John Philip Sousa

John Philip Sousa or John Philip de Sousa (November 6, 1854 – March 6, 1932), popularly known as "The March King", is probably the most famous conductor and composer in history of military marches.

Sousa the Freemason

One year after the 1882 transit of Venus, Sousa was commissioned to compose a processional for the unveiling of a bronze statue of American physicist Prof. Joseph Henry, who had died in 1878. Henry, who had developed the first electric motor, was also the first secretary of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.

Related Topics:
Transit of Venus - Joseph Henry - Smithsonian Institution

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A Freemason, Sousa was fascinated by what the group considered mystical qualities in otherwise natural phenomena. According to Sten Odenwald of the NASA IMAGE Science Centerhttp://image.gsfc.nasa.gov/poetry/venus/TransitFAQs.html, this played a significant role in the selection of the time and date of the performance, April 19, 1883, at 4:00 P.M. Dr. Odenwald points out that Venus and Mars, invisible to the participants, were setting in the west. At the same time, the Moon, Uranus and Virgo were rising in the east, Saturn had crossed the meridian, and Jupiter was directly overhead. According to Masonic lore, Venus was associated with the element copper, and Joseph Henry had used large quantities of copper to build his electric motors.

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The "Transit of Venus March"http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cocoon/ihas/loc.natlib.ihas.100010997/default.html never caught on, and went unplayed for more than 100 years, after Sousa's copies of the music were destroyed in a flood. As reported in The Washington Posthttp://transitofvenus.org/sousa.htm, Library of Congress employee Loras Schissel recently found copies of the old sheet music for "Venus" ?languishing in the library's files.? The piece was resurrected recently, in time for the 2004 Transit.

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