Ancient and Honorable
Artillery Company

The fifth piece in the concert, entitled Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company, was written by John Philip Sousa (see below) in 1924.

“I have always found a great deal of inspiration in these old songs. … We cannot improve simple straightforward melodies, but we can give them a more adequate, full-throated expression….” Sousa made this statement to a newspaper reporter in discussing the new march he had just build around “Auld Lang Syne.”

“Auld Lang Syne” happened to be the marching song of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of Boston, the oldest military organization in the United States. When the Sousa Band visited Boston in 1923, a delegation from the “Ancients” requested that Sousa compose a march incorporating the song so dear to them. He gave them his word. Formal solicitation by Governor Cox of Massachusetts and the commander of the company, Capt. Clarence J. McKenzie, followed shortly.

The Sousa Band’s strenuous thirty-second annual tour lay ahead of Sousa, but he wasted no time in penning the new march when the tour ended, and it was promptly published.

“Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company” was the featured march of the next tour, and a formal presentation was made to the “Ancients” at Symphony Hall in Boston on September 21, 1924.

Interestingly, it is Sousa’s shortest march, taking only two minutes and twenty-three seconds to play. Nonetheless, it incorporates several interesting melodies (besides “Auld Lang Syne”) and countermelodies and is a sparkling example of Sousa’s gift of masterfully crafting march music.

John Philip Sousa was born on November 6, 1854, in Washington, D.C., near the Marine Barracks where his father, Antonio, played trombone in the U.S. Marine Band. John Philip was the third of 10 children of John Antonio Sousa (born in Spain of Portuguese parents) and Maria Elisabeth Trinkhaus (born in Bavaria). Young John Philip grew up surrounded by military band music, and when he was just six, he began studying voice, violin, piano, flute, cornet, baritone, trombone and alto horn. By all accounts, John Philip was an adventure-loving boy, and when, at the age of 13, he tried to run away to join a circus band, his father instead enlisted him in the Marine Band as a band apprentice. Except for a period of six months, Sousa remained in the band until he was 20 years old. In addition to his musical training in the Marine Band, he studied music theory and composition with George Felix Benkert, a noted Washington orchestra leader and teacher. It was during his years in the Marines that Sousa wrote his first composition, “Moonlight on the Potomac Waltzes”.

Discharged from the Marines in 1875, the 21-year-old Sousa began performing on violin, touring and eventually conducting theater orchestras, including Gilbert & Sullivan's H.M.S. Pinafore on Broadway.

In 1879, Sousa met Jane van Middlesworth Bellis, and they married on December 30, 1879. Just a year later, the couple returned to Washington, D.C., where Sousa assumed leadership of the U.S. Marine Band. Over the next 12 years, Sousa conducted the “The President's Own” band, serving under Presidents Hayes, Garfield, Cleveland, Arthur and Harrison. Sousa, the composer, first received acclaim in military band circles with the writing of his march “The Gladiator” in 1886. In 1888, he wrote “Semper Fidelis”, which he dedicated to “the officers and men of the Marine Corps.” It is traditionally known as the “official” march of the Marine Corps.

Under Sousa, the Marine Band also made its first recordings. The phonograph was a relatively new invention, and the Columbia Phonograph Company sought a military band to record. The Marine Band was chosen, and 60 cylinders were released in the fall of 1890. By 1897, more than 400 different titles were available for sale, placing Sousa's marches among the first and most popular pieces ever recorded, and making the Marine Band one of the world's first "recording stars." Interestingly, Sousa actually directed the band in very few of the recordings (he left that to an assistant). He detested mechanical recordings of music.

After two successful but limited tours with the Marine Band in 1891 and 1892, promoter David Blakely convinced Sousa to resign and organize a civilian concert band; thus was born Sousa's New Marine Band.

The band's first concert was performed on Sept. 26, 1892 at Stillman Music Hall in Plainfield, New Jersey. Two days earlier, legendary bandleader Patrick Gilmore had died in St. Louis. Nineteen of Gilmore's former musicians eventually joined Sousa's band, including Herbert L. Clarke (cornet) and E. A. Lefebre (saxophone). Although its original name was Sousa's New Marine Band, criticism from Washington eventually forced the band to drop the “New Marine” part of its name.

In 1896, Sousa and his wife were vacationing in Europe when word came that David Blakely had died. The couple immediately left for home. It was on the return voyage home that Sousa was inspired to begin writing his most famous composition, “The Stars and Stripes Forever.”

From 1900 to 1931, the Sousa Band toured the U.S., Europe, Great Britain, the Canary Islands and the South Pacific (Australia and New Zealand during the band's 13-month round-the-world tour undertaken in 1910-11), strengthening its growing reputation as the most admired American band of its time.

Between 1879 and 1915, Sousa wrote 11 operettas, of which El Capitan (1896), The Bride Elect (1897), and The Free Lance (1906) were particularly successful. He also wrote at least 70 songs, 11 waltzes, 12 other dance pieces, 11 suites, 14 humoresques, and 27 fantasies. This was in addition to the 137 marches for which he is most famous.

In 1893, Sousa collaborated with James Welsh Pepper to develop a type of bass tuba made to his specifications and eventually called the sousaphone. Contrary to popular opinion, the instrument was intended for concert use, with its bell pointed upward (“to send the sound upward and over the band”). The so-called “raincatchers” were eventually modified to have forward facing bells, and now are most commonly used for marching bands.

During World War I, Sousa enlisted in the U.S. Navy (at the age of 62!) and took charge of the band-training center at Great Lakes Naval Base, in Illinois. For the U.S. Department of the Navy he compiled National, Patriotic and Typical Airs of All Lands.

After World War I, Sousa continued to tour with his band while championing the cause of music education for all children. He also received several honorary degrees and fought for composers' rights, testifying before Congress in 1927 and 1928.

Sousa's last appearance before the Marine Band was in 1932 in Washington, D.C. Sousa, as a distinguished guest, rose from the speaker's table, took the baton from Captain Taylor Branson, the band's director, and led the band in “The Stars and Stripes Forever.”

Later that year, one day after conducting a rehearsal of the Ringgold Band in Reading, Pa., the 77-year old Sousa passed away on March 6, 1932. The last piece Sousa had rehearsed with the band was “The Stars and Stripes Forever”.

Sousa had many talents aside from music, authoring three novels and a full-length autobiography, as well as a number of articles and letters-to-the-editor on a variety of subjects. He was also an avid horseman, until he broke his neck in a fall in 1921 and had to stop riding.