The "Transit of Venus March" is a

march March is the third month of the year in both the Julian and Gregorian calendars. It is the second of seven months to have a length of 31 days. In the Northern Hemisphere, the meteorological beginning of spring occurs on the first day of March ...

scored for military brass band written by

John Philip Sousa John Philip Sousa ( ; November 6, 1854 – March 6, 1932) was an American composer and conductor of the late Romantic era known primarily for American military marches. He is known as "The March King" or the "American March King", to dis ...

in 1883 to celebrate the 1882

Transit of Venus frameless, upright=0.5 A transit of Venus across the Sun takes place when the planet Venus passes directly between the Sun and a superior planet, becoming visible against (and hence obscuring a small portion of) the solar disk. During a tr ...

and published by the J.W. Pepper Company. The work was erroneously thought to be lost for over 100 years when a piano transcriptionFront cover shown at right; the full sheet music can be found on Wikisource. published in 1896 was found by a

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library ...

employee in 2003. Copies of the original Pepper publication, however, do survive.

Background

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 Joseph Henry, who had died in 1878. Henry, who had developed the first electric motor, was also the first secretary of the

Smithsonian Institution The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums and education and research centers, the largest such complex in the world, created by the U.S. government "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge". Founded ...

in Washington, D.C. 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 Center, 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 Venus is the second planet from the Sun. It is sometimes called Earth's "sister" or "twin" planet as it is almost as large and has a similar composition. As an interior planet to Earth, Venus (like Mercury) appears in Earth's sky never f ...

and

Mars Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and the second-smallest planet in the Solar System, only being larger than Mercury. In the English language, Mars is named for the Roman god of war. Mars is a terrestrial planet with a thin at ...

, invisible to the participants, were setting in the west. At the same time, the

moon The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It is the fifth largest satellite in the Solar System and the largest and most massive relative to its parent planet, with a diameter about one-quarter that of Earth (comparable to the width of ...

Uranus Uranus is the seventh planet from the Sun. Its name is a reference to the Greek god of the sky, Uranus ( Caelus), who, according to Greek mythology, was the great-grandfather of Ares (Mars), grandfather of Zeus (Jupiter) and father of ...

, and

Virgo Virgo may refer to: *Virgo (astrology), the sixth astrological sign of the zodiac * Virgo (constellation), a constellation *Virgo Cluster, a cluster of galaxies in the constellation Virgo *Virgo Stellar Stream, remains of a dwarf galaxy * Virgo Su ...

were rising in the east, Saturn had crossed the meridian, and

Jupiter Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest in the Solar System. It is a gas giant with a mass more than two and a half times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined, but slightly less than one-thousandth t ...

was directly overhead. According to Masonic lore, Venus was associated with the element

copper Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu (from la, cuprum) and atomic number 29. It is a soft, malleable, and ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. A freshly exposed surface of pure copper has a pinkis ...

, a component of electric motors.

2003 resurrection

The "Transit of Venus March" never caught on during Sousa's lifetime. It went unplayed for many years, after Sousa's manuscript copies of the music were destroyed in a flood. As reported in ''

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...

'', Library of Congress employee Loris J. Schissel found copies of the old sheet music for the "Transit of Venus March" "languishing in the library's files".The reason for its presence there, and its going unnoticed for so long, is unclear. The piece was resurrected in time for the

2004 Transit of Venus The second most recent transit of Venus observed from Earth took place on 8 June 2004. The event received significant attention, since it was the first Venus transit after the invention of broadcast media. No human alive at the time had witnesse ...

. The piece had been performed on compilation albums before then, but it was the 2004 transit that brought it to wide public attention. The Library of Congress joined with

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil List of government space agencies, space program ...

to celebrate the 2004 transit with this march.

Gallery

People

Image:JohnPhilipSousa-Chickering.LOC.jpg,

, the composer of the march. Image:JosephHenry-SmithsonianCastle-20050517.jpg, The statue of Joseph Henry, the unveiling of which was Sousa's reason for writing the march.

Transits of Venus

Image:1882 transit of venus.jpg, The 1882 transit, which inspired Sousa to write the march. Image:Venustransit 2004-06-08 07-49.jpg, The 2004 transit. The march, rediscovered in 2003, was used to celebrate this event.

Notes

References

External links

Copies of the original march
(including all player parts) published by JW Pepper in 1883
Audio recording of the march
(performed 2003 by the Virginia Grand Military Band)
Video recording of the 2004 transit of venus, accompanied by the Sousa march
produced by John Walker {{Authority control Sousa marches 1883 compositions Transit of Venus