I just listened to some Sousa music on NPR performed by Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops and I AM CHARGED!
Sousa’s marches speak to me not only of power but also of compassion. My car speakers are probably blown now, but I positively cranked it on my way to the supermarket and back a little while ago.
Guess there’s no point to this thread but just to ask y’all if you feel the same way I do?
I love John Philip Sousa! I have an LP of his marches, and it makes great exercise or housecleaning music! I also found in my younger days it made for great “mood music” on a romantic date. If the guy liked making out to “The Liberty Bell March,” I knew he and I would get along . . .
I was always partial to The Washington Post March but enjoy all his music a great deal. He did more than marches, though it was all for band IIRC, but those get very little play.
If you like Sousa like I like Sousa ;), then by all means check out Kenneth J. Alford as well, famous for Colonel Bogey and writer of a great number of kick-ass, brass-heavy pieces.
Yes, Sousa wrote wonderful stuff,
Full of bangs, full of booms, full of bashes,
I agree, I just can’t get enough,
Of the horns and the cymbal crashes;
I’m partial to El Capitan,
And the Liberty Bell, full of thunder…
And of course there’s the Stars and the Stripes!
Mr. Sousa was a mousa-cal wonder.
[He wrote some operetta too, along with waltzes and other dance music, some for orchestra. There was a great album of his lesser-known stuff at one point; it was called Peaches and Cream and I believe it may have been put out by the Cincinnati Pops, but don’t quote me…Anyway, worth a listen or twelve.]
As a former euphonium player, I have to like Sousa – his marches are among the only things in the repertoire with decent euphonium parts (along with Holst’s “First Suite in Eb for Military Band”). I still hear the melody line of the trio of “King Cotton” in my sleep at times.