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Today is Sousa's birthday!

And Antoine-Joseph "Adolphe" Sax.

This evening I won't be surprised to hear our band director announce to the crowd that M. Sax invented the tuba, because the saxhorn is an ancient tuba, etc. I should speak to her beforehand, but unfortunately am a little fuzzy on this myself. I think I would go so far as to say the classic alto horn, e.g. the Yamaha 201 that will be on hand, might actually be traced back to the saxhorn family, but not the baritones and tubas.

Of course we may also hear that Sousa invented the sousaphone, and I suspect there isn't much to that one either. The way I have it, JW Pepper produced the first one and got it endorsed by Sousa, and that's about the extent of Sousa's role.

Though somewhere I am sure I read that Sousa did have some ideas about such an instrument, but really wanted it to face up at an angle like the later "bell front" tuba - not straight forward as the sousaphone does (nor straight up.) At the time, he would have been talking about a bell front helicon. Maybe someone gave that a try and it didn't balance, and by the time they worked out the balance they had convinced themselves that straight forward was more useful.

LJV wrote:Dan should know, he sat next to little John Philip in kindergarten!!!

I wish!... Oh wait... I would probably be dead, huh?!

bloke wrote:I may have heard that the helicon was unsinkable

Was that model called the Titanic?

Dare I ask, who would be the equivalent of Sousa in terms of star power today?

roughrider wrote:Dare I ask, who would be the equivalent of Sousa in terms of star power today?

What about John Williams of 'Star Wars' fame? I was surprised when I attended a concert he conducted in London that a crowd was trying to get his autograph at the end.

Neptune wrote:

roughrider wrote:Dare I ask, who would be the equivalent of Sousa in terms of star power today?

What about John Williams of 'Star Wars' fame? I was surprised when I attended a concert he conducted in London that a crowd was trying to get his autograph at the end.

No. Sousa was like Elvis, or The Beatles. Seriously, making allowances for a less media saturated world at the time, he was a really big deal. Today? Don't know, maybe there is no one who would be his equivalent, or maybe it's easier to see in retrospect.