U of Ideas of General Interest -- July 2000
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Contact: Melissa Mitchell, Arts Editor, (217) 333-5491; [email protected]
MUSIC HISTORY
Life and times of 'March King' come alive at Sousa Archives
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- It's the fifth of July. The parades are gone and the fireworks are over. What's a patriotic, nostalgia-driven American to do?
Two words: Road trip. And the perfect off-the-beaten-track destination for patriots and music-lovers alike just might be the Sousa Archives for Band Research at the University of Illinois. There, visitors can view -- among other things -- the original band parts of the march many Americans most closely associate with the Fourth of July: John Philip Sousa's "The Stars and Stripes Forever."
As noted in a recent article in the American Automobile Association magazine "Home & Away," the archives is an invaluable resource for Sousa scholars and American band-music researchers. But the archives and its small museum housing everything from Sousa band uniforms and instruments to the band leader's own brand of cigars also manages to capture the imagination of hundreds of visitors each year who simply share an interest in American musical history.
Archivist Phyllis Danner said Sousa is perhaps best known as America's "March King," with 136 march scores to his credit. And the march he is probably most famous for -- "The Stars and Stripes Forever" -- was actually the last composition played under his baton. Sousa died following a performance of the Ringgold Band in Reading, Pa., in 1932.
Among the facts of Sousa's life not so well known to those who appreciate his music today, Danner said, is that he also composed a wide variety of other types of music -- from songs and suites to fantasies, humoresques and operettas. He wrote 14 operettas, four of which -- "El Capitan," "The Charlatan," The Bride Elect" and "Chris and the Wonderful Lamp" -- were in production on Broadway between 1896 and 1900. Another of Sousa's comic operas, "The Glass Blower," has been restored by Jerrold Fisher and William Martin of New York's Lyric Theater and will receive its world premiere July 8 at Glimmerglass Opera in Cooperstown, N.Y.
Danner said Sousa didn't limit his writing to music. He wrote seven books, among them an autobiography, a manual on how to run a marching band, and a couple of works of fiction. Danner described Sousa's "Pipetown Sandy" as "a tale of a boy's adventures around Washington, D.C., during the Civil War," and his novella "The Fifth String" as "a Faustian tale of a young man who sells his soul to buy a violin to attract the attention of a woman." Sousa also wrote poetry, journal articles and numerous letters to the editor "on a variety of topics he felt passionately about," Danner said.
The UI's Sousa collection dates from 1896-1932 and comprises about 70 percent of the Sousa Band performance library; remaining Sousa materials can be found at the Library of Congress, U.S. Marine Band headquarters and New York Public Library. The archives, administered by the UI Library, also house other band-music material, including personal papers of the UI's first band director, Albert Austin Harding, and subsequent directors. It also is the repository for the Herbert L. Clarke collection. Clarke was cornet soloist and assistant director of the Sousa band from 1893 to 1917.
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