Barnum and Bailey’s Favorite — Karl King (1891-1971)

Karl King composed exclusively for the circus. He worked as a euphonium player for the Barnum and Bailey Circus beginning at age 15 and at 16 he became music director. King is known for his marches, but he also composed music for all attractions at the circus, including trapeze acts, animal shows, and anything else under the Big Top.

King’s most famous march, Barnum and Bailey’s Favorite, was composed for the music director at the time, Ned Brill, who was quite fond of brassy pieces. King’s march, composed for a 32-piece band, immediately evokes the circus. Opening with a fanfare, it then launches a fast theme with cymbals representing every trick in the ring. An impressive low brass section is then followed by the more legato trio, which returns to end the march.

March No. 1, York’scher, WoO 18 — Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

While Beethoven is known for his large-scale works for orchestra, chorus, piano, and chamber ensembles, he had a strong interest in other genres. There are collections of folk songs from the British Isles, as well as a small number of works for wind band likely inspired by the refugees from the French Revolution passing through Bonn. After his move to Vienna, the music brought by these refugees found its way into his style, perhaps most notably in his Eroica Symphony.
In 1809 Beethoven composed three marches for wind band. The first of these has the subtitle York’scher (sometimes stated as York). First dedicated to Archduke Anton Victor of Austria, the work had no trio section. It was originally published in 1818, still without a trio. In 1822 Beethoven finally added the trio and the work reached the form on this program but remained unpublished until after the composer’s death.
Today the piece is the official march of the German Wachbataillon and, strangely, for the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces. This piece is short and serves essentially as a fanfare.

Manhattan Beach — John Philip Sousa (1854-1932)

In 1880 John Philip Sousa became director of the United States Marine Band, known as “The President’s Own” and in existence since 1798. Although it was with this band that his notoriety began, he had received some notice as a violin virtuoso. Although he wanted to join a circus band, his father enlisted him in the Marine Band at the age of thirteen. He remained there seven years.
After being discharged, he started a second career as a composer of light operettas. Although European operettas invariably included a waltz as the marketable “hit,” American operettas included a march. Sousa became proficient at this form and his marches became popular. Band masters took notice and, when the position of director of the Marine Band became available, he was asked to take over the ensemble.

After taking over, Sousa changed their repertoire of the ensemble to include symphonic transcriptions. Although marches were always included and Sousa’s career as a march composer became lucrative, this new direction in band programming was the standard for over a century. In only twelve years as director of the Marine Band, he served under five presidents – Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, Cleveland, and Benjamin Harrison – and turned the band into the fine ensemble it is today. In 1892 Sousa left the Marine Band to start his own civilian touring group, which he led for thirty-nine years.
In all, Sousa composed fifteen operettas, seventy songs, eleven waltzes, eleven suites, thirteen humoresques, numerous fantasies, over three hundred arrangements for various ensembles, and, of course, 136 marches.

Manhattan Beach dates from 1893 and was first played at Manhattan Beach, New York. This fashionable summer resort welcomed the newly formed Sousa Band as a resident ensemble in 1893. Among other illustrious players were 19 former members of the Gilmore Band, which raised interest among critics. As this was a new ensemble, Sousa asked the NYC critics and several noted musicians to come hear the band at the new venue. Rave reviews followed and the band lasted for the rest of his life.

“Country Band” March — Charles Edward Ives (1874-1954)

Possibly the most overlooked American composer, iconoclast Charles Ives was the son of a New England cornetist who had served as a bandmaster in the Civil War. Ives’s reputation as a renegade came largely from his experimentations with harmony; he composed a few pieces with tone rows a decade before Arnold Schoenberg began to move away from tonality. Showing an interest in the science of music, Ives composed a few works for a microtonal piano, tuned to intervals smaller than a half-step. It was Ives’ father who introduced him to this type of musical freedom with numerous exercises in tonal independence. One such drill consisted of young Charlie singing a familiar song in one key while his father changed keys in the accompaniment. The youngster was expected to maintain his key regardless of what his father played.

Anyone familiar with Ives is aware of his extensive borrowing of musical materials from other sources – most often patriotic songs, folk tunes, and popular melodies of the 1890s. This should not be viewed as plagiarism, but as a technique of pastiche – akin to the use of fabric scraps to make a quilt. As with a comfortable old-time quilt, the various fabrics of his sources are often apparent, but they fit so well that it is unimaginable that they could be assembled in any other way. It is also important to remember that Ives’s world was one of Civil War veterans’ brass bands performing in park gazebos, ragtime, barn dances, and patriotic Americana. Assimilating all of this into his music, Ives wrote four symphonies, numerous works for chamber ensembles, piano, voice, chorus, and independent orchestral works.
“Country Band” March, composed in 1903, used his pastiche style to parody those veterans’ bands. The humor is intentional with wrong notes and synchronization problems. Musical quotes are abundant and many will be recognizable. Others are buried beneath the surface. Listen for the ragtime rhythms that surface from time to time.

King Cotton — Sousa

This march was composed in 1895 for the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta, Georgia. Although the Sousa Band was invited to play, the administration of the Exposition was running out of money and tried to release him from his contract. Sousa persisted and his first concert was such a success that word spread around the area. Audiences grew even larger and Sousa’s band saved the event from bankruptcy.

Semper Fidelis — Sousa

Semper Fidelis is one of Sousa’s most famous marches, along with The Thunderer, The Washington Post, High School Cadets, Liberty Bell, El Capitan, and the official march of the United States, Stars and Stripes Forever. Composed in 1888, Semper Fidelis has a very interesting background. President Arthur felt that Hail to the Chief was undignified and wanted another piece to be played at his appearances. Sousa obliged with the Presidential Polonaise in 1886 but was not really satisfied. Although President Arthur died in November of that year, Sousa eventually realized the need for a more festive work and composed Semper Fidelis two years later.

Set in a modified march form (with the usual one fewer sharp in the key signature than the actual key, but without the traditional “break” strain), this march opens with an eight-measure introduction that provides a flourish and established the key. The first strain is scalar at first but ends with leaps. The disjointed second strain leads to the familiar trio, which consists of a bugle call. In fact, the melody also appears in Sousa’s treatise entitled The Trumpet and Drum. The trio is repeated with added woodwind obbligato. Sousa ends the march with a new strain featuring the low brass.

“March” from Symphony No. 6 — Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)

By the late 1880s, Tchaikovsky had composed nearly all of his most revered works – five of the six symphonies, the ballets Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty, and most of his operas and chamber music. Since the mid-1870s, the wealthy widow Nadezhda von Meck had been his benefactress, providing him with an annual stipend of six thousand rubles on the condition that he would devote his energies to full-time composition. These were the brightest years of his life, but they were not to last.

In 1890 von Meck severed their relationship. Even though he no longer relied on her financial assistance, the world-famous composer sorely missed the emotional support he found through their many correspondences. For years he had suffered from depression over his failed month-long marriage in the 1870s, his general insecurity, and his difficulty in coming to terms with his homosexuality. The loss of von Meck’s support sent Tchaikovsky into the deepest depression of his life. On his American tour of 1891 (during which he gave the opening concert for New York’s Carnegie Hall), he began to feel as if something was gravely wrong. By 1893 he had hit rock-bottom. On November 6 of that year, the composer died under mysterious circumstances. Although the official story has Tchaikovsky committing suicide by drinking a glass of unboiled water during a cholera epidemic, arsenic poisoning has never been ruled out.

Tchaikovsky composed the Pathetique Symphony in the depths of his despair – a state of mind that somehow helped him immerse himself in the creative process. He completed the symphony in seven months, between February and August of 1893. Tchaikovsky conducted the premiere on October 28 – just nine days before his unforeseen death.

The Pathetique is one of Tchaikovsky’s most soul-searching scores. He claimed that the work was a program symphony – one that tells a story – but refused to divulge the underlying program. One significant clue was found on a scrap of paper among the sketches for his Nutcracker ballet:

“Following is the plan for a symphony LIFE! First movement – – all impulse, confidence, thirst for activity. Must be short (Finale death – result of collapse). Second movement love; third movement disappointment; fourth end with a dying away (also short)”

The march of the third movement is the brightest emotional moment of the entire work but is more akin to Berlioz’ March to the Scaffold than Tchaikovsky’s ceremonial music.

Gallito — Santiago Lope (1871-1906)

Santiago Lope was a precocious youngster. He learned to play the flute and was already a member of a band by age 6. As a teenager, he studied violin and composition at the Madrid Conservatory. By 1903, at the age of 32, he was director of the Banda Municipal de Valencia.

The year before his 1906 death, he composed four marches, one each for the four matadors of Valencia’s Plaza de Toros. Gallito (Little Rooster) was composed for Fernando Gomez, a matador known by that nickname. The march opens in a minor key with an alternating pair of chords that reminds the listener of flamenco. When the ornamented main melody begins, it is decidedly Spanish in character, but it soon gives way to a major-key theme filled with the decorum befitting a special occasion. A legato trio section provides a sense of pathos and returns in fancy dress at the end.

“Marches” from Symphony No. 4 (for Band) — Morton Gould (1913-1996)

As precocious as young Mozart a century and a half before him, Morton Gould published his first work at the age of six. While still in his teens, he attended the Institute of Musical Arts (now the Juilliard School) by day but played piano in vaudeville theatres and silent movie houses by night. Appearances on WOR Mutual radio shows, often as conductor and arranger of both popular and classical music, led to national recognition. By the end of the 1940s, Gould’s music reached millions.

Seldom has there been a composer as active in as many genres as Morton Gould. In addition to his radio work, he has written Broadway shows (most notably Billion Dollar Baby with lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green), film, television, and ballet. He often integrated popular and classical styles into the same work using blues, jazz, and country – even rap in at least one of his later works. He once stated, “I’ve always felt that music should be a normal part of the experience that surrounds people. It’s not a special taste. An American composer should have something to say to a cab driver.”

A Pulitzer Prize winner for his 1995 Stringmusic, he was also a Kennedy Center honoree in 1994. Gould served as ASCAP president from 1986 to 1994. He was elected to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters and served on the board of the American Symphony Orchestra League and the NEA music panel.

Gould’s Symphony No. 4 was composed for the West Point Sesquicentennial Celebration and was premiered on April 13, 1952, by the West Point Military Academy Band conducted by the composer. Opening with a passacaglia entitled “Epitaphs,” the first movement is of great gravitas. However, it is the second movement, “Marches,” which is heard on this program. The composer described the movement as follows:

“The second and final movement is lusty and gay in character. The texture is a stylization of marching tunes that parades past in an array of embellishments and rhythmic variants. At one point there is a simulation of a fife and drum corps which, incidentally, was the instrumentation of the original West Point Band. After a brief transformed restatement of the themes in the first movement, the work finishes in a virtuoso coda of martial fanfares and flourishes.”

Marche Slav — Tchaikovsky

In 1876 Nikolai Rubinstein organized a benefit concert. In previous months, Slavic troops joined Serbia and Russia in fighting against the Turkish army. There was great Slavonic support in Russia, especially when these troops started experiencing significant injuries. Rubinstein worked with the Red Cross Society to help Serbian veterans.

Tchaikovsky’s contribution was his Marche Slav, a work not unlike the 1812 Overture in that it features themes to represent military action. At the opening, there are two Serbian folk songs followed by a major-key dance. The end of the piece quotes “God Save the Tsar” to represent Russia coming to the aid of the Serbs.