SOUSA‘S MARCHES

As He Conducted Them

by Keith Brion

Sousa conducted his music with his own players more often than any composer in history when he wrote a new march the published parts were thickly orchestrated with outdoor marching in mind. Sousa’s Band, however, was exclusively a concert band, playing mainly in concert halls, theaters, and opera houses. Therefore, during the first rehearsal of a newly composed march, Sousa would verbally indicate various changes to his players, radically altering the orchestration for indoor performance. The changes included deletions in doublings, octave switches, changes of texture, dynamics, and accents. The repeated strains were reorganized to enhance the progression of musical ideas. All of the changes served to build toward the march’s grandioso finale. These alterations developed in the daily give and take between the composer/conductor, his virtuoso musicians, and the audience. The process allowed the march to reach its fullest concert hall potential, and shortly settled into a standard procedure for the march. This created the “Sousa sound.” It made Sousa’s performances of his own music unique.

When a march had proven to be a hit, it was added to the Sousa encore books-bound volumes of 100 popular encore selections. From these, 8 to 10 were chosen for performance at each concert. Sousa’s altered performance versions of his marches remained fairly constant through the years, even though the players continued to read the music from the original, heavily orchestrated, and largely unmarked march-size parts. New members learned Sousa’s orchestration style by ear and by word of mouth from their older “side-partners.” While the changes are sometimes difficult to pinpoint, they must be considered authentic clues to the accurate concert interpretation of Sousa’s music. They are essential to its fullest realization.

These Sousa performance practices offer numerous musical rewards. There is a freshness of texture, shading, and dynamics. The trimming of instrumentation allows some parts of the march to become more delicate and dance like, reminding one of Sousa’s origins as a violinist, and recalling the European “light-music” traditions of Sousa’s idols, Arthur Sullivan, Johann Strauss, and Jacques Offenbach. The lightness of texture contrasts and illuminates the powerful “battle scenes” and grandioso finale which conclude the march. The alterations heighten architectural form, greatly enhancing the total effect of the composition. Sousa’s marches, in their sophisticated concert versions, rival similar compositions by Sullivan, Strauss, and Offenbach.

Clues abound for the “verification of Sousa’s unwritten “secret arrangements” They include recordings of the Sousa Band, one lone published example, information passed on by band members, and secondary sources such as bandmasters of the time who sought out Sousa or his players for knowledge of their performance practice.

James Smart’s The SOUSA BAND – A Discography, attributes 1166 victor Talking Machine record titles to Sousa’s Band. Of those issued, only six were led by Sousa. The best known: “Nobles of the Mystic Shrine,” “Sabre and Spurs,” “Solid Men to the Front,” and a radio broadcast of “‘The Stars and Stripes Forever” All reveal precisely the orchestration changes reported by Sousa’s contemporaries.

Sousa’s biographer, Paul Bierley, says that the March King personally approved every disk whether or not he was the conductor. Many Sousa Band recordings led by other conductors, from the earliest cylinder recordings until the electrical recordings of the late 1920s, reveal orchestration changes similar to those confirmed by other sources.

A comparison of the published indoor and outdoor versions of the march from the operetta The Free Lance, provides a rare corroboration of Sousa’s “changes” The marching band edition, as usual, is thickly orchestrated and doubled, but the concert version, meant for indoor performance and published in a concert edition as the finale to the “Selections from The Free Lance,” uses the lighter orchestration style often attributed to Sousa’s indoor performances. The process also worked in reverse. For his concert music, Sousa often added doublings when the band played outdoors.

Edmund Wall, principal clarinetist from 1926 until Sousa’s death in 1932, affirmed to this writer the general accuracy of reports of Sousa’s re-orchestration. Since many of Sousa’s instructions were given to one section at a time, the rest of the band would likely be unaware that any change had occurred. Some deletions and changes were accomplished with a quick visual gesture from the conductor and remained forever. Some of these ideas may be confirmed by a small number of pencil markings surviving in the Sousa Band encore books, located in the library of the United States Marine Band. Most of the alterations were of a simple nature and did not require rewriting. However, for some marches Sousa did add special parts for bells and harp. These are also preserved in the Marine Band l,ibrary. According to Mr. Wall, once the march settled into a satisfactory performing pattern, Sousa rarely made subsequent changes.

Today, over 57 years after the death of Sousa, these ideas also live in the contemporary performance practice of the marvelous Allentown (Pennsylvania) Band.

Those musicians began to play the marches in the Sousa style during his lifetime and continue to do so today The band, which was conducted from 1925-75 by Albertus Myers, a former Sousa cornetist, has maintained the tradition section by section in the same aural and oral manner used by the Sousa band. Older members pass the information to younger ones, and all play from the unedited parts.

A number of prominent college band directors, including Albert Austin Harding and Mark Hindsley at the University of Illinois, and Raymond Dvorak at the University of Wisconsin, made an effort to emulate Sousa’s concert orchestrations and thus preserve the Sousa sound. In the 1960s, Frank Simon, who had been Sousa’s solo cornetist and assistant conductor, supervised a remarkable two volume record series for the American School Band Directors Association. Extensive program notes detailed Simon’s memory of Sousa’s performance practice.

It is strange that Sousa altered his published music so greatly. It is even more mysterious that, since his death, attempts to restore Sousa’s concert arrangements and make his “secrets” public by such dedicated conductors as Simon, Hindsley, and Dvorak have had so little general influence. Although most of Sousa’s works are now performed indoors, publishers have resisted reissuing the music as it was originally played by Sousa. The vast majority of today’s performances and recordings use the outdoor editions intended for marching band.

If “classical” is defined as “music each generation rediscovers as valuable,” and if “classical” refers to “ideal compositional realizations within strict but pleasing forms,” then Sousa’s marches are America’s classical music.

Sousa, although he lived in the romantic era, may well be regarded as one of America’s pre-eminent classical composers. However, until the public is once again able to hear the marches in the original concert settings and performance practice of Sousa and his Band, Sousa’s true place in music history will not be fully established.