ed
in Turkey by the military bands in the reviews.

The reason for this overwhelming appeal to the hearts of a planet is
not far to seek. The music is conceived in a spirit of high martial
zest. It is proud and gay and fierce, thrilled and thrilling with
triumph. Like all great music it is made up of simple elements, woven
together by a strong personality. It is not difficult now to write
something that sounds more or less like a Sousa march, any more than
it is difficult to write parodies, serious or otherwise, on Beethoven,
Mozart, or Chopin. The glory of Sousa is that he was the first to
write in this style; that he has made himself a style; that he has so
stirred the musical world that countless imitations have sprung up
after him.

The individuality of the Sousa march is this, that, unlike most of the
other influential marches, it is not so much a musical exhortation
from without, as a distillation of the essences of soldiering from
within. Sousa's marches are not based upon music-room enthusiasms, but
on his own wide experiences of the feelings of men who march together
in the open field.

And so his band music expresses all the nuances of the military
psychology: the exhilaration of the long unisonal stride, the grip on
the musket, the pride in the regimentals and the regiment,--_esprit de
corps_. He expresses the inevitable foppery of the severest soldier,
the tease and the taunt of the evolutions, the fierce wish that all
this ploying and deploying were in the face of an actual enemy, the
mania to reek upon a tangible foe all the joyous energy, the
blood-thirst of the warrior.

These things Sousa embodies in his music as no other music writer ever
has. To approach Sousa's work in the right mood, the music critic must
leave his stuffy concert hall and his sober black; he must flee from
the press, don a uniform, and march. After his legs and spirits have
grown aweary under the metronomic tunes of others, let him note the
surge of blood in his heart and the rejuvenation of all his muscles
when the brasses flare into a barbaric Sousa march. No man that
marches can ever feel anything but gratitude and homage for Sousa.

Of course he is a trickster at times; admitted that he stoops to
conquer at times, yet in his field he is supreme. He is worthy of
serious consideration, because his thematic material is almost always
novel and forceful, and his instrumentation full of contrast and
climax. He is not to be judg