The Secret of John Philip Sousa
A hundred years ago, John Philip Sousa was the most popular musician in America. Was that just because marches were more popular then?
No. "Sousa's secret," says Jerry Rife, the leader of the Blawenburg Band, and a professor of music at Rider University in Lawrenceville, NJ, "is simple, but often lost on people who people who put together programs of orchestral music today."
A little-known fact about Sousa, according to Rife, who studies and plays his music, is that the composer of "The Stars and Stripes Forever" and other popular favorites was a classically-trained musician, who also followed the avant-garde trends of the late nineteenth century.
"Sousa's secret was his programming: the way he put his band concerts together. After the audience listened to a disturbing or difficult modern piece, it was always rewarded with a piece of candy by Sousa: a light air or a rousing march."
The secret works. This summer, under Rife's leadership, the Blawenburg Band is playing to large and appreciative audiences, and introducing some modern and contemporary works among the stirring favorites, such as Stars and Stripes Forever, and sentimental ballads.
"Academic music could learn a lot from John Philip Sousa," says Rife, who has combined his academic research interest with his performing talents.
The Blawenburg Band is playing a Sousa-style concert in Yardley, Pennsylvania this year on the 4th of July. It will be a formal classical concert at the Yardley Community Center, with an overture, soloists, special pieces, and plenty of rare Sousa pieces. His great "Atlantic City Pageant March," which he wrote for the Miss America Pageant in Atlantic City, is on the program, as is the "Rose, Shamrock and Thistle," which is a paean to the United Kingdom. Sousa once played it for the King and Queen of England in a private concert, and the audience-- the royal couple-- regally stood during the playing of Rule Britannia.
For information contact Jerry Rife at Rider University at 609-895-5481, at home at 609-882-4148, [email protected], or try Earle Rommel in the university news office at 609-896-5192.
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