Creativity Quote by John Philip Sousa

Sousa is doing something sly here: crowning grand opera as the ultimate theatrical weapon while quietly stripping it of most of its supposed “theatrical” virtues. “Most powerful of stage appeals” sounds like a concession to the highbrow establishment of his day, the very crowd that often treated marching bands and popular music as second-tier. Then he twists the knife: opera’s force comes “almost entirely through the beauty of music.” Not acting, not sets, not literary prestige, not the social ritual of the opera house. Music, the thing Sousa actually traffics in, becomes the engine that makes the whole grand machine move.

The intent is partly aesthetic, partly political. In the late 19th and early 20th century, American culture was busy sorting itself into hierarchies: European art music on top, vernacular forms below. Sousa, a consummate populist professional (and a sharp critic of canned, mechanical sound), argues for a hierarchy inside the hierarchy. If opera is the summit, it’s because music can overwhelm language and plot, turning narrative into a delivery system for sensation.

The subtext is a defense of music’s directness. “Beauty” isn’t a soft word here; it’s a claim about persuasion. Opera’s “appeal” is not reasoned argument but engineered feeling, a kind of emotional mass communication. Coming from Sousa, that’s also a backhanded legitimization of his own arena: if music is what makes opera mighty, then the real power has always belonged to the composer and the sound, not the gilded proscenium.