John Philip Sousa Has Great Impacts on Modern Day Music Band

Published: 2019-04-10
John Philip Sousa Has Great Impacts on Modern Day Music Band
Type of paper:  Essay
Categories:  Music Personality
Pages: 7
Wordcount: 1677 words
14 min read
143 views

Music is considered to be one of the greatest tools of communicating to people especially when they should here and get to feel the message. The beauty of the music best defines the impact of the message it intends to pass across. The inspiration of the composers of the music have a great impact on the music and its beauty, and therefore a close attention must be paid to the melody and harmony. The bands have a great responsibility of keeping melody and harmony in check all the time to ensure their message do not pass the intended audience. John Philip Sousa has great impacts on a modern day music band as discussed herein. All the pieces of music in modern society must have been inspired by some higher power according to the works of John Philp, 1930. Though atheist would consider this funny, it is a fact that lack of inspiration would make a piece of music have less impact.

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Despite the fact that John Philip had died a long time ago, he is still remembered even in the current world of music. His music lingers in the minds and hearts of many though it has been over eighty years since he died. The percentage of people who loves his work supersedes those who hate him. It is natural for musicians to have haters and lovers. However, it is not always common to have everyone fall in love with someone's music as people did to Philip's musical band.

Philip Sousa is seen as an idol to so many young people in the entire globe. According to Frederick Fennel, the young adults look at Philip and see someone they would like to be like. Most of the youths who worship him as their role model have a great passion and enthusiasm for music and musical instruments. He is loved mostly for the mere fact that his pieces of music have great attraction to the intended audience. This is typical of what happened at the National Music Camp's Interlochen Bowl. Those who performed with him confesses that he made them perform not because it was their duty to but because the performance was emanating from deep within their hearts. This showed the power of enthusiasm and self-belief. The end results of this were total involvement of almost all American youths into ban performance.

Great as he was, John Philip Sousa gave out his name to the benefit and engagement of the young people who together were chained with him in the small world of Band performance. The Sousa career was a managed one, created to stimulate and satisfy consumer interest and oriented to marketplace approval.t According to him, an introduction of mechanical music would signal the genesis of deterioration of the beauty of American music. He made publications to that effect and named it The Menace of Mechanical Music. His worry was that the introduction of faster spinning in music would make people take loss interest in learning instruments and how to sing. The bone of contention here was the simplicity of this invention which was feared to make work so easier thus promoting laziness towards learning.

The strengths of Sousa relied on the fact that he formed a cocktail of the best musical band then. The Marine Band was Sousa's first experience conducting a military band, and he approached musical matters unlike most of his predecessors. He replaced much of the music in the library with symphonic transcriptions and changed the instrumentation to meet his needs. He learned the best bands of music at that point which were symphony orchestras, brass bands, beer hall bands, and military bands. A conglomeration of the four produced the best band the world had ever seen. This was a band loved and cherished by persons across all Age groups and racial groupings. In a nutshell, he provided something that could speak to the heart of everyone. The popularity of the band lasted for over 40 years. Rumors of their excellent performance did spread far and wide to all parts of the world. It took a few months for the Sousa Band to get rolling, but once it did, the band stayed popular for almost 40 years. Year after year they played for sold-out crowds all over America, and, later, all over the world.

Sousa had the advantage of learning most of the core training for band music while he was still young. Now 21 years of age, he promptly landed a job in the first violin section of the official centennial orchestra playing for guest conductor Jacques Offenbach. He got skills in violin, piano and music composition and these made his works easier as he organized his band. Sousa did not have to hire a professional to help him train his band but could do it himself with lots of ease. The greatest wonder is the fact that he amassed a lot of professional experience at a time when such knowledge was hard to gain. Could be this is one of the reasons why he was greatly celebrated as he climbed the ladder of musical fame.

The talents that proved so instrumental to him and his band were the skills of composing music and conducting music. His compositions of pieces with great rhythm gave the band an easier task as they perform. Moreover, his conducting skills were excellent, and this made his band play with vigor and enthusiasm that emanates only from the heart and not as people forced to act. His work thus was both precise and charming to the ears and hearts of the fans.

The band and John Philip Sousa became international icons because of the great showmanship he displayed while conducting and as the band performed. Many are mesmerized by the fact that they cannot trace and understand how Sousa's band climbed the ladder to become the best. It is a general assumption that Sousa sieved what worked out as they trained and perfected on such.

John Philip Sousa's work has an impact not only in the past but also in the current day bands. The modern day band lover appreciates his work because of its originality and the fact that it is natural. Music describes in my terms as a music of the heart. The modern bands admire the rhythm, intonation, precision and integrity of Sousa works. The current bands have a problem achieving a balance between instruments and clarity of the music. This is the greatest lesson that work of John Philip teaches modern bands. The largest wish of listeners of bands today is to get a band with the powerful instrument, but still, the voices can be heard word by word. More often today, it is only the instruments that are heard.

The modern day music band also gets to learn the importance of performing to a defined group of people with the aim of finding employment. During his entire life, Sousa performed only to the militia. His dedication was to ensure the navy was greatly entertained at all-time especially during the wars. Settling for one line of duty could be the reason why he became so successful in what he did, and this is a lesson to modern day bands. His choice placed him at a position where he could easily communicate to the then greatest US and world leader.

John Sousa flexed his muscles in the world of music by writing matches for various Universities and State. The modern day bands should focus on doing performances on their National anthems and for various clubs such as the football clubs and many others. Such a performance will not only improve their work but also propel them high to the hall of fame.

In conclusion, the works of John Philip Sousa have the significant impact on the modern day bands. The life of John Philip acts as a great inspiration to anyone who cares to look at his biography. The time and environment in which he wrote and performed his works greatly inspires the modern generation and shows the power of determination. He is well known as The Match King, and this shows the contemporary artists that they should always strive to be identified with something. Finding a tag that identifies a particular band would be possible if they keep doing one thing that makes them unique. The current generation has a lot to learn from Sousa as discussed in this paper.

The most important lesson is that of balancing between instruments and songs. The moment they would be able to achieve this balance is the time they would consider themselves to have made strides with their bands. It is common knowledge that most bands have put so much focus on instrumentals forgetting the importance of words of their music. Some of the fans always just want to get the worst, and this explains why most modern bands have been a disappointment.

Bibliography

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Making the March King: John Philip Sousa's Washington Years, 1854t1893. By Patrick Warfield. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2013

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