John Philip Sousa Quotes

• Jazz will endure just as long people hear it through their feet instead of their brains.

  John Philip Sousa

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• Grand opera is the most powerful of stage appeals and that almost entirely through the beauty of music.

  John Philip Sousa

• I firmly believe that we have more latent musical talent in America than there is in any other country. But to dig it out there must be good music throughout the land, a lot of it. Everyone must hear it, and such a process takes time.

  John Philip Sousa

• American teachers have one indisputable advantage over foreign ones; they understand the American temperament and can judge its unevenness, its lights and its shadows.

  John Philip Sousa

• America can well expect to develop a goodly amount of composers for she has a goodly number of people.

  John Philip Sousa

• No nation as young as America can be expected to become immediately a power in the arts.

  John Philip Sousa

• I had found English audiences highly satisfactory. They are the best listeners in the world. Perhaps the music-lovers of some of our larger cities equal the English, but I do not believe they can be surpassed in that respect.

  John Philip Sousa

• I have always believed that 98% of a student’s progress is due to his own efforts, and 2% to his teacher.\

  John Philip Sousa

• To the average mind popular music would mean compositions vulgarly conceived and commonplace in their treatment. That is absolutely false.

  John Philip Sousa

• Remember always that the composer’s pen is still mightier than the bow of the violinist; in you lie all the possibilities of the creation of beauty.

  John Philip Sousa

• There is much modern music that is better adapted to a wind combination than to a string, although for obvious reasons originally scored for an orchestra. If in such cases the interpretation is equal to the composition the balance of a wind combination is more satisfying.

  John Philip Sousa

• I still feel the impulse to give young writers a hearing, and I believe I have played more unpublished compositions than any other band leader in the country.

  John Philip Sousa

• I can almost always write music; at any hour of the twenty-four, if I put pencil to paper, music comes.

  John Philip Sousa

• My success is not due to any personal superiority over other people.

  John Philip Sousa

• My religion lies in my composition.

  John Philip Sousa

• Anybody can write music of a sort. But touching the public heart is quite another thing.

  John Philip Sousa

• The average music-lover hears only the production under prevailing conditions.

  John Philip Sousa

• Composers are the only people who can hear good music above bad sounds.

  John Philip Sousa

• Sincere composers believe in God.

  John Philip Sousa

• Any composer who is gloriously conscious that he is a composer must believe that he receives his inspiration from a source higher than himself.

  John Philip Sousa

John Philip Sousa (28)

Birth:	6th November, 1854
Death:	6th March, 1932
Nationality:	American
Profession:	Composer, Conductor, Inventor, Lyricist

About

John Philip Sousa was born in Washington, D.C., USA. He was an American composer, conductor, inventor and songwriter, known primarily for American military and patriotic marches. Among his best-known marches are "The Stars and Stripes Forever", "Semper Fidelis", "The Liberty Bell", "The Thunderer" and "The Washington Post". In 1867 he began to follow the career of his father as a trombonist, but later he took engagements as an orchestral violinist and served as a conductor. He also began composing. In 1868, he enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps as an apprentice in the Marine Band. In 1892 he formed his own band, a carefully selected group capable of equal virtuosity in both military and symphonic music; with it he toured the United States and Europe and finally made a world tour. He wrote at least 70 songs, 11 waltzes, 12 other dance pieces, 11 suites, 14 humoresques, and 27 fantasies. In the 1890s he also redeveloped a type of bass tuba called the helicon, made to his specifications and eventually called the sousaphone. He wrote three novels, including The Fifth String, Pipetown Sandy, and The Transit of Venus-as well as a full-length autobiography, Marching Along.

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