I was in Italy and I wished to get home as soon as possible. Someone asked, “Who influenced you to compose ‘Stars and Stripes Forever,’” and before the question was hardly asked, Sousa replied, “God–and I say this in all reverence! I was in Europe and I got a cablegram that my manager was dead. In a Sousa Band program at Willow Grove we find this account: When asked why he composed this march, he would insist that its strains were divinely inspired. Sousa was very emotional in speaking of his own patriotism. That the players never tired of it is surely a measure of its greatness. Many former Sousa Band members have stated that they could not recall a concert in which it was not played, and that they too were inspired by looking into the misty eyes of those in the audience. Usually it was played unannounced as an encore. The piece was expected–and sometimes openly demanded–at every concert of the Sousa Band. The sight of Sousa conducting his own great band in this, his most glorious composition, always triggered an emotional response. With the passing years the march has endeared itself to the American people. Many bands still perform the piece this way.

It was his practice to have the cornets, trumpets, trombones, and piccolos line up at the front of the stage for the final trio, and this added to the excitement.

This became traditional at Sousa Band concerts. There was a vigorous response wherever it was performed, and audiences began to rise as though it were the national anthem. “The Stars and Stripes Forever” had found its place in history. Capitalizing on this situation, Sousa used it with maximum effect to climax his moving pageant, The Trooping of the Colors.

It grew gradually in public acceptance, and with the advent of the Spanish-American War the nation suddenly needed such patriotic music. … Symbolic of flag-waving in general, it has been used with considerable effectiveness to generate patriotic feeling ever since its introduction in Philadelphia on May 14, 1897, when the staid Public Ledger reported: “It is stirring enough to rouse the American eagle from his crag, and set him to shriek exultantly while he hurls his arrows at the aurora borealis.”Īside from this flowery review, the march’s reception was only slightly above average for a new Sousa march. With the possible exception of “The Star Spangled Banner,” no musical composition has done more to arouse the patriotic spirit of America than this, John Philip Sousa’s most beloved composition.

Stripes and stars