Then I began to think of all the countries I had visited, of the foreign people I had met, of the vast difference between America and American people and other countries and other peoples, and that flag of ours became glorified.and to my imagination it seemed to be the biggest, grandest, flag in the world, and I could not get back under it quick enough. In a kind of dreamy way I used to think over old days at Washington when I was leader of the Marine Band.when we played at all public official functions, and I could see the Stars and Stripes flying from the flagstaff in the grounds of the White House just as plainly as if I were back there again. The composition was actually born of homesickness, as Sousa freely told interviewers, and some of the melodic lines were conceived while he was still in Europe. Presumably it was penned in Sousa’s hotel suite in New York soon after docking. I wrote it on Christmas Day, 1896.” The march was not put to paper on board the ship. On board the steamer as I walked miles up and down the deck, back and forth, a mental band was playing ‘Stars and Stripes Forever.’ Day after day as I walked it persisted in crashing into my very soul. I rushed to Genoa, then to Paris and to England and sailed for America. I was in Italy and I wished to get home as soon as possible. Someone asked, “Who influenced you to compose ‘Stars and Stripes Forever,’” and before the question was hardly asked, Sousa replied, “God–and I say this in all reverence! I was in Europe and I got a cablegram that my manager was dead. In a Sousa Band program at Willow Grove we find this account: When asked why he composed this march, he would insist that its strains were divinely inspired. Sousa was very emotional in speaking of his own patriotism. That the players never tired of it is surely a measure of its greatness. Many former Sousa Band members have stated that they could not recall a concert in which it was not played, and that they too were inspired by looking into the misty eyes of those in the audience. Usually it was played unannounced as an encore. The piece was expected–and sometimes openly demanded–at every concert of the Sousa Band. The sight of Sousa conducting his own great band in this, his most glorious composition, always triggered an emotional response. With the passing years the march has endeared itself to the American people. Many bands still perform the piece this way. It was his practice to have the cornets, trumpets, trombones, and piccolos line up at the front of the stage for the final trio, and this added to the excitement. This became traditional at Sousa Band concerts. There was a vigorous response wherever it was performed, and audiences began to rise as though it were the national anthem. “The Stars and Stripes Forever” had found its place in history. Capitalizing on this situation, Sousa used it with maximum effect to climax his moving pageant, The Trooping of the Colors. It grew gradually in public acceptance, and with the advent of the Spanish-American War the nation suddenly needed such patriotic music. … Symbolic of flag-waving in general, it has been used with considerable effectiveness to generate patriotic feeling ever since its introduction in Philadelphia on May 14, 1897, when the staid Public Ledger reported: “It is stirring enough to rouse the American eagle from his crag, and set him to shriek exultantly while he hurls his arrows at the aurora borealis.”Īside from this flowery review, the march’s reception was only slightly above average for a new Sousa march. With the possible exception of “The Star Spangled Banner,” no musical composition has done more to arouse the patriotic spirit of America than this, John Philip Sousa’s most beloved composition.
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