Part 4

Philip’s violin teacher found fault with his manner of bowing and they had a fiery argument. Angry and disgusted, the boy decided to give up music. He went to work at night in a bakery. His parents insisted that he continue going to school in the daytime, but he could not carry on such a sleepless, strenuous schedule. He gave up the bakery job and returned to the Academy after his father had made peace with the professor.

Although only thirteen years old, Philip organized his first band--a quadrille band he called it. He played the first violin. Seven men, all much older than he, played respectively: the second violin, viola, bass, clarinet, cornet, trombone and drum. They became quite a famous dance orchestra until young Sousa, urged by the other members asked for an increase in pay. When the manager refused him, Philip quit. The other members played on without a raise, but Sousa had lost his job.

Feeling very blue and despondent, Philip was quite in the mood to accept an offer which came to him just then--to play in a circus band. The job seemed full of gaiety and glamour, but he felt sure that his parents would never give their consent. The circus agent also knew this was true, but he finally won the boy’s promise to keep it a secret and go with the company when it left Washington.

Under the cloak of secrecy the idea grew more appealing, but Philip made the mistake of confiding in his friend who lived next door, swearing him to secrecy. The boy promptly told his mother all about it. _His_ mother, just as promptly, told Philip’s mother. Horror-struck she went to her husband, but Philip’s father wisely said nothing to the boy.

The next day, however, Mr. Sousa and his son went out for a walk. The walk ended at the Navy Yard where, a few hours before, Mr. Sousa had conferred with the Commandant, General Zeilin. As a result John Philip Sousa enlisted in the Marine Band June 9, 1868, as a music apprentice.

This was the beginning of Philip’s training for his real career. He soon became an expert cornetist, but he did not neglect his violin practice. And before long he had begun to compose music.

He made friends rapidly. Among them was the Honorable William Hunter, Assistant Secretary of State. Mr. Hunter, a great lover of music, each week invited a group of young students to his home for a musical evening. He always gave them a bountiful supper and never failed to slip a five-dollar bill into the pocket of his favorite, Philip.

After a few years the Marine Band began to lose its glamour for Sousa. He wanted more independence. Through Mr. Hunter’s influence he was released from the organization. He began to teach the violin, and his classes grew fast. At the same time he took lessons from George Benkert, a fine violinist. By playing first violin in the orchestra at Ford’s Opera House, he was able to pay his way.

Soon Philip, a handsome young fellow of nineteen, accepted a position as an orchestra leader in Chicago. And before long he went to Philadelphia to play first violin in Offenbach’s Orchestra which had come from France to play at the Centennial Celebration. He also played in Mrs. John Drew’s popular theater orchestra. Later he managed and coached a company of society folk in the Gilbert and Sullivan opera, _Pinafore_.

Then young Philip Sousa fell in love with Jennie Bellis, a pretty sixteen-year-old actress in the opera cast. In less than one year they were married and living in a little home in Philadelphia. Three children were born to them throughout the years, two girls and one boy, Helen, Priscilla and Philip Jr.

On October 1, 1880, Sousa was recalled to Washington from Philadelphia to conduct the Marine Band. He took the group of well-trained but disorganized musicians and succeeded in establishing fine cooperation and rare good feeling. _He built the Marine Band into the finest marching band in all America._ “The President’s Own,” as it was called, always played at the White House for social and state affairs.

At 26, Sousa was a man of distinctive appearance with his square-trimmed black beard, gold-rimmed eyeglasses and his always immaculate uniforms. He never failed to put on a pair of clean white kid gloves for each performance. In later years after Sousa had achieved great wealth, he stepped into a large Fifth Avenue store in New York City and nonchalantly ordered twelve hundred pairs of white kid gloves, at five dollars a pair.

Although Sousa conducted with a gracious dignity, he seldom smiled. Yet his audience keenly felt his strong, magnetic personality. He had no affectations or mannerisms but stood still in his place very erect, swinging his arms in precise unison in his own individual fashion. The music seemed to come from his expressive hands.

Sousa was a wonderful showman with a keen sense of spectacular effects. Once when giving an outdoor evening concert, he noticed the lights were turned on gradually. First a tiny speck appeared in the darkness, slowly growing into a glaring blaze of light. That gave him an idea. Sousa had his band begin the opening number, _Nearer My God to Thee_, in a soft, tender pianissimo just as the faint beam of light appeared. The music gradually increased in power as the lights grew brighter, ending in an enormous crescendo as the illumination reached its greatest strength. This was so impressive and pleasing that the audience requested this hymn and the accompanying lighting effects be played throughout the entire season.

The people, not only in the capital city but over the whole United States, were enabled to hear the finest music of the time through John Philip Sousa and the Marine Band. At his request Congress, for the first time, granted permission for the U. S. Marine Band to make concert tours over the country. Those opportunities were appreciated for that was an era when a fine band was a great novelty. Many people gladly traveled long distances to large cities to hear Sousa’s Marine Band.

After twelve years Sousa retired from this great organization. A syndicate of Chicago men asked him to come there and form a band “which would not be excelled by any brass band on earth.” He was offered a huge salary besides a generous interest in the profits. “And in addition,” said Sousa, “they purchased a half interest in all my manuscript compositions and in any others I may write through the next five years. For twelve years, I have been conducting in Washington and my heart is here, but this offer is too good to be refused.”

Sousa had no difficulty in forming his new organization in Chicago. Soloists on the various band instruments and expert bandsmen from all parts of the country, eager to join the famous bandmaster, applied for membership.

Beginning at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1892, this noted concert band traveled all over the United States, playing in every large town and city. They toured many foreign countries and in addition, made one trip around the world, winning the greatest success and honor wherever they appeared. Sousa and his popular band gave command concerts for England’s royalty, and it was a London newspaper man that gave him the title of the “March King.”

Sousa believed that he was inspired to write marches by the influence of the Civil War days during his childhood in Washington. At that time the air was filled with the sound of marching troops and military bands, and this impression had never left him. Sousa is said to have been responsible for the great popularity of marches during the 1890 decade.

_The Stars and Stripes Forever_ came to him during an ocean voyage. Called home by the death of his friend and manager, David Blakesly, he sailed from Naples. He spent hours pacing back and forth on deck, and this music came into his mind and would not leave. When he arrived home, he immediately wrote the composition as he had heard it. This march was published without any change at all, and from its various sources earned Sousa over $300,000.

In World War I Sousa gave up his band and his huge salary to join the Great Lakes Naval Reserve. He became conductor of the Great Lakes Band for which he accepted only one dollar a month. He at once shaved off his luxurious beard--“so the young fellows wouldn’t think me so much older than they.”

The number of enlistments fairly swamped the band quarters. Hundreds flocked to receive instruction from this noted bandmaster. There were so many that Sousa organized a band battalion of 350 with a full quota of officers. The remaining men he put into double battleship units which were assigned to each regiment at the station and to different ships as the Admirals requested. While he was with the Great Lakes Band, Sousa designed a new band instrument--a mellow-toned horn to replace the Helicon tuba with its harsh sound. This Sousaphone is in use in all large bands today.

At the end of the war Sousa reassembled his concert band of eighty-four top-notch players. This was generally acknowledged the finest concert band of all time. He traveled with the group through six months of the year and vacationed the remaining months. For some time Sousa refused to broadcast as he disliked the radio. He said that he missed the direct contact with his audience and the stimulation of its presence and applause. However, when he was seventy-five years old, he accepted the large salary offered him to play weekly broadcasts of one hour each.

Although the world at large knew Sousa as the March King, his more than one hundred marches represent only a small part of his writings. He also composed ten operas, including _El Capitan_, in which De Wolfe Hopper starred. _The Queen of Hearts_, _The Bride Elect_, _Chris and the Wonderful Lamp_, and _The Charlatan_, all big successes in their day. He composed more than twenty suites, forty or fifty songs, and a monumental work for orchestra, organ and choir, including _The Last Crusade_. He wrote three novels: _Pipetown Sandy_, in which he devoted a chapter describing the two-day march of the victorious U. S. Northern army; _The Transit of Venus_; and _The Fifth String_. He was the author of numerous magazine articles, and an illustrated biographical sketch ran serially in the _Saturday Evening Post_ in 1925. His autobiography, _Marching Along_, was published in 1928.

So many sources of income brought Sousa great wealth. He had always liked to ride horseback, play golf, and shoot clay pigeons at the trap. To indulge in these hobbies he bought a large farm--700 acres--in North Carolina. There he also raised game birds--quail, grouse and partridges, as well as dogs and horses. But Sousa really spent most of his free time at his beautiful home at Sands Point on Long Island, New York. There he was happiest when surrounded by his devoted wife and family. There he often entertained his warm friends, among whom were Thomas A. Edison, Victor Herbert, Irving Berlin and Charles Chaplin.

Sousa was seventy-eight years old when he died of a sudden heart attack, March 6, 1932, at Reading, Pennsylvania. He had gone there to lead the Ringgold band on its eightieth anniversary. His body was brought home to Washington, his birthplace, and lay in state in the bandroom of the Marine Barracks, where at the age of thirteen his musical career had begun.

During his funeral the Senators and Representatives of the U. S. Government paused in their proceedings to pay a tribute to John Philip Sousa, whom they called “The world’s greatest composer of march music.”

Sousa is buried in the Congressional Cemetery on a grassy plot, not far from his beloved Capitol.

“Wherever he has gone,” Deems Taylor wrote, “I am sure he has found a welcome. There is a dining hall in the Elysian Fields marked Grade A Composers Only. If you could look in at the door tonight, you would probably see him there; perhaps not at the speakers’ table with Wagner and Beethoven and Mozart and Bach and Debussy and the rest, but somewhere in the room--at a small table, possibly, with Herbert and Strauss and Delibes.

“‘However did _he_ get in here?’ asks some disapproving shade--a small-town Kapellmeister, probably ... ‘Who got _him_ in?’

“The guide smiles, ‘The marching men. The men who had to go long miles, on an empty belly, under a hot sun, or through a driving rain. They made us take him in. They said he made things easier for them.’”

PATRICK SARSFIELD GILMORE

_The Father of the Concert Band_

Patrick Sarsfield Gilmore, America’s first great bandmaster, was born on Christmas Day, 1829, in the village of Ballygar, County Galway, Ireland. His parents hoped that he would go into the priesthood, but that idea did not appeal to Patrick. He loved music more than anything else in the world. Even when a very small boy he had a knack of making his own toys from wood, wire or whatever he could find. Always they were crude musical instruments, fifes, drums or fiddles from which he was able to blow, beat or scrape a bit of a tune.

At fifteen, Patrick having finished the village school, went to work in a mercantile house in the nearby town of Athlone. Several regiments of the British army were stationed in the town, and Patrick could not keep away from their bands. One of the bandmasters, a Mr. Keating, noticed the boy and taught him to play the cornet.

Before long Patrick’s employer discovered that his young clerk was giving more time to music than business. He kindly suggested that the boy teach his own sons what he knew about music. But Pat did not care to teach, he preferred playing. He learned so rapidly that soon Keating gave him a place in a regimental band. Later, when the regiments were sent over to Canada, along went Patrick Gilmore.

When Pat was nineteen, he became tired of the military service. He obtained his release from the British army, and drifted down to Boston which was then the musical center of the United States. Young Gilmore at once found a job in Ordway’s Music Store. This concern which had a band and a minstrel show held his interest for a short time. But Patrick, true to his first love, soon got a place in a band and became known as a skillful cornetist.

It was but a short time until Patrick Gilmore was the leader of the Charleston Band. His second venture in leadership was as the successor of Ned Kendall, the well-known bandmaster of the Suffolk Band. Gilmore’s experience in the army had taught him the value of discipline and practice and with his genial, friendly disposition, he had no trouble in training his bandsmen. His reputation grew as he took over the leadership of the Boston Brigade Band.

About this time a noted French bandleader, Louis Antoine Jullien, arrived in Boston. He had a fine orchestra and used many spectacular effects in his programs. One number which must have made a deep impression on Pat Gilmore was called _The Firemen’s Quadrille_. In this, fireworks were displayed and a company of firemen appeared drenching the aisles with water from the hose.

Gilmore gave up the Boston Brigade to accept an offer from the Salem Band at “$1,000 a year and all he could make.” After two successful years he returned to Boston where he organized his first band. Gilmore was then twenty-nine years old. Handsome, high-spirited and even-tempered, he made many friends. He was popular in various circles, especially among newspaper publishers, merchants and politicians. Pat never believed in hiding his accomplishments; he used every possible means of advertising himself and his band. He took his organization to the Charleston Convention, in 1860, and to the Lincoln Convention in Chicago’s Wigwam.

When the Civil War came on, Gilmore and his band enlisted in a body in the 24th Massachusetts Volunteers. Governor Andrews named Gilmore Bandmaster-General and Chief Musician of the State of Massachusetts. The regiment was sent to North Carolina, and later to New Orleans where Gilmore was put in charge of all the military bands in the Department of the Gulf.

In 1864, at a huge celebration in honor of the inauguration of the Honorable Michael Hahn as Governor of the Union State of Louisiana, Gilmore staged a spectacular concert. He assembled a chorus of 5,000 school children, a band of 500 pieces, a huge fife and drum corps, with cannon and bells coming in to accent the climaxes. _Hail Columbia_, _Star-Spangled Banner_, _America_ and other patriotic choruses were sung. Bandmaster Gilmore scored a great success. He returned home filled with ambition and eager for new worlds to conquer.

Back in Boston he organized a new band, and made a tour of the country, reaping more honors for himself and his new organization. Then Patrick Sarsfield Gilmore conceived the great idea which carried him to the peak of his career. In June, 1867, he told his wife after asking her to keep the matter secret, “I’m going to get up the greatest musical festival and the grandest celebration in the world. It is to be a National Jubilee to celebrate the Coming of Peace throughout the land. It will be held in a great coliseum that will be built to hold 50,000 people.... The excitement over all the country will be tremendous and everybody will rejoice at the idea.”

Gilmore went to work at once on his great project. Boston people thought he was crazy. Neither New York nor Washington would have anything to do with such a wild scheme. Failing to get any city to undertake the plan, he determined to do it himself. With his winning Irish ways Gilmore talked to millionaire bankers, conservative music leaders, doctors, lawyers and merchants, everyone of influence whose interest he desired. And he won their cooperation in almost every case. Julius Eichberg, the director of the staid Boston Conservatory of Music, agreed to conduct the chorus of 20,000 school children. Carl Zerrahn, Boston’s top orchestra leader, promised to direct the mammoth orchestra in several great works. Singing societies from far and near accepted invitations to join the grand chorus of 10,000 voices. They wrote for programs and soon the choral numbers were being practiced in countless towns and cities, all getting ready for the great event.

Gilmore, producer or projector, as many spoke of him, personally carried out his gigantic plans, and neither his powerful energy nor his smiling good humor ever failed him. He wrote hundreds of letters and signed each one. “Praying that the grace of God be with the undertaking and direct it to a successful end.” Although there were great numbers of objectors and opponents to the stupendous scheme, Gilmore, undaunted, worked cheerfully on. Many hundreds of people gave money and help to the happy, confident originator of the plan.

The date was set, June 15, 16, 17, 1869. The immense auditorium, 500 feet long, 300 feet wide and 100 feet high, was erected in St. James Park,--now the site of the Copley-Plaza Hotel. Thousands objected to the huge coliseum, saying that it would be unsafe for a great crowd. Parents protested against the 20,000 children’s chorus singing in the new untried structure. The school board reported this to Gilmore who cleverly suggested that the children sing on the _final_ instead of the _first_ day, after the building had been tested by the crowds at the earlier programs. The school board consented to this.

The coming great Peace Jubilee was the talk of the whole country. Crowds were coming from great distances as well as nearby. Gilmore had won the consent of the railroad companies to sell half-fare train tickets to all visitors. The newspapers advertised low-priced rooms and lodgings. All Boston was hysterically excited over the gigantic celebration. When the huge bass drum arrived on a flat car--it was the largest drum ever made in America up to that time--the crowd of curious people completely jammed the railroad station so that no one could get in or out.

In order to keep the thousands of musicians together in the performance, Gilmore had speaking tubes attached to his music stand through which he gave orders to his various assistant leaders throughout the band and chorus. Beside these tubes were telegraph keys to control the electrified cannon out in the park.

Finally all the arrangements were completed. Gilmore, returning home at midnight June 14, told his wife, “When I even think of tomorrow I can find no words to express my feelings.” Mrs. Gilmore gave him this cheery reply. “... Only two things will afterwards be spoken of as wonderful and miraculous--one is the Creation, the other, your Peace Jubilee.”

At three o’clock on the afternoon of June 15, the doors of the great auditorium were closed. The vast audience, thousands upon thousands, filled the great building from the floor to the roof. The singers, ten thousand of them, were seated on the stage. The one thousand men in the orchestra sat in their places with every instrument tuned in readiness.

The aged Edward Everett Hale offered the opening prayer. After the mayor’s too lengthy address which very few could hear, the concert master, Carl Rosa came on the stage to join the orchestra. Following him, amid great applause came the world’s most noted violinist, Ole Bull, to be the first violin in the orchestra.

Gilmore entered last, wildly cheered. He mounted the high stand. Bowing to the audience his voice trembled with emotion as he uttered a few words of welcome, ending with, “To One alone, the Omnipotent God, all honor, all glory and all praise are due.” He was a striking figure, tall and slender. His face, framed in his black sideburns and distinctive goatee, was pale from excitement. Large, star-shaped, gold studs glittered in the snowy shirtfront of his immaculate costume. Every eye was fixed upon the graceful erect leader. With his hands held straight before him his baton in his right, suddenly the baton was lifted high, then in a forceful swoop, signalled the opening down beat. Band, organ, chorus, all burst forth together in an ecstasy of harmony in the grand old hymn, _A Mighty Fortress Is Our God_.

The entire audience went wild and their applause lasted for an unbelievable time. Gilmore, trembling and shaken, although filled with triumph, bowed and hurried from the stage.

The program proceeded in its regular order. Julius Eichberg took his place on the stand to conduct Wagner’s _Tannhäuser_ by the band.

The most spectacular number, _The Anvil Chorus_ from Verdi’s _Il Trovatore_, had to be repeated at every day’s program by the request of the audience. No one present could ever forget the parade of the Boston Firemen down the aisle to the stage.

When the time came for _The Anvil Chorus_ which Gilmore always directed, he whistled through the tubes, snapped down his upraised hands, and every instrument instantly woke into sound. The clanging anvils shot flaming sparks as the firemen struck their rhythmic blows. At the grand climax the telegraph keys let loose the ear-shattering blasts of the cannon in a magnificent fortissimo. (Gilmore was the first bandleader to fire a cannon by electricity.)

The vast audience was completely carried away by the marvelous voice of the singer, Parepa-Rosa. She created a tremendous sensation by her singing of the _Star-Spangled Banner_. Dressed in glistening white silk with large buttons of red, white and blue, and diamonds sparkling in her dark hair, she was magnificent. The newspapers gave her great praise. “... Her voice ringing like a trumpet-call above the noise of a thousand instruments, ten thousand voices, the roaring organ, the big drum and the artillery.”

The whole program was a superb success, but the great soprano, Parepa-Rosa, the spectacular arrangement of _The Anvil Chorus_, and Patrick Gilmore himself, were the outstanding features of the festival.