Cincinnati native Henry Fillmore (1881-1956) was prolific composer and arranger and a beloved band leader whose music and performances delighted audiences. He started his own professional band (the Fillmore Band) in Cincinnati in the 1930s, one of the last great professional bands of its kind. He was also prolific in creating pseudonyms, including Harold Bennett (whose young band books were famous), Will Huff, Al Hayes, Gus Beans, Henrietta Hall (a rare female name), Ray Hall, Harry Hartley, and others. Over the span of his 50 year career, he (and his pseudonyms) wrote more than 250 original compositions, including 113 marches. He also created more than 750 arrangements for band, many of which are gold standards of the genre. After a long career in Ohio, he moved to Miami (the one in Florida, not the one in Ohio) and became involved with the bands at the University of Miami, where he had a lasting impact and where he left most of his estate.
Fillmore wrote The Klaxon in 1929 for the Cincinnati Automobile Show and dedicated it “To the Producers of the Klaxon Automobile Horns.” Frederick Fennell has more to say about it, from his 1984 edition of the score:
The great American love affair with the automobile really began to heat-up in the 1920’s when the family car drew us all to the roads. An old French word and a new small rectangular building–the garage–became part of life. Long before the phrase “standard equipment,” the buyer of a new car had to add such items as a loud horn that worked when needed. As a boy I remember watching my father add one to an old Buick. Even then I thought that the raucous sound of its name accomplished its commercial purpose; it was called a Klaxon.
Henry Fillmore obviously kept all avenues to the public very wide open and functioning. When his band played at the Cincinnati Automobile Show in January, 1930 he seized the opportunity to introduce a new march that was most appropriate to the occasion, The Klaxon. Not content simply to play a new march named for an automobile horn, Fillmore dressed up the performance with another “first,” the introduction of a “new instrument,” the Klaxophone, a brace of the noisy devices tuned to play along with the band, presumably in the Trio and Break strain.
Commercial considerations apart, Henry obviously could not pass the chance to feature the horn section in any march that he would entitle The Klaxon. Theirs is the tune in the trio, a subdued and simple line with the percussion out for 32 bars!–and the horns take the melody for the final fade to the closing stinger, fortissimo!! The Klaxon is unusual and, therefore, typical Henry Fillmore. Enjoy it.
Fillmore specialized in circus marches and screamers, so it is tempting to play The Klaxon in that vein (VERY fast!), yet Fennell’s edition calls for a relatively reserved tempo of 140 to the half note – the Robert Foster edition puts it at a downright relaxed 120. Here is a performance that roughly splits the difference between those tempos:
…and the screamer version (c. h=164):