Austin Symphonic Band

“Lest We Forget”
January 19, 2025

 PROGRAM NOTES

Colonel Bogey March (1914)
Kenneth J. Alford (1881-1945)
Arranged by Andrew Glover

Program note from the United States Marine Band:

Composed in 1913 and first published in 1914, “Colonel Bogey” was an instant hit, becoming a best-seller on the sheet music “charts” by selling more than a million copies by the early 1930s. Furthermore, the march gained worldwide exposure and popularity when it was featured as the musical theme for The Bridge on the River Kwai, an Oscar-winning film which was set during the Second World War. Fittingly, the composer Kenneth J. Alford had an extensive military background. Alford was actually the nom de plume of Major F. J. Ricketts, Director of Music for the Royal Marines at Plymouth (UK). Fluent on the cornet, piano, and organ, Ricketts had also served as bandmaster at the Royal Military School of Music, and later led the band of the Second Battalion Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, an infantry regiment of the British Army. The inspiration for the march and its amusing title came from the composer’s experience of playing golf with an eccentric colonel who, instead of shouting the customary “Fore!” after an errant shot, would issue the warning by whistling. Although “Colonel Bogey” proved to be his most famous composition, Ricketts also wrote and published hymns, fantasias, solos for xylophone and piano, and many classical and operatic arrangements under his mother’s maiden name. Ultimately, it was his gift for writing marches that earned him the nickname of “The British March King.”

Listen for:

• The descending minor third indicating an errant golf shot

• A happy, dancing euphonium counter-melody

Suite Francaise (1944)
Darius Milhaud (1892-1974)

I. Normandie
III. Ile de France
IV. Alsace-Lorraine
V. Provence

Program note by Darius Milhaud:

For a long time I have had the idea of writing a composition fit for high school purposes, and this was the result. In the bands, orchestras, and choirs of American high schools, colleges and universities where the youth of the nation be found, it is obvious that they need music of their time, not too difficult to perform, but nevertheless keeping the characteristic idiom of the composer.

The five parts of this suite are named after French Provinces, the very ones in which the American and Allied armies fought together with the French underground of the liberation of my country: Normandy, Ile-de-France (of which Paris is the center), Alsace-Lorraine, and Provence (my birthplace).

I used some folk tunes of these provinces. I wanted the young American to hear the popular melodies of those parts of France where their fathers and brothers fought to defeat the German invaders, who in less than seventy years have brought war, destruction, cruelty, torture, and murder three times to the peaceful and democratic people of France.

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I. Normandie: Milhaud uses two lively Norman folk songs: Germaine, about a warrior coming home as seen through the eyes of a young woman; and The French Shepherdess and the King of England, about a comic meeting between the two title characters. Milhaud added some original material to help him depict the region where so many American servicemen landed in France during World War II.

III. Ile de France: With lively folk song, this movement depicts the bustle of Paris. It begins with a children’s round that alternates bars of 3 beats and 2, and which Milhaud sets in 4 beats while still retaining the accents of the original. The lyrical melody that follows also reflects the bubbly attitude of the City of Light.

IV. Alsace-Lorraine: Here Milhaud takes a dark turn, with material suggesting distant artillery fire around a solemn funeral procession, fitting for a region that borders Germany and was taken over during the war.

V. Provence: Reflecting on his home region, Milhaud utilizes a rondo with a fast, scatterbrained main theme, alternating with a fife-and-tambor segment typical of the French Provinces countryside and a slower, slightly more romantic subject — both of these interludes derived from the principal melody.

Listen for:

• Simple yet unpredictable melodies

• Complex layers of counterpoint

• Wistful Satie-like scoring

Commando March (1943)
Samuel Barber (1910-1981)
Edited by R. Anderson Collinsworth

Program note from University of North Texas University Band:

Commando March was not only Barber’s first work for wind band, but his first work subsequent to entering the Army. There is no extant documentation regarding a formal commission or a direct military order; rather it appears Barber was inspired to compose for the military bands he must have come in contact with during his basic training. In spite of its large instrumentation, Barber often referred to the work in letters as his “little march.” Frederick Fennell at one time described the music as representing “a new kind of soldier, one who did not march in straight lines” but “struck in stealth with speed, disappearing as quickly as he came.”

The premiere performance was given by the Army Air Forces Technical Command Training Band, Warrant Officer Robert L. Landers, conductor, on May 23, 1943, in Atlantic City, New Jersey. As was the case with many of Barber’s earlier works, Commando March was immediately well-received by audiences. Following its premiere, Barber himself led the Goldman Band in several performances in July 1943. He even adapted the work for orchestra at the request of Serge Koussevitzky, who led this score’s first performance with the Boston Symphony Orchestra on October 29, 1943.

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Pennsylvania native Samuel Barber was noted for the lyricism, rhythmical complexity, harmonic richness and romanticism of his music, and is regarded as one of the great American composers of the 20th century. A child prodigy who trained at the Curtis Institute as a teenager, he went on to win numerous awards for his compositions including the Prix de Rome, two Pulitzer Prizes, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and membership to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is best known for his Adagio for Strings, his soprano and orchestra piece Knoxville: Summer of 1915, and many other orchestral and operatic works.

Listen for:

• A stealthy melody first introduced in the clarinets, then relayed through the lower reeds on to the euphonium

• An underlying triplet-based rhythm in contrast to the duplet sub-divided melody.

• Techniques such as the use of whole-tone scales and harmonizations using augmented and diminished chords

• Jazz techniques such as trombone glissandi and flutter tonguing

The Homefront: Musical Memories from World War II (1995)
Arranged by James Christensen (1935–2020)

It’s Been a Long, Long Time — Jule Styne / Sammy Cahn
Thanks for the Memory — Ralph Rainger / Leo Robin
Bell Bottom Trousers — Sea Shanty
The White Cliffs of Dover — Walter Kent / Nat Burton
I’ll Be Seeing You — Sammy Fain / Irving Kahal
Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree with Anyone Else But Me — Sam Stept
Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition — Frank Loesser

Out of the darkness of the war, many classic songs found their way to the jukeboxes of America to spread hope to news-weary patriots. Groups such as the Andrews Sisters, Glenn Miller’s Band, Kay Kyser “Kollege of Musical Knowledge” and the Harry James Orchestra bolstered the spirit of soldiers and civilians with these tunes.

Listen for:

• Big Band scoring featuring our saxophone section

• Poignant ballads triggering memories of home

Victory at Sea - Symphonic Scenario (1954)
Richard Rodgers (1902-1979)
Transcribed for band by Robert Russell Bennett (1894-1981)

Program note adapted from Wikipedia and Program Notes for Band:

The documentary television series about naval warfare during World War II entitled Victory at Sea was originally broadcast by NBC in the United States in 1952 and 1953. It was condensed into a film in 1954. Excerpts from the music soundtrack, by Richard Rodgers and Robert Russell Bennett, were re-recorded and sold as record albums. The series, which won an Emmy award in 1954 as “best public affairs program,” played an important part in establishing historic “compilation” documentaries as a viable television genre.

The New Yorker Magazine describes the music as “a seemingly endless creation, now martial, now tremendously moving.” The symphonic sweep of Rodgers’s score captures the moods and variations of the panoramic war at sea in all its terror and beauty, and adds an elusive emotional dimension which neither camera nor words quite convey.

Rodgers’s music is greatly enhanced by the comprehensive arrangement of his long-time collaborator, Robert Russell Bennett. Bennett transformed 12 of Rodgers's 24 “themes” — Song of the High Seas (main theme), Submarines in a Calm Sea, Beneath the Southern Cross, The Guadalcanal March, The Sunny Pacific Islands, The Approaching Enemy, Death and Debris, The Hymn of Victory, Big Wave — into today’s symphonic scenario. Bennett also composed much more original material than Rodgers had, for which he received little credit.

Listen for:

• Undulating woodwinds emulating the sea

• Sounds conjuring the images of ship’s bells and prowling submarines

• The return of the main theme

Epilogue: “Lest We Forget” (1992)
Robert Jager (b. 1939)

Program Note from publisher:

This is not a work of celebration. It is, rather, music to commemorate the decent people who suffered through the agony of World War II, and those who gave their lives for peace and freedom. It is not funeral music, but rather a solemn hymn to the indomitable spirit of those who were touched by tyranny, and who were able to rise above it — both in life and in death. It is these people that we remember.

Epilogue: “Lest We Forget” was commissioned by the United States Army Field Band, Lt. Col. Jack Grogan, Conductor. The premiere took place at the Kentucky Music Educators Association Convention in Louisville on February 6, 1992.

Listen for:

• A heavy, dramatic, Wagnarian approach

• Heroic horn lines

• Hints of the bugle call “Taps” in the closing measures

The Stars and Stripes Forever (1896)
John Philip Sousa (1854-1932)

With the possible exception of “The Star Spangled Banner,” no musical composition has done more to arouse the patriotic spirit of America than this, John Philip Sousa’s most beloved composition. Symbolic of flag-waving in general, it has been used with considerable effectiveness to generate patriotic feeling ever since its introduction in Philadelphia on May 14, 1897, when the staid Public Ledger reported: “It is stirring enough to rouse the American eagle from his crag, and set him to shriek exultantly while he hurls his arrows at the aurora borealis.”

Aside from this flowery review, the march’s reception was only slightly above average for a new Sousa march. It grew gradually in public acceptance, and with the advent of the Spanish-American War the nation suddenly needed such patriotic music. Capitalizing on this situation, Sousa used it with maximum effect to climax his moving pageant, The Trooping of the Colors.

The Stars and Stripes Forever had found its place in history. There was a vigorous response wherever it was performed, and audiences began to rise as though it were the national anthem. This became traditional at Sousa Band concerts. It was his practice to have the cornets, trumpets, trombones, and piccolos line up at the front of the stage for the final trio, and this added to the excitement. Many bands still perform the piece this way.

With the passing years the march has endeared itself to the American people. The sight of Sousa conducting his own great band in this, his most glorious composition, always triggered an emotional response. The piece was expected — and sometimes openly demanded — at every concert of the Sousa Band. Usually it was played unannounced as an encore. Many former Sousa Band members have stated that they could not recall a concert in which it was not played, and that they too were inspired by looking into the misty eyes of those in the audience. That the players never tired of it is surely a measure of its greatness.

Sousa was very emotional in speaking of his own patriotism. When asked why he composed this march, he would insist that its strains were divinely inspired. In a Sousa Band program at Willow Grove we find this account:

Someone asked, “Who influenced you to compose The Stars and Stripes Forever,” and before the question was hardly asked, Sousa replied, “God — and I say this in all reverence! I was in Europe and I got a cablegram that my manager was dead. I was in Italy and I wished to get home as soon as possible. I rushed to Genoa, then to Paris and to England and sailed for America. On board the steamer as I walked miles up and down the deck, back and forth, a mental band was playing Stars and Stripes Forever. Day after day as I walked it persisted in crashing into my very soul. I wrote it on Christmas Day, 1896.” The march was not put to paper on board the ship. Presumably it was penned in Sousa’s hotel suite in New York soon after docking.

The composition was actually born of homesickness, as Sousa freely told interviewers, and some of the melodic lines were conceived while he was still in Europe. In one such interview he stated:

In a kind of dreamy way I used to think over old days at Washington when I was leader of the Marine Band … when we played at all public official functions, and I could see the the Stars and Stripes flying from the flagstaff in the grounds of the White House just as plainly as if I were back there again. Then I began to think of all the countries I had visited, of the foreign people I had met, of the vast difference between America and American people and other countries and other peoples, and that flag of ours became glorified … and to my imagination it seemed to be the biggest, grandest, flag in the world, and I could not get back under it quick enough. It was in this impatient, fretful state of mind that the inspiration to compose ‘The Stars and Stripes Forever’ came to me, and to my imagination it was a genuine inspiration, irresistible, complete, definite, and I could not rest until I had finished the composition. Then I experienced a wonderful sense of relief and relaxation. I was satisfied, delighted, with my work after it was done. The feeling of impatience passed away, and I was content to rest peacefully until the ship had docked and I was once more under the folds of the grand old flag of our country.

The interviewer then added this telling postlude: “‘Amen! to those sentiments,’ I said. And as I looked at John Philip Sousa there were tears in his eyes.” Sousa explained to the press that the three themes of the final trio were meant to typify the three sections of the United States. The broad melody, or main theme, represents the North. The South is represented by the famous piccolo obbligato, and the West by the bold countermelody of the trombones.

By almost any musical standard, “The Stars and Stripes Forever” is a masterpiece, even without its patriotic significance. But by virtue of that patriotic significance it is by far the most popular march ever written, and its popularity is by no means limited to the United States. Abroad, it has always symbolized America. It has been recorded more often than practically any other composition ever written. Sales of the sheet music alone netted Sousa over $400,000 in his lifetime; radio broadcasts, sheet music, and phonograph records brought his heirs tidy sums for many years. After the copyright expired in 1953, over fifty new arrangements appeared in the United States alone. Looking back at the march’s astonishing success, it is difficult to believe that the publisher had shown little faith in it and that he had even suggested to Sousa that “Forever” be stricken from the title.

Sousa did not claim that his march title was original. He could have come by it in one of two ways. First, the favorite toast of bandmaster Patrick S. Gilmore was “Here’s to the stars and stripes forever!” Also, one of Sousa’s publishers had earlier printed a piece with the same title.

Sousa wrote words for the march, evidently for use in The Trooping of the Colors, his pageant of 1898. These are printed below. One phrase (“Death to the enemy!”) was curiously omitted, however—one which he said came to him repeatedly while he was pacing the decks of the Teutonic.

Hurrah for the flag of the free!
May it wave as our standard forever,
The gem of the land and the sea,
The banner of the right.

Let despots remember the day
When our fathers with mighty endeavor
Proclaimed as they marched to the fray
That by their might and by their right it waves forever.

Paul E. Bierley, The Works of John Philip Sousa (Westerville, Ohio: Integrity Press, 1984), 43. Used by permission.

The 48-star American flag displayed above the band is provided courtesy of the National Museum of the Pacific War in Fredericksburg, Texas. While the history of this particular standard is unknown, it is of the 1912 design that flew until 1959, making it the longest-used design at the time.

Return to “Lest We Forget.”