SOUNDS TO ESTABLISH A CORPS: THE ORIGINS OF THE UNITED STATES MARINE BAND, 1798–1804

The Jeffersonian rise to power in 1801 ushered in sweeping political changes for the United States of America. It also focused attention on the newly established United States Marine Corps, as a group of hostile Congressmen sought to audit the service, dismiss many of its officers and do away with the executive function of its commandant. But Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) was also a supporter of the new capital's growing cultural life, and no organization better defined the connection between music and the federal government than the United States Marine Band. While this ensemble was not officially authorized by Congress until 1861, Commandant William Ward Burrows had already transformed his small group of sanctioned field musicians into an ensemble that could provide ceremonial and entertainment music for Washington, DC. This article traces the earliest history of the Marine Band, documents its development from eighteenth-century signalling traditions and suggests the ways in which its presence in the capital helped to stem the growing Republican tide against the Marine Corps itself.

A Presidential Musician

This chapter examines the first part of John Philip Sousa's tenure as leader of the United States Marine Band and shows how he worked to stabilize that ensemble's membership and modernize its repertoire. The following day after Sousa and his wife arrive in Washington in 1880, he enlisted in the Marine Corps for the third time, now as the band's seventeenth director, its youngest leader, and its first American-born conductor. Given the nature of Sousa's later fame, his appointment to the Marine Band seems only natural. But at this stage of his career he had never led a band or military ensemble. He was a published composer, but very little of his music was for ensembles of winds alone, and marches were not yet an important part of his output. Despite this lack of experience, Sousa's new appointment was little more than a fine-tuning of his career.

A Capital Boyhood

This chapter looks at John Philip Sousa's early education in Washington and his training as a member of the United States Marine Band. Looking back over his childhood, the March King remembered the 1860s as a period of adventure and the Navy Yard as a neighborhood that allowed youthful play to coexist with military pageantry. The soundtrack of this childhood was provided by military bands, some of which were accompanying Northern regiments to battle, while others were permanent residents of the city. The most important band was, of course, the Marine Band. By the age of thirteen he had largely committed himself to a career in music. He was helped along the way by a community of musicians that provided him with much more than playmates and an apprenticeship.

Making the March King

John Philip Sousa's mature career as the indomitable leader of his own touring band is well known, but the years leading up to his emergence as a celebrity have escaped serious attention. This revealing biography explains how the March King came to be by documenting Sousa's early life and career. Covering the period 1854–1893, the book focuses on the community and training that created Sousa, exploring the musical life of late nineteenth-century Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia as a context for Sousa's development. The book examines Sousa's wide-ranging experience composing, conducting, and performing in the theater, opera house, concert hall, and salons, as well as his leadership of the United States Marine Band and the later Sousa Band, early twentieth-century America's most famous and successful ensemble. Sousa composed not only marches during this period but also parlor, minstrel, and art songs; parade, concert, and medley marches; schottisches, waltzes, and polkas; and incidental music, operettas, and descriptive pieces. The book's examination of Sousa's output reveals a versatile composer much broader in stylistic range than the bandmaster extraordinaire remembered as the March King. It presents the story of Sousa as a self-made business success, a gifted performer and composer who deftly capitalized on his talents to create one of the most entertaining, enduring figures in American music.