July 5, 2006
“The Stars and Stripes Forever!” Posted by John Steele Gordon at 04:50 PM EST Even successful artists are usually not destined for immortality. Gustav Kerker was a very popular Broadway composer from the 1880s until the 1920s, but he is utterly forgotten today, despite having written such hits as Belle of New York.
Other men get a tiny but seemingly permanent toehold on immortality. You’ve probably never heard of an English divine named John William Burgon, dean of Chichester, unless you are deep into the study of Victorian theological disputes. But he is in every book of quotations for his description of the lost city of Petra as a “rose red city ‘half as old as time’” despite the fact that half his one-and-only famous line is a quotation from the poet Samuel Rogers.
And some are immortal but not for the reasons they thought they would be. Sir Arthur Sullivan wrote operas, symphonies, oratorios and other “serious” music in great quantity. But today that music is all forgotten and his name is a household word because of the operettas he wrote with W. S. Gilbert—works Sullivan regarded as trivial, merely a means to fund a lavish lifestyle. (In fairness Sullivan is also the composer of “The Lost Chord” and the perennially popular with children but oh-so-politically-incorrect hymn “Onward Christian Soldiers.”)
This week we have all been celebrating the 230th anniversary of American independence, and it is quite impossible to get through the week of July 4 without hearing the music of John Philip Sousa. Like Sullivan he wrote much music that, popular at the time, is now forgotten, including 15 operettas and numerous independent songs. Like Burgon, he will always be remembered for one thing, “The Stars and Stripes Forever!”
It is perhaps the most famous march in the world, and many consider it the greatest march ever written. Leonard Bernstein, no mean judge of music and unquestionably immortal in his own right, once said that he would have given half his career to have written the four minutes of music that is “The Stars and Stripes Forever!”
Sousa wrote it in 1896 while on board ship returning from Europe. While he composed it in his head, he didn’t write it down until he got back to the United States and thereafter never changed a note. Why should he have? It was an instant sensation and has been foot-stampingly popular with young and old, simple and sophisticated, ever since, as thrilling to hear for the hundredth time as it must have been to hear for the first time. It is the official national march of the United States.
On March 6th, 1932, Sousa led a rehearsal for a concert in Reading, Pennsylvania. Shortly afterwards, he collapsed and died, at the age of 77. The last piece of music this most famous of bandleaders conducted before being taken ill was, of course, “The Stars and Stripes Forever!”
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