Music the American People Demand

by John Philip Sousa

American Musical Taste of Today

"The American demand for music is the most cosmopolitan demand in the world. It represents the composite tastes of more different people than were every brought together under one flag, and in one country, since the famous tower of Babel took its ominous tumble. The American people hate a rut, and no one knows better than I do that in order to please them they must have an infinite variety. They must have all kinds of music by all kinds of composers. Like our appetite for food, our appetite for music has been cultivated by tasting a little of the products of all nations. We have come to eat and enjoy Irish potatoes, English roast beef, French mushrooms, Italian macaroni, Spanish saffron, and Spanish onions, German sausages and cheese, Russian caviar, Chinese ginger and rice, to say nothing of a hundred and one other dishes coming from all parts of the globe. We recognize the genius of the French composer long before Germany takes him up, and Wagner was well known and widely played in the United States before the French came to realize his true greatness. Mme. Liza Lehmann came to America with her dreamy "In a Persian Garden" under her arm. London couldn't hear the beauty of the thing but New York did and Mme. Lehmann's reputation as a composer was established."

"I am not a believer in national schools of music. The very idea seems ridiculous in itself. As I have said before, national music is nothing more nor less than international imitation. A striking genius like Wagner arises, and he starts in to compose just as all his contemporaries composed. He writes a work like "Rienzi" which was nothing more nor less than an advanced form of Italian opera of the day. Then he does a little original thinking and realizes that if he wishes to make a bid for real greatness he must work not as an imitator but as a creator. The consequence is that he brings forth a number of genuinely inspired works, and, lo and behold, we are told that a new German school has been founded. It would have been precisely the same if Wagner had been born in Russia or in Tasmania. In no other art is individualism so strong as in music. In Wagner there is really no suggestion of a national school. It is simply Wagner, a musical mountain peak, and that is all. If Wagner had written music suitable only for Germans it would not be as popular in New York, Sydney, Bombay, London or Paris as it is in Bayreuth. Wagner wrote good music, great music, and the world identifies it, irrespective of any school."

"Public taste in America is unquestionable improving. All changes of this kind must be gradual. People are attracted to the concerts of my band because they know that in the program they will find numbers which will appeal to them. If I played all Wagner, all Liszt and Beethoven, all Strauss and Debussy I do not believe that I should be able to help as many people as I can by attracting a certain element by means of some tuneful and often trite compositions that they can understand. They come and hear great masterpieces and in a few years they may be among the ranks of those who clamor against the very pieces which brought them to the concerts originally."

"Musical taste is all a matter of becoming accustomed to certain kinds of music. I remember that when I commenced horseback riding in my childhood, I noticed that horses were liable to shy at bits of paper flying about the road. Later they were frightened by the bicycles, trolley cars and automobiles. Now there are more of these vehicles in the road than ever, but horses are accustomed to them and you could dump a whole edition of The Etude in the road in front of a thorough bred and he would hardly notice it. Now the horses will doubtless have a new lesson to learn if the flying machine industry continues to grow as it has started. It is much the same with the public. The people who were ridiculing Wagner forty years ago are now clamoring for his music. The brain of the public grows and becomes more responsive to new impressions every day."

"The public lets one know very quickly whether they are interested or not. How do you suppose I tell? If I hear a few people cough during the performance of a new number I rarely ever play that number again. Coughing in an audience is a sign of restlessness and impatience. When they are interested they are quiet and it is really very astonishing how one can veritable feel the interest of an audience. It is something in the atmosphere and the sensitive artist knows and feels it at once."

The Growing Popularity of Good Music

"The commercial side of America has unquestionable interfered with the development of music in the past, though it has, in another sense, been the means of developing it. People who have interviewed me seemed to be most interested in how much money I have made out of it. I have doubtless made more money out of music than falls to the lot of the vast majority of composers. I state this simply as a fact and quite without any egotism. It happens that a great number of my compositions have been what can only be described as 'hits'. they have brought me large returns, but I am willing to make the statement that no composer has ever made less attempt to make money than I have. While writing I never think of the possible financial reward. My sole object is to turn out a good piece of music, a worthy piece, a piece that I can be proud of, no matter whether it is a military march or a more elaborate suite. I have one composition which I think so far and away above anything I have ever written. It is called "The Last Days of Pompeii"; I have played it for years in public, but I have always avoided publishing it, as I desire to keep it and work at it until I am sure that it cannot be improved by further work."

"One reason why the love for music in America has been somewhat more difficult to develop than the love for music in Europe is attributable to the vast number of other amusements which the American people posses and enjoy. In Europe the principal sources of amusement are to be found in the gatherings at local inns or taverns, the occasional picnics or excursions to the country, and visits to the theater, the opera house and the concert hall. Americans have a host of other amusements which take their time and attention. Baseball, for instance, is one of the leading interests of thousands of men in our large cities. The automobile, combined with American wealth and prodigality, is another amusement which draws thousands away from the serious pursuits of studies forming the basis of culture. the Sunday newspapers, piling ton upon ton of printed matter upon the tons and tons of magazines, booklets, advertisements, etc., also take up an enormous amount of time, although they are for the most part educational in themselves. What the Americans have accomplished in music is truly amazing in face of the countless distractions they meet every day of their lives. There is a big difference between the German, calmly sitting in his Bierhalle sipping his malt and hops and listening to a Beethoven Symphony, and the strenuous and commercial American who hears his "Tristan and Isolde" with half of his mind set upon the problem of how he is going to squeeze a sea bath, a roller coaster ride, a moving picture show and a course dinner into the next hour."

"But we are commencing to stand alone, and when I say 'we' I mean the whole American people, and not a few blue nosed highbrows who, after a residence of many years in European countries, have come back to us with a kind of snobbish all knowing superiority which is, to say the least, aggravating. Until very recently, music has only been part of a function for the American people. They were willing to accept it as one of the many events in a day's outing. Now good concerts of standard works are becoming commercially profitable. People find such delight in hearing good music that they are willing to pay well for it. That is what we can call real musical culture. Moreover, the day of big reputations is passing in a most encouraging manner. The American people are waking up, and they refuse to be deceived. It is impossible for a singer with a reputation gained during the Civil War and a voice that strikes terror to the heart of the most courageous to tour America and hoodwink the people. I do not believe that any musical performer or organization of performers can succeed unless they can exhibit ability which entitles them to public appreciation.

What Makes The High Class Composition Popular

"High class compositions become popular because the real composer is always inspired. I should say that about ninety percent of all the musical compositions written are uninspired. What is inspiration? Ah, one could write volumes and volumes in the telling of that and still be just as far away from a definition as at the beginning. No one doubts its existence who has had the kind of musical experience that I have had with the public. The public seems to recognize musical inspiration at once, whether it comes to them through the music of Wagner, Schubert or Brahms, or through the music of Stephen Foster, or the trite but clever tunes of some unschooled writer of ballads of the day."

"The success of a piece is due to the composer, the power beyond the composer (inspiration), and to the public. The higher power which has incited the composer's mind and empowered him to write a musical masterpiece seems to be at work preparing the public to receive that masterpiece as it should be received."

"The mere acquisition of the technical knowledge will never make a composer any more than a knowledge of grammar will make an author. What is a string of words without ideas, and what is a string of notes without the spark which distinguishes them from dead, dull, uninteresting ink and paper?  Pot boilers are rarely ever successful. The man who sites down and says 'I need the money, therefore I will write a kind of composition which I know the public will like, and make money with it.' is almost invariably a failure. The composer must believe in his work and have faith in himself, whether he be writing a three act grand opera or a popular waltz. Above all things, he must forget the idea of gain. Gain and music don't go together. I remember the case of a composer of considerable renown who brought one of his lighter compositions to me and asked me to put it upon my program. As a favor to him I consented, although I did not like the piece. Then he said, 'Of course, I don't want my own name to be connected with this, you know. You must play it under an assumed name.' then I told him that if he was ashamed of it I was even more so, and we had better not play it at all."

Wagner's Wonderful Hold on the Public

"One of the most notable instances of the popularity of good music is the popularity of Wagner. Wagner, the composer, who was first heralded as the writer of marvelously complex and intricate works which could only be understood by the advanced musician, is now demanded by popular audiences. I rarely play a program without a Wagner number, and my band has in its repertoire practically everything which Wagner has written. This means that the public demands not only the beautiful melodies like the "Evening Star", "Preislied", "Bridal March from Lohengrin", "The Spinning Song", etc. but also is delighted to hear the complicated music of the "Kaisermarch", "Tristan and Isolde" and "Parsifal". The reason for this is that Wagner was one of the most inspired of all composers and was the greatest composer of dramatic music. In fact, in a forthcoming book I have made the statement that if I were to send a missionary orchestra to a people who knew nothing of music for the purpose of making converts, I should have the orchestra commence upon them with Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries".

"The people are fond of dramatic music because they are fond of the pictorial in music. They have read the plots of the operas and like to associate the stories with the music. They love color, movement and lights. We are all very primitive in this respect. Of course, when it comes right down to the truth of the matter, descriptive music must depend very largely upon literal conceptions which the hearers have previously formed. There is a mighty little difference between the musical representation of a storm and of a boiler explosion, but if I tell you it is a storm and not a boiler explosion you immediately picture a storm, hear the thunder and see the lightning flash. This is one of the reasons why operatic and descriptive music is so popular."

"Some composers carry descriptive music to an absurd extreme. You can't depict a man taking off his shoes, and the representation of a domestic quarrel is often more ridiculous than descriptive. It must be admitted, however, that there is an appropriateness which must govern all descriptive music. Although, as I have said, I do not believe in national schools, but rather in individualism in musical composition, it is, nevertheless, a fact that the music of certain peoples has racial characteristics. The Scotch, for instance, are influenced in their music by their national instrument, the bag pipes. Mendelssohn knew this, and in his Scotch Symphony he shows the study of the characteristics of the bag pipes throughout the entire piece. Only once does he make a slip and omit this characteristic. Donizetti, however, in his Scotch opera 'Lucia de Lammermoor' has hardly a suggestion of anything that might be called Scotch in the entire work. The audience must rely upon the plaids and kilts for local color, but in the Mendelssohn work an audience in a concert hall which is at all familiar with Scotch music would detect the unmistakable atmosphere at once."

"I have often been asked to account for the success of my own military marches. Of course it is impossible for anyone to tell what makes a piece of this kind popular, but I have always felt that a march must have an element of the barbaric in it to make it go. It must be robust, it must stir the blood, it must be a march filled with oriental splendor, suggesting the flash of the bayonet, it must make you think of battalions of big chested men in motion. Europe remembers our marches while America almost forgets them, and longs for new ones all the time. Some of my first marches are just as popular in Europe today as when they were first written. In writing a march I always try to make it sound so that anyone in the audience would say after hearing it, 'that is the way I would have wanted it to sound if I had written it'. No matter how refined and cultured we may be, we all have an element of the savage, the man of the wilds and the steppes in us. We like the clashing of cymbals, the roar of the drums, the intoxicating rhythms, and the blare of the brass that carries us off our feet whether we will or not. All this I try to put into my marches. Sometimes I wait for months before I get the right melodic inspiration. Then the musical idea comes and I can't wait until I have it worked out."

"Once a young lady of staid old Boston asked me: 'Why is it that I like military marches better than any other kind of music?' I told her that it was because of the barbarian, the savage, the oriental in her. She seemed shocked at this and said: 'How can you detect anything of the savage in me'. I called her attention to the feathers in her hat, the skins of wild animals with which she trimmed her dress, and the little ornamental tassel on her slippers. She was quite willing to admit that Boston was not so very far from the forest and the desert after all."

Forecast

"There will always be cheap and trite music because there will always be a certain class of people who will have to evolve from no music whatever to music that is worth while through music which requires very little taste for intelligence to understand. The problem is to get them interested in good music by first gaining their attention through music of less esthetic value. I have no sympathy with those who would build a Chinese wall around the good music and keep all those out who honestly confess that they don't understand it. Because a man cannot understand Strauss or Debussy is no reason why he should be musically excommunicated. The people themselves readily determine what they like and what they dislike. There has been a great deal printed about Strauss and about Debussy, consequently there has been a kind of fad for their music, but I notice that the compositions of Puccini among the latter composers elicit more real applause than those of any other writer, and I am quite willing to predict that twenty years from now they will be equally popular. Musical fashions cannot be determined by printer's ink. The public in the end will demand the kind of music it likes best, and not what critics and writers say ought to be most popular."

The Etude Magazine October 1910