Hands Across the Sea

Hands Across the Sea as written in 1899 by John Philip Sousa (see below); this edition of the march was edited for current instrumentation by Frederick Fennell (see also below) in 1982.

Warning: This is a rather lengthy spotlight, especially concerning Sousa. Feel free to skim or skip through it as you wish.

When Hands Across the Sea premiered on April 21, 1899, at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia, the audience insisted that it be repeated three times. The march is “addressed to no particular nation, but to all of America’s friends abroad.”

In 1901, John Philip Sousa heard the Virginia Tech Regimental Band (The Highty-Tighties) playing “The Thunderer” at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. Sousa was so impressed that he dedicated a performance of his latest march, “Hands Across the Sea”, to the band.

Sousa prefaced the sheet music's score with a quotation from the English diplomat John Hookham Frere: “A sudden thought strikes me; let us swear eternal friendship”. The march was composed in the wake of the Spanish–American War and is idealistic, in addition to patriotic, in nature.

From the editor, Frederick Fennell, in 1982:

This new edition of Sousa's marvelous music is the third to be issued, the first two being in the quick-step format including the Sousa original published by the John Church Company six weeks after he signed the manuscript 14 March 1899. That original edition is carefully preserved here with nuance, dynamic, and articulation clarified; in that first edition 119 of the 150 measures are fortissimo.

There are, of course, as many ways to play Sousa marches as there are conductors to lead them, and no official “system” of performance was either provided or approved by him. Those many admirers among his players who subsequently conducted provided viable options, but Sousa's approval on proofs for publication make them all that is ultimately correct.

In the fifty years since Sousa's death on March 7, 1932, bands in our country have passed through the musical metamorphoses of their time, adding and balancing instrumental sonorities as they play. The editor has provided those materials appropriate to the contemporary band and offers, as well, alternate percussion parts to those previously published. Music as superb as this deserves serious study and rehearsal for proper concert performance, and it is to these ends that the publisher dedicated this excellent new issue.”

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.

Arranger/editor Frederick Fennell (1914 – 2004) was an American conductor and one of the primary figures who promoted the Eastman Wind Ensemble as a performing group. He was also influential as a band pedagogue, and greatly affected the field of music education in the US and abroad. In Fennell’s New York Times obituary, colleague Jerry F. Junkin was quoted as saying “He was arguably the most famous band conductor since John Philip Sousa.’

Fennell was born in Cleveland, Ohio. He chose piccolo as his primary instrument at the age of seven, and later became a drummer in the fife-and-drum corps at the family's encampment called Camp Zeke. He owned his first drum set at age ten. In the John Adams High School orchestra, Fennell performed as the kettledrummer and served as the band’s drum major.

His studies at the Interlochen Arts Camp (then the National Music Camp) included being chosen by famed bandmaster Albert Austin Harding as the bass drummer in the National High School Band in 1931. The band was conducted by John Philip Sousa on July 26th of that year in a program including the premiere of Sousa's Northern Pines march. Fennell himself conducted at Interlochen at the age of seventeen.

Fennell formed a compatible and fruitful relationship with the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York. As a student, he organized the first University of Rochester marching band for the football team and held indoor concerts with the band after the football season for ten years. At Eastman, he completed his bachelor's and master's degrees (in 1937 and 1939). Fennell became the first person to whom the Eastman School of Music awarded a degree in percussion performance.

Fennell was one of the world’s most active and innovative maestros. He was principal guest conductor of the Dallas Wind Symphony, principal conductor of the Tokyo Kosei Wind Orchestra in Japan, and Professor Emeritus at the University of Miami School of Music. The internationally-acclaimed conductor, widely regarded as the leader of the wind ensemble movement in this country, was one of America’s most recorded American classical conductors, and was a pioneer in various methods of recording.

He also served as the conductor of the Columbia University American Festival, the National Music Camp, the Yaddo Music Period, the Eastman-Rochester Pops Orchestra and the Eastman Opera Theatre, among others.

He was principal guest conductor of the Interlochen Arts Academy, and other guest conducting stints included frequent appearances with the Boston Pops Orchestra as well as performances with the Carnegie Hall Pops Concerts and the Boston Esplanade concerts. He appeared with the Denver, San Diego, National, Hartford, St. Louis and London Symphonies; the Buffalo, Calgary and Greater Miami Philharmonic Orchestras, the Cleveland Orchestra and the New Orleans Philharmonic.

He was part of pioneering recordings with the Cleveland Symphonic Winds and Dallas Wind Symphony and he held countless honors, awards, appointments and conducting appearances.

Dr. Fennell was the conductor of the first Honor Band of America in 1992, at the debut National Concert Band Festival, held at Northwestern University.

The music for Hands Across the Sea was provided for the band

by Mark and Kim Freisthler.