Travel to the Boston Food Fair With a Favorite Sousa March

Summer band concert season is in full swing this week, so what better time to talk about a piece by the “March King” himself? While John Philip Sousa (1854-1932) wrote an incredible number of marches, the one I love is The Fairest of the Fair. He wrote it in 1908 – the only work he composed that year. He wrote this for the Boston Food Fair, and the story goes that he was inspired by a lovely lass he saw, but never met.

Many (most?) of Sousa’s marches follow a specific formula. The Fairest of the Fair is no exception. This form contains several sections which should be fairly easy to tell apart. See if you can figure out where each section starts. I’ll give you the time marks as I walk through the piece and you can see if you got them right. (Or you can just keep reading without guessing. But where’s the fun in that?)

1. Introduction
2. First strain (repeated)
3. Second strain (repeated)
4. Trio
5. Break strain
6. Trio (modified; repeat sections 5 and 6)
7. Stinger

The intro and first two strains are in one key – in this case, E♭ major. We begin with a happy little tune in the first strain, supported with a traditional march oom-pah from the lower voices (tubas as the “oom” on the beat, horns as the “pah” playing the off-beats). We take the repeat of the first strain, then move on to the second strain (0:37).

The second strain introduces a new theme. The theme occurs in the upper voices with a countermelody happening in the middle voices. Partway through this strain, we get a reprise of the theme from the first strain. We repeat the entire second strain.

Next up is the trio (1:27). As is usually the case in American marches of this form, we change keys here. The pattern is to add a flat to the key signature – this takes us to A♭ major, which has four flats compared to our previous key of E♭ major, which has three. (This takes us one move counter-clockwise around the circle of fifths. The circle of fifths shows how keys are related to each other.) Not only do we change keys in the trio, but we change moods as well. The theme here is smoother and a bit more reserved than the previous themes. We play this section only once.

Trio? Isn’t this for a band?

So why is it called a trio? Back in the day, as in the 1600s, there were a lot of instrumental dance forms. One of those was called a minuet. Eventually, the minuet evolved into a longer form – basically adding a new section in the middle. So you had an ABA form to the music. That B section was called the trio, as it often utilized just three instruments. “A Guide to the Minuet and Trio Form” by John Mello has more information.

Then we reach the break strain at 2:02. The break strain truly creates a break in the piece. We go from a lovely trio melody to a loud, rhythmic burst from the band. I’d always heard the term “break strain” as interchangeable with “dogfight”, but I noticed that the Virginia Tech music theory page lists a dogfight as a specific type of break strain. At 2:19, I like how Sousa inserts a quote of the first theme in only the upper voices, which then leads us into the restatement of the trio melody.

One thing I find a bit different about The Fairest of the Fair is that Sousa doesn’t add any type of countermelody or obbligato when restating the trio theme (2:23), which is often what happens during this section of a march. An obbligato is a specific countermelody, often played in an upper voice, that is yet considered part of the accompaniment. Probably the most famous one, at least to Americans, is the piccolo line that happens during The Stars and Stripes Forever.

We repeat the break strain and trio theme to bring us to the end of our march. But before we sign off for good, we end with the typical march “stinger” – one last, short chord from the entire band. The vast majority of American marches end with a stinger. There’s a notable exception in Sousa’s Riders for the Flag march – no stinger! It can be difficult to fight the natural tendency to add one when playing that piece!

I hope you enjoyed our visit to a genre that’s very familiar to community bands and their audiences all across the country. It wouldn’t be a summer band concert without a march (or three), with at least one of them coming from Sousa!

Shamless plug: I’ve arranged this piece for clarinet choir; it is available at SheetMusicPlus.com. You can also find the original band parts at IMSLP.