Composers Datebook™ is a daily two-minute program designed to inform, engage, and entertain listeners with timely information about composers of the past and present. Each program notes significant or intriguing musical events involving composers of the past and present, with appropriate and accessible music related to each.
Sousa gets stiffed in Minneapolis
It was on this day in 1929 that a new march by John Philip Sousa was played for the first— and last — time until almost 60 years later. The "Foshay Tower Washington Memorial March" was commissioned by Wilbur Foshay, a high-flying Minneapolis businessman of the Roaring 20s who fell victim to the stock market crash and criminal charges of mail fraud. One of his extravagant projects was the Foshay Tower he built in downtown Minneapolis. An office building shaped like the Washingon Monument, it was for many years the tallest structure in the city. It still stands, with Foshay's name carved in huge letters on all sides of the obelisk, now renovated as a historic site. In the lobby hangs Wilbur Foshay's portrait, along with the score of Sousa's march, which the March King himself conducted in Minneapolis on August 30th, 1929. Just two months after the tower doors swung open, Wilbur Foshay's empire of public utilities, factories and banks crumbled to dust. A year and a half later he was convicted of fraud, and spent two years and eleven months in Leavenworth prison. Not surprisingly, John Philip Sousa never got paid for his commission. He considered giving it a new name: "The Washington Memorial March," but then decided to withdraw the piece completely, and the music was not published or widely performed again until 1988.