At the same time, Sousa played first violin for BenkertвЂ™s Washington Orchestral Union, as well as performing for regular Tuesday evening string quartet concerts at the home of the Assistant Secretary of State William Hunter. Benkert greatly encouraged the young Sousa, allowing him the sort of sophisticated training in composition, harmony, counterpoint and orchestration in Washington that was generally presumed available only in Europe. The following year, 1886, he changed music teachers, beginning studies with George Felix Benkert, who had trained in Vienna with the famed theorist Simon Sechter, with whom Schubert planned lessons and whose most famous student was to be Anton Bruckner. The rest of his orchestra consisted of seven grown men and quickly became a popular dance orchestra in the Washington area. These early school days coincided with the great events of the American Civil War, then swirling around the Washington area.Д«y the age of eleven Sousa organised and led his own quadrille orchestra. The boy was found to have absolute pitch, and thus deemed sufficiently gifted to begin basic training in harmony and the study of the violin. By the age of six, his musical talent had become apparent and he was enrolled for a year of solfeggio with a local Italian teacher. SousaвЂ™s father was a trombonist with the United States Marine Band. While SousaвЂ™s fame as a bandmaster needs little comment, far less is known about his formative years as an orchestral composer, conductor and violinist.Д«orn in Washington DC on 6th November, 1854, Sousa developed with startling quickness. His American tours first brought classical music to hundreds of towns. John Philip Sousa personified the innocent energy of turn-of-the-century America, still a new nation, and he represented America across the globe. However, he was no mere maker of marches, but an exceptionally inventive composer of over two hundred works, including symphonic poems, suites, songs and operettas created for both orchestra and for band. Sousa said a march вЂњshould make a man with a wooden leg step outвЂќ, and his surely did.

Marine band stars and stripes forever