Master of The March

The unquestioned guru of the March is John Philip Sousa. And the unquestioned biggest appreciator of Sousa is the United States Marine Band, who has been playing Sousa marches since Sousa himself directed the ensemble over 130 years ago. Therefore it is only fitting that the Marine Band should be the featured ensemble in 'Making the March King: The Sousa March in Form, Style, and Performance'. The first thing that should be mentioned is that the Marine Band already performed 3 times yesterday, and here they were back in clinic at 8:30 in the morning. Clearly they're the real MVPs here. Onstage with the Band was Patrick Warfield, a Musicologist and biographer of Sousa. With the assistance of the ensemble, Mr. Warfield proceeded to take us though Sousa's history with marches. Early on, Sousa's marches were strictly functional, used while the Band was parading and utilizing a lot of repeats and looping back in the piece so that all of the spectators along the parade route would be able to hear a good majority of the pice being played. But eventually the Marine Band (as well as Sousa himself) because extremely busy and reduced the number of parades that they did. Sousa was now faced with a problem: how do you take a music form that is meant to be very functional and played in a parade setting and make that same piece fit into a concert setting? This quandry led Sousa to make several unique tweaks to the form of his marches over the next several years. The first and most prevalent of those was making several un-notated changes in his pieces,  making then sound different from their as-written counterparts (a difference then demonstrated by the Marine Band). Another innovation he put into play was the extended trio, making the light parts between the heavy brass sections longer and more dynamically contrasted. As you might imagine, this change captivated audiences. All of these changes culminated in 1896, when Sousa wrote The Stars and Stripes Forever (the greatest American March). Audiences loved it. One contemporary reviewer said that the song was "stirring enough to rouse the American Eagle from its crag, and send a shriek exaltedly while he hurls his arrow at the Aurora Borealis!" You may think that an overstatement, but get back to me after you've played the trumpet on the triumphant ending to the song. It is practically a religious experience. The current Marine Band is doing its part to preserve Sousa's legacy of marches. Since 2014 they have been on a mission to record every single Sousa march. The recordings are being released online free of charge on the Marine Band's website.