Tone Poem Tuesday

I get asked all the time: “Hey, when you were a young musician, what was the first Sousa march you ever played?”

[RON HOWARD NARRATOR VOICE: This is false. Nobody asks him this.]

OK, fine, but anyway: when I was in 7th grade, and in the Junior High Band (consisting of 7th and 8th graders), we played a march by Sousa called The Free Lance. I assume that we played an arrangement for young players, but I may be wrong on that score. I don’t remember much of the music from the march at all, except for one segment halfway through which turns out to be notable because the march starts in one time signature, 6/8, and shifts to 2/4 halfway through. Also, the structure is slightly different, with three strains before the Trio.

The Free Lance March is a repurposing of melodies that Sousa wrote for an earlier operetta, also called The Free Lance. Sousa is known as a prolific composer of marches for wind band, but he was more prolific even than that: among his large non-march output were fifteen operettas, none of which are much heard today, but which were generally well-received in his lifetime. From what I’ve read, Sousa was influenced greatly by Gilbert and Sullivan, and he featured their music in his own concerts and even used some of their themes in his own marches and other works. While Sousa’s name lives on because of his marches, including the immortal Stars and Stripes Forever, he was a great deal more than that.

Here is The Free Lance March.

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