John Philip Sousa for Monty Python's Flying Circus), "The Thunderer" and "The Washington Post". Sousa began his career playing violin and studying music theory and composition under John Esputa and George Felix Benkert. His father enlisted him in the United States Marine Band as an apprentice in 1868. After departing the band in 1875, Sousa learned to conduct. From 1880 until his death, he focused exclusively on conducting and the writing of music. He eventually rejoined the Marine Band and served there for 12 years as director. On leaving the Marine Band, Sousa organized his own band. Sousa aided in the development of
John Philip Sousa inducted into the American Classical Music Hall of Fame in Cincinnati, Ohio. The band hall of the Marine Band was dedicated as "John Philip Sousa Band Hall." In 1987, an act of Congress named "The Stars and Stripes Forever" as the national march of the United States. Sousa wrote 137 marches, 15 operettas, 5 overtures, 11 suites, 24 dances, 28 fantasies, and 322 arrangements of nineteenth-century western European symphonic works. Sousa wrote 137 marches, published by Harry Coleman of Philadelphia, Carl Fischer Music, the John Church Company, and the Sam Fox Publishing Company, the last association beginning in 1917 and