It’s a day of saxophones and sousaphones, as we mark the birthday anniversaries of Adolphe Sax (1814-1894) and John Phillip Sousa (1854-1932).
Sousa, America’s “March King,” composer of “Semper Fidelis,” “The Liberty Bell,” “The Washington Post,” and of course “The Stars and Stripes Forever,” believe it or not, started out on the violin. By 13, he was assigned to the United States Marine Band as an apprentice musician. His father was a trombonist in the band. Young Sousa served (ranked “boy”), from 1868 to 1875. Later, he returned as its director, from 1880 to 1892. During his tenure, he built the ensemble into the country’s premier military band. In 1892, he retired from the Marines to pursue a successful civilian career. His Sousa Band was celebrated internationally. During World War I, Sousa was back in the service, as a lieutenant in the Naval Reserve. He donated his entire salary, save for a token $1 a month, to the Sailors’ and Marines’ Relief Fund.
The sousaphone was created in 1893, built by J.W. Pepper of Exton, PA, under Sousa’s direction. Dissatisfied with the helicons used by the U.S. Marine Band, Sousa wanted a tuba-like instrument that could send the sound upward and over the mass of musicians. He unveiled his invention with the professional ensemble he established after leaving the Marines. The band marched with its sousaphones only once. It was not for nothing that he called it John Philip Sousa’s Peerless Concert Band. However, the sousaphone proved practical for bands on the move, and by 1908 even the Marine Band had adopted it.
Sousa, by the way, was more than just a march composer. He also wrote concert works, operettas, and a few novels. Back in my days as a bookseller, I would occasionally come across concert programs from when he directed at Willow Grove Park and even signed copies of his books. Like an idiot, I sold them, as I had to make the rent. “The Stars and Stripes Forever” was performed for the first time in Willow Grove in 1897.
Belgian instrument-maker Adolphe Sax invented his saxophone in the 1840s. Although it’s made of brass, the saxophone is classified as a woodwind, since it employs a single reed, like a clarinet.
In 1842, Hector Berlioz wrote approvingly of the new instrument, “I think its main advantage is the greatly varied beauty in its different possibilities of expression. At one time deeply quiet, at another full of emotion; dreamy, melancholic, sometimes with the hush of an echo… I do not know of any other instrument having this specific tone-quality, bordering on the limits of the audible.”
Jean-Baptiste Singlée, one of the first composers to treat the saxophone seriously, penned the first quartet for the instrument in 1857.
Still, in 1872, the year Georges Bizet included saxophone passages in his incidental music to “L’Arlésienne,” there remained enough resistance to the instrument that the part frequently had to be performed on clarinet. The saxophone’s fortunes greatly improved by the 20th century, when the instrument gained a degree of legitimacy when it was taken up by Claude Debussy, Alexander Glazunov, Jacques Ibert, Heitor Villa-Lobos, and others. And of course, it received even wider acceptance through its use in jazz and popular music.
Sax received a patent for his invention in 1846. In 1866, the patent expired, creating a kind of free-for-all in the saxophone world. Sax found himself embroiled in endless legal entanglements, and even declared bankruptcy twice.
But hardly anyone remembers his rivals. Everyone knows the saxophone.
Sousa and Sax use their outdoor voices on their birthday. Saxophones and sousaphones forever!
Jean-Baptiste Singlée, Premier quartuor pour saxophones, Op. 53
Sousa introduces and conducts “Stars and Stripes Forever” in 1929
CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: Sousa; Sax; Sousa Band saxophones in 1926; Sousa Band sousaphones in 1923
