Austin Symphonic Band Performing The Stars and Stripes Forever

Austin Symphonic Band ( austinsymphoni... ). January 19, 2025. ASB performing The Stars and Stripes Forever by John Philip Sousa,. [NOTE: Click 'more' to read the program notes.] Music Director Dr. Kyle R. Glaser conducting. "Lest We Forget" concert at the Connally HS Performing Arts Center in Austin, TX.
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The 48-star American flag displayed above the band is provided courtesy of the National Museum of the Pacific War in Fredericksburg, Texas. While the history of this particular standard is unknown, it is of the 1912 design that flew until 1959, making it the longest-used design at the time.
Video and Sound Production: Eddie Jennings
From the program notes written by David Cross:
The Stars and Stripes Forever
(1896)
John Philip Sousa (1854-1932)
With the possible exception of “The Star Spangled Banner,” no musical composition has done more to arouse the patriotic spirit of America than this, John Philip Sousa’s most beloved composition. Symbolic of flag-waving in general, it has been used with considerable effectiveness to generate patriotic feeling ever since its introduction in Philadelphia on May 14, 1897, when the staid Public Ledger reported: “It is stirring enough to rouse the American eagle from his crag, and set him to shriek exultantly while he hurls his arrows at the aurora borealis.”
Aside from this flowery review, the march’s reception was only slightly above average for a new Sousa march. It grew gradually in public acceptance, and with the advent of the Spanish-American War the nation suddenly needed such patriotic music. Capitalizing on this situation, Sousa used it with maximum effect to climax his moving pageant, The Trooping of the Colors.
The Stars and Stripes Forever had found its place in history. There was a vigorous response wherever it was performed, and audiences began to rise as though it were the national anthem. This became traditional at Sousa Band concerts. It was his practice to have the cornets, trumpets, trombones, and piccolos line up at the front of the stage for the final trio, and this added to the excitement. Many bands still perform the piece this way.
Sousa was very emotional in speaking of his own patriotism. When asked why he composed this march, he would insist that its strains were divinely inspired.
By almost any musical standard, “The Stars and Stripes Forever” is a masterpiece, even without its patriotic significance. But by virtue of that patriotic significance it is by far the most popular march ever written, and its popularity is by no means limited to the United States. Abroad, it has always symbolized America. It has been recorded more often than practically any other composition ever written. Sales of the sheet music alone netted Sousa over $400,000 in his lifetime; radio broadcasts, sheet music, and phonograph records brought his heirs tidy sums for many years. After the copyright expired in 1953, over fifty new arrangements appeared in the United States alone. Looking back at the march’s astonishing success, it is difficult to believe that the publisher had shown little faith in it and that he had even suggested to Sousa that “Forever” be stricken from the title.
Sousa did not claim that his march title was original. He could have come by it in one of two ways. First, the favorite toast of bandmaster Patrick S. Gilmore was “Here’s to the stars and stripes forever!” Also, one of Sousa’s publishers had earlier printed a piece with the same title.
Sousa wrote words for the march, evidently for use in The Trooping of the Colors, his pageant of 1898. These are printed below. One phrase (“Death to the enemy!”) was curiously omitted, however-one which he said came to him repeatedly while he was pacing the decks of the Teutonic.
Hurrah for the flag of the free!
May it wave as our standard forever,
The gem of the land and the sea,
The banner of the right.
Let despots remember the day
When our fathers with mighty endeavor
Proclaimed as they marched to the fray
That by their might and by their right it waves forever.
Paul E. Bierley, The Works of John Philip Sousa (Westerville, Ohio: Integrity Press, 1984), 43. Used by permission.