As is custom, music director Carl St.Clair will once again hold a conducting clinic for children before the orchestra’s Symphony in the Cities events in Mission Viejo and Irvine this month, and then have them come to stage en masse during the concert to lead Sousa’s “Hands Across the Sea.”

Sousa wrote this march in 1899, with such hits as “The Washington Post,” “El Capitan” and “Stars and Stripes Forever” already under his belt. And hits they were. The march was a popular dance form at the time and Sousa was one of the most famous musicians in the country. There was estimated to be more than 10,000 wind bands extant and amateur music-making was in its heyday. Consequently, when a new Sousa march was published, it arrived in a multitude of arrangements for different ensembles and solo instruments.

Here’s the title page of the first edition of “Hands Across the Sea.” Click to enlarge and scroll to the bottom to see the arrangements available.

Sousa later explained the dedicatory quotation (top right of title page) and the title:

“After the Spanish war there was some feeling in Europe anent our republic regarding this war. Some of the nations…thought we were not justified while others gave us credit for the honesty of our purpose. One night I was reading an old play and I came across this line, ‘A sudden thought strikes me,—let us swear an eternal friendship.’ That almost immediately suggested the title “Hands Across the Sea” for that composition and within a few weeks that now famous march became a living fact.”

Here’s a fine recording of it by the United States Marine Band.

The original 1st cornet part.

As you will probably hear “Star and Stripes Forever,” or “Semper Fidelis” or “The Washington Post” or some other famous Sousa march today, I thought I’d share one of his lesser known gems, the “George Washington Bicentennial” March. Rudolf Urbanec conducts the Czechoslovak Brass Orchestra, of course. Happy 4th.

John Philip Sousa in front of a marching band in 1914.

By TIMOTHY MANGAN

Summer is upon us and that means that, as Americans, at some point in the next few months most of us will hear a Sousa march. The Pacific Symphony alone has four of them on its schedule. Richard Kaufman will lead the well known trio of marches, “The Washington Post,” “Semper Fidelis” and “The Stars and Stripes Forever,” on July 4, and later in the month, in three Symphony in the Cities concerts, Carl St.Clair will present “Hands Across the Sea” and, again, “The Stars and Stripes Forever.”

Across the country, most if not all other classical music ensembles and concert bands that present outdoor concerts will also perform Sousa. Lots of people will hear Sousa marches. One can’t say for sure how many of those people will actually listen to them — Sousa is taken for granted, these days — but they’ll hear them.

John Philip Sousa (1854-1932) was a remarkable man and a remarkable musician. In his day, he was one of the most famous people in the country, and plenty famous outside of it too. He was a novelist, a composer of operettas, a champion trapshooter (he’s in the trapshooting hall of fame), a founding member (along with Victor Herbert and Irving Berlin) of the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers, the developer of the sousaphone, a showman. He was best known, though, for his band — the Sousa Band toured the country and the world and gave 15,623 concerts between 1892-1931— and for his marches. He was dubbed, of course, “The March King.”

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