Concert Band - Level 4 - Digital Download
SKU: A0.987644
Composed by John Philip Sousa. Arranged by Kevin R. Tam. 20th Century. Score and parts. 66 pages. Freedom Band Press #45613. Published by Freedom Band Press (A0.987644).
John Philip Sousa shall forever be regarded as the March King. However, his body and scope of work extend well beyond the marches which made him so famous. In a rough accounting of Sousa’s body of work, marches make up only the second most numerous of his efforts – some 135 march compositions versus over 320 arrangements and transcriptions for Band. Outside of his marches, most of the Sousa catalog, including his humoresques, remains unpublished and largely unheard today. By way of an old Sousa concert program, we learn the narrative of his humoresque Among My Souvenirs. In it, the Nichols song Among My Souvenirs is lengthened into a sketch. Among his souvenirs is a photograph, letters and a broken heart. As he meditates, he goes back to a time before he was broken-hearted and remembers when he and his beloved were softly singing Twinkling Stars are Laughing, Love. Next, his mind reverts to the time when he was Seeing Her Home, recalling the songs of years gone by at Aunt Dinah’s Quilting Party – he was Seeing Nellie Home. After this, he travels to the Far East, and visions of The Road to Mandalay come to him. From there, he meditates on the Sweet Mysteries of Life and, finally, arrives at the closing picture in which he is once more Among my Souvenirs.
