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Sousa’s Descriptive Works and Suites as Class-Cultural Mediations

Wilcer, Steven Scott
http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8109-6910
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1492772866166938

Abstract Details

2017, Master of Arts, Ohio State University, Music.
American bandleader John Philip Sousa’s rise to international fame during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries coincided with a time of growing self-awareness and -criticism in American musical culture. Numerous groups and music ensembles formed in the United States around this period that dedicated themselves to so-called “highbrow” European classical music while dismissing American works as imitative or inferior. Though Sousa is recognized as a composer primarily through his American marches—a genre clearly distasteful to the Eurocentric symphonic halls and opera houses of his time—his lesser-known descriptive works and multi-movement instrumental suites reveal that the bandleader desired to appease both casual concertgoers and trained music analysts. Sousa strove to entertain and educate his audience equally and show them the value in both popular (“lowbrow”) music and its high-art counterpart. His programs for the United States Marine Band and the Sousa Band were characterized by a strong presence of well-known contemporary tunes and songs and orchestral transcriptions alike. The descriptive works and suites do not neatly fall into either category, and instead serve as a middle ground that bridges the opposing ends of the spectrum. Sousa’s two descriptive works—The Chariot Race in 1890 and Sheridan’s Ride in 1891—were the result of early experimentation with the wind band ensemble to expand the United States Marine Band’s repertoire for new performance seasons. The works focused on programmatic musical depictions and instrumental effects to convey a narrative to the listener, but Sousa also incorporated more intricate musical techniques in their context, such as chromaticism and leitmotivs. The first suite, The Last Days of Pompeii in 1893, continued this practice but did so in a much larger form with multiple movements and subsequently more space for musical development. The suites are among the longest instrumental works that Sousa composed for the concert band. As such, they offer a unique perspective not only on Sousa’s navigation of high- and lowbrow musical concepts, but also on his personal compositional style. Writings and correspondences related to American music at the time and Sousa and his activities suggest that his endeavors with the new genres were generally well-received but ultimately saw limited lasting effects. Sousa personally expected that the suites—particularly The Last Days of Pompeii—would come to be considered the shining jewel of his compositional output and serve to shape future American music. Although critics and concertgoers typically lauded the pieces for both their programmatic clarity and musical depth, music analysts such as Louis C. Elson and Frederic Louis Ritter seem to have been uninterested in including them and their composer in their publications on American music. Though they failed to reach the degree of importance Sousa hoped they would in his legacy, the descriptive works and suites represent a critical facet of their composer’s beliefs on class culture and music development in America as it entered the twentieth century.
Arved Ashby, PhD (Advisor)
Graeme Boone, PhD (Committee Member)
Eric Johnson, PhD (Committee Member)
60 p.
Music
music; America; Sousa; March King; band; class culture; reception; descriptive work; suite; 1890s; 1900s

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Wilcer, S. S. (2017). Sousa’s Descriptive Works and Suites as Class-Cultural Mediations [Master's thesis, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1492772866166938

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Wilcer, Steven. Sousa’s Descriptive Works and Suites as Class-Cultural Mediations. 2017. Ohio State University, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1492772866166938.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Wilcer, Steven. "Sousa’s Descriptive Works and Suites as Class-Cultural Mediations." Master's thesis, Ohio State University, 2017. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1492772866166938

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1492772866166938
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This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.