One of the original band parts for the Sea King March, in 1975-vintage purple Ditto ink. Click it to hear a MIDI version (played by your computer’s music synthesizer). Close your MIDI player (Windows Media Player, RealPlayer) if you want to stop the playback before it finishes, or use your browser’s STOP or BACK button.
If you went to Palos Verdes High School (PVHS) in Southern California between 1975 and 1991, you’ve almost certainly heard the Sea King March. You might not know it by name unless you were in the band or the cheerleading squad. But you would likely recognize the spirited music the marching band played before football games, and when the Sea Kings scored a touchdown. The pep band also played it at basketball games.
The PVHS band started playing the Sea King March at basketball games at the end of 1975. By resolution of the student council, it became the “official fight song” in 1976. It served in that capacity until the school closed in 1991. (For readers outside the United States, a “fight song” is a fast march associated with football games at universities, usually dating from the early decades of the 20th century. Several of them have become quite famous, and are frequently appropriated by high schools to cheer on their football teams.)
Before 1975, the PVHS fight song was “On Wisconsin,” the fight song of the University of Wisconsin, and of probably half the high schools in the United States. The marching band’s pre-game music at football games also included the “Notre Dame Victory March” (belonging to the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, and to most of the high schools that don’t use “On Wisconsin”).
More significantly, “On Wisconsin” was the fight song of “cross-town rival” Rolling Hills High (whose campus became the site of the current Palos Verdes Peninsula High School). At the PV-Rolling Hills football game in 1974, our band started to play “On Wisconsin” a few seconds after the Rolling Hills band started playing it. It struck me as absurd for two “rival” schools to use the same fight song. The epiphany from antiphony inspired me to write something that would be unique to PVHS.
Before PVHS reopened in 2002, the new principal contacted me about resurrecting the Sea King March, among other discarded school traditions (and I mean “discarded” literally— the two sets of marching band parts for the Sea King March now in my possession were recovered from garbage dumpsters). So I took the opportunity to make a new band arrangement of the piece.
I did the new arrangement with music-notation software so the band could have readable, professionally-typeset parts. I hereby apologize to all those musicians who had to suffer with my horrible handwriting in purple Ditto ink, or with blurry photocopies thereof. I also corrected a few embarrassing mistakes (I particularly apologize to any tuba players who may have wondered about the incorrect bass line at measure 11), and streamlined the instrumentation (two clarinet parts instead of four, and no oom-pah afterbeats for the horns).
Putting the score in electronic form means I can put a MIDI “performance” of it on the Web. On most computers it will sound like a circus calliope or an accordion, but you’ll get the idea. If you’ve got perfect pitch, you’ll notice that the new version is in A-flat instead of B-flat. That should make it more comfortable for younger players. I hope that for some of you, hearing it brings back some pleasant memories of long ago.
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