept an offer which came to him just then--to play in a circus band.
The job seemed full of gaiety and glamour, but he felt sure that his
parents would never give their consent. The circus agent also knew this
was true, but he finally won the boy’s promise to keep it a secret and
go with the company when it left Washington.
Under the cloak of secrecy the idea grew more appealing, but Philip
made the mistake of confiding in his friend who lived next door,
swearing him to secrecy. The boy promptly told his mother all about it.
_His_ mother, just as promptly, told Philip’s mother. Horror-struck she
went to her husband, but Philip’s father wisely said nothing to the boy.
The next day, however, Mr. Sousa and his son went out for a walk. The
walk ended at the Navy Yard where, a few hours before, Mr. Sousa had
conferred with the Commandant, General Zeilin. As a result John Philip
Sousa enlisted in the Marine Band June 9, 1868, as a music apprentice.
This was the beginning of Philip’s training for his real career. He
soon became an expert cornetist, but he did not neglect his violin
practice. And before long he had begun to compose music.
He made friends rapidly. Among them was the Honorable William Hunter,
Assistant Secretary of State. Mr. Hunter, a great lover of music,
each week invited a group of young students to his home for a musical
evening. He always gave them a bountiful supper and never failed to
slip a five-dollar bill into the pocket of his favorite, Philip.
After a few years the Marine Band began to lose its glamour for Sousa.
He wanted more independence. Through Mr. Hunter’s influence he was
released from the organization. He began to teach the violin, and
his classes grew fast. At the same time he took lessons from George
Benkert, a fine violinist. By playing first violin in the orchestra at
Ford’s Opera House, he was able to pay his way.
Soon Philip, a handsome young fellow of nineteen, accepted a position
as an orchestra leader in Chicago. And before long he went to
Philadelphia to play first violin in Offenbach’s Orchestra which had
come from France to play at the Centennial Celebration. He also played
in Mrs. John Drew’s popular theater orchestra. Later he managed and
coached a company of society folk in the Gilbert and Sullivan opera,
_Pinafore_.
Then young Philip Sousa fell in love with Jennie Bellis, a pretty
sixteen-year-old actress in the opera cast. In less than one year
they were married and living in a little home in Philadelphia. Three
children were born to them throughout the years, two girls and one boy,
Helen, Priscilla and Philip Jr.
On October 1, 1880, Sousa was recalled to Washington from Philadelphia
to conduct the Marine Band. He took the group of well-trained but
disorganized musicians and succeeded in establishing fine cooperation
and rare good feeling. _He built the Marine Band into the finest
marching band in all America._ “The President’s Own,” as it was called,
always played at the White House for social and state affairs.
At 26, Sousa was a man of distinctive appearance with his
square-trimmed black beard, gold-rimmed eyeglasses and his always
immaculate uniforms. He never failed to put on a pair of clean white
kid gloves for each performance. In later years after Sousa had
achieved great wealth, he stepped into a large Fifth Avenue store in
New York City and nonchalantly ordered twelve hundred pairs of white
kid gloves, at five dollars a pair.
Although Sousa conducted with a gracious dignity, he seldom smiled. Yet
his audience keenly felt his strong, magnetic personality. He had no
affectations or mannerisms but stood still in his place very erect,
swinging his arms in precise unison in his own individual fashion. The
music seemed to come from his expressive hands.
Sousa was a wonderful showman with a keen sense of spectacular
effects. Once when giving an outdoor evening concert, he noticed the
lights were turned on gradually. First a tiny speck appeared in the
darkness, slowly growing into a glaring blaze of light. That gave him
an idea. Sousa had his band begin the opening number, _Nearer My God
to Thee_, in a soft, tender pianissimo just as the faint beam of light
appeared. The music gradually increased in power as the lights grew
brighter, ending in an enormous crescendo as the illumination reached
its greatest strength. This was so impressive and pleasing that the
audience requested this hymn and the accompanying lighting effects be
played throughout the entire season.
The people, not only in the capital city but over the whole United
States, were enabled to hear the finest music of the time through
John Philip Sousa and the Marine Band. At his request Congress, for
the first time, granted permission for the U. S. Marine Band to make
concert tours over the country. Those opportunities were appreciated
for that was an era when a fine band was a great novelty. Many people
gladly traveled long distances to large cities to hear Sousa’s Marine
Band.
After twelve years Sousa retired from this great organization. A
syndicate of Chicago men asked him to come there and form a band
“which would not be excelled by any brass band on earth.” He was
offered a huge salary besides a generous interest in the profits. “And
in addition,” said Sousa, “they purchased a half interest in all my
manuscript compositions and in any others I may write through the next
five years. For twelve years, I have been conducting in Washington and
my heart is here, but this offer is too good to be refused.”
Sousa had no difficulty in forming his new organization in Chicago.
Soloists on the various band instruments and expert bandsmen from all
parts of the country, eager to join the famous bandmaster, applied for
membership.
Beginning at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1892, this noted concert band
traveled all over the United States, playing in every large town and
city. They toured many foreign countries and in addition, made one
trip around the world, winning the greatest success and honor wherever
they appeared. Sousa and his popular band gave command concerts for
England’s royalty, and it was a London newspaper man that gave him the
title of the “March King.”
Sousa believed that he was inspired to write marches by the influence
of the Civil War days during his childhood in Washington. At that time
the air was filled with the sound of marching troops and military
bands, and this impression had never left him. Sousa is said to have
been responsible for the great popularity of marches during the 1890
decade.
_The Stars and Stripes Forever_ came to him during an ocean voyage.
Called home by the death of his friend and manager, David Blakesly,
he sailed from Naples. He spent hours pacing back and forth on deck,
and this music came into his mind and would not leave. When he arrived
home, he immediately wrote the composition as he had heard it. This
march was published without any change at all, and from its various
sources earned Sousa over $300,000.
In World War I Sousa gave up his band and his huge salary to join the
Great Lakes Naval Reserve. He became conductor of the Great Lakes Band
for which he accepted only one dollar a month. He at once shaved off
his luxurious beard--“so the young fellows wouldn’t think me so much
older than they.”
The number of enlistments fairly swamped the band quarters. Hundreds
flocked to receive instruction from this noted bandmaster. There were
so many that Sousa organized a band battalion of 350 with a full quota
of officers. The remaining men he put into double battleship units
which were assigned to each regiment at the station and to different
ships as the Admirals requested. While he was with the Great Lakes
Band, Sousa designed a new band instrument--a mellow-toned horn to
replace the Helicon tuba with its harsh sound. This Sousaphone is in
use in all large bands today.
At the end of the war Sousa reassembled his concert band of eighty-four
top-notch players. This was generally acknowledged the finest concert
band of all time. He traveled with the group through six months of the
year and vacationed the remaining months. For some time Sousa refused
to broadcast as he disliked the radio. He said that he missed the
direct contact with his audience and the stimulation of its presence
and applause. However, when he was seventy-five years old, he accepted
the large salary offered him to play weekly broadcasts of one hour each.
Although the world at large knew Sousa as the March King, his more
than one hundred marches represent only a small part of his writings.
He also composed ten operas, including _El Capitan_, in which De Wolfe
Hopper starred. _The Queen of Hearts_, _The Bride Elect_, _Chris and
the Wonderful Lamp_, and _The Charlatan_, all big successes in their
day. He composed more than twenty suites, forty or fifty songs, and a
monumental work for orchestra, organ and choir, including _The Last
Crusade_. He wrote three novels: _Pipetown Sandy_, in which he devoted
a chapter describing the two-day march of the victorious U. S. Northern
army; _The Transit of Venus_; and _The Fifth String_. He was the author
of numerous magazine articles, and an illustrated biographical sketch
ran serially in the _Saturday Evening Post_ in 1925. His autobiography,
_Marching Along_, was published in 1928.
So many sources of income brought Sousa great wealth. He had always
liked to ride horseback, play golf, and shoot clay pigeons at the trap.
To indulge in these hobbies he bought a large farm--700 acres--in
North Carolina. There he also raised game birds--quail, grouse and
partridges, as well as dogs and horses. But Sousa really spent most of
his free time at his beautiful home at Sands Point on Long Island, New
York. There he was happiest when surrounded by his devoted wife and
family. There he often entertained his warm friends, among whom were
Thomas A. Edison, Victor Herbert, Irving Berlin and Charles Chaplin.
Sousa was seventy-eight years old when he died of a sudden heart
attack, March 6, 1932, at Reading, Pennsylvania. He had gone there
to lead the Ringgold band on its eightieth anniversary. His body was
brought home to Washington, his birthplace, and lay in state in the
bandroom of the Marine Barracks, where at the age of thirteen his
musical career had begun.
During his funeral the Senators and Representatives of the U. S.
Government paused in their proceedings to pay a tribute to John Philip
Sousa, whom they called “The world’s greatest composer of march music.”
Sousa is buried in the Congressional Cemetery on a grassy plot, not far
from his beloved Capitol.
“Wherever he has gone,” Deems Taylor wrote, “I am sure he has found a
welcome. There is a dining hall in the Elysian Fields marked Grade A
Composers Only. If you could look in at the door tonight, you would
probably see him there; perhaps not at the speakers’ table with Wagner
and Beethoven and Mozart and Bach and Debussy and the rest, but
somewhere in the room--at a small table, possibly, with Herbert and
Strauss and Delibes.
“‘However did _he_ get in here?’ asks some disapproving shade--a
small-town Kapellmeister, probably ... ‘Who got _him_ in?’
“The guide smiles, ‘The marching men. The men who had to go long miles,
on an empty belly, under a hot sun, or through a driving rain. They
made us take him in. They said he made things easier for them.’”