Sousa March Interpretation


It is a pleasure to discuss the marches of John Philip Sousa. In recent years, the number of Sousa March performances has diminished and the quality of those performances has dropped as well. Unfortunately, the performances of Sousa Marches (and all marches, for that matter) have not received the degree of attention given to the other music on the program. As a consequence, the music has suffered and the result has been mediocre performances which may lead listeners to conclude that march music is mediocre.


A Sousa March, like any other piece of music, requires careful preparation and rehearsal. Without paying attention to characteristic devices found in the music, a Strauss Waltz would not be a Strauss Waltz and the same is true for a Sousa March.


With the Marine Band, Sousa marches are a staple of our musical diet. Every Marine Band performance includes at least one Sousa march, often, one of his concert works as well.


In the mid-1970’s, the Marine Band completed a major recording project consisting of eighteen albums of Sousa’s Marches and Concert Music. The nine-volume series was entitled “The Heritage of John-Philip Sousa” and some of you may have encountered it in your school or university record libraries.


This year, we are embarking upon another Sousa recording project which will initially cover ten marches and five concert works. Without the deadlines and pressures of an entire series facing us at once, we are re-examining the Sousa Marches and are consulting every available source to try to record the most authentic interpretations of each piece. It has been a fascinating project and I wanted to share with you some of the insights which we have gained through this study.


Our first challenge in recording these marches was to insure that we were performing this music from the most authentic editions of each march. One of the problems is that many Sousa Marches have been republished in editions which have significantly changed what Sousa wrote, with no indication of those changes.


For example, if you purchase the edition of “The Stars and Stripes Forever” which is currently available from Theodore Presser, that edition will contain ten instrumental parts which Sousa did not compose, nor did he ever perform them.


When the original copyrights on a number of the more popular Sousa Marches expired, the publishers apparently decided to expand the instrumentation and to re-copyright the march in


ala breve


its new form. These changes served largely to expand the original instrumentation to meet that of the full symphonic band but, surprisingly, rather major changes were made. The new parts were not simply doublings of existing lines but entirely new material. In some cases, the new parts were written, basically, in thirds as a harmony part to an existing part. In other cases, entirely new music was composed which appears nowhere in Sousa’s original scores.


John R. Bourgeois


The following are excerpts from a clinic given by Colonel John R. Bourgeois, Director of “The President’s Own’ United States Marine Band, during the 1989 Alabama All-State Band Festival. This article first appeared in the October 1989 Ala Breve.


William Gens, president of the society at that time, reported about a speech given by Edwin Franko Goldman to the Sousa Band members on this subject. He wrote, “Dr. Goldman asked us to do everything in our power to stop publishers from murdering Sousa Marches. It is a crime what they are doing to make a sale. We should all refuse to buy, play, or handle anything but those from the original publishers.”


Knowing that such problems existed, we began by selecting editions of the marches which were published within Sousa’s lifetime. We know that Sousa was aware of these editions and used them with his band. All editions of Sousa which were republished in the early 1950’s obviously did not have the benefit of Sousa’s scrutiny.


To verify the correct editions, we consulted the Sousa Band Encore Books, which are in the Sousa collection in our library. These encore books were used at every performance by the Sousa Band and include the actual performance parts used by his musicians. Following a programmed work, Sousa would call out the march encores to the band and they would be played from the parts in these encore books.


In addition to verifying the editions themselves, the encore books are also a valuable source of information about Sousa performance practice – a subject we will discuss later. Once the correct editions of the marches had been identified, we located all of the original manuscript scores which were known to exist. Copies of these manuscript scores would be used to verify notes, articulations, and dynamics of the marches.


John Phillip Sousa


To add to the problem, the original cornet parts were redistributed, totally changing the balances and eliminating the important first cornet part and, further, two trumpet parts were composed from out of thin air.


It may come as a surprise to many of you that the arpeggiated trumpet figures which we often hear in the trio of “Stars and Stripes” are not original Sousa and were never played by the Sousa band. Unfortunately, the music simply indicates that it was written by John Philip Sousa and no indication is given that a change was ever made. Because no full scores were published to these marches, the changes and discrepancies with the original versions became harder to find.


Former members of the Sousa Band were aware of this problem and discussed it during the 1952 meeting of the Sousa Band Fraternal Society.


The next challenge was to prepare the instrumental parts and to reconcile discrepancies within the edition itself. Although Sousa did not approve the publication of the marches in his lifetime, his publishers were not always precise and thorough in giving exact notations, accents, and other critical markings. This required checking each part to each march with the key parts – solo cornet and solo clarinet – and then checking the entire march against the original score.


The purpose of checking against the solo cornet and solo clarinet parts is that, in many cases, the most correct accents, articulations, and dynamics were indicated in these parts. The problem is that these marking were not always carried consistently throughout all the other parts. When Sousa conducted his own music, he could give elaborate verbal instructions on note lengths, accents, and interpretations and some of these discrepancies were less critical to him in his work with his professional band. He thoroughly coached his


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