It’s a tune that’s known to many about a school that’s known to all. “Victory for MSU” has enthralled Michigan State University fans for over a century and was named one of the NCAA’s best fight songs by ESPN.
The version that is ingrained in the ears of Spartans — the tight minute-and-40-second song that is played at parades and longer breaks during football and hockey games — was arranged by Leonard Falcone, the man whose unlikely journey from the countryside of southeastern Italy to the banks of the Red Cedar laid the groundwork for today’s music programs at Michigan State.
Falcone (pronounced fahl-KOH-nee) emigrated to the U.S. as a teenager in 1915 and, in 1927, was hired as the director of what was then the 65-member Michigan State College Military Band. As someone who had likely never witnessed an American football game growing up, he would go on to lead one of the greatest marching bands in the country and would spend the next four decades turning MSU’s music programs into some of the best in the nation.
“Leonard Falcone is the person who put Michigan State onto the map when it comes to college band programs,” says Kevin Sedatole, the director of bands in the College of Music. “Falcone established the standard and quality that we come to expect from MSU bands.”
All year long, the Spartan Marching Band and other musical groups around campus are keeping that standard going.
From Italy to East Lansing
Growing up as one of seven children in Roseto Valfortore, Italy, a small town just over 80 miles from Naples, Falcone was musically inclined from an early age — at 9, he played the alto horn in the town’s prestigious band.
His older brother Nicholas emigrated to the U.S. in 1912 to pursue a career in music and, as Italy entered World War I a few years later, Falcone boarded a ship to join him stateside, avoiding conscription. The brothers found work in Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti while enmeshing themselves in the music scene there. Falcone was a trombonist for silent movies and by 1926 had graduated from the University of Michigan’s School of Music with a degree in violin.
The next year, a fateful opportunity would come his way. The military band at Michigan State College (MSU’s name at the time) was searching for a new director. Both Falcone and his brother, who was the director of bands at the University of Michigan, were considered for the job thanks to their growing reputation, with Leonard Falcone eventually accepting the role and moving to East Lansing.
It was not a harmonious start.
“I shall always remember the first rehearsal I had with the band,” Falcone said, according to Myron Welch’s “The Life and Work of Leonard Falcone.” “The band sounded so bad that it was one of the most disheartening experiences of my life up to that point.”
Falcone considered resigning but was talked out of the idea by university officials. That intervention signaled the beginning of what would be a 50-year career at MSU, where Falcone would transform not just the marching band, but also music programs across Michigan State.
Building the Spartan sound
“He had to learn about marching bands,” Sedatole says. “The town bands in Italy were nothing like the military bands in the U.S. It was completely out of his realm.” So, Sedatole says, Falcone worked with Michigan State’s ROTC to establish what would become the standard for MSU’s marching band. At the same time, he would expand on the school’s entire music program.
In 1927, music education became a degree program, and Falcone did his best to make it thrive. He would make East Lansing home, eventually marrying and living with his wife, Beryl, and two children in a house on Charles Street north of campus.
“The role of the college band as I see it is very simply stated,” Falcone says in “Solid Brass: The Leonard Falcone Story.” “Primarily, it is to develop a group to the highest degree of proficiency, constantly striving to improve the standards of band performance and match the performance to the level of professional orchestras.”
In 1930, the Spartan Marching Band performed on the White House lawn for President Herbert Hoover. Here is footage (without sound) of the performance:
Falcone reintroduced open-air concerts on campus in 1930, beginning with a performance at Beaumont Tower and succeeded by shows in the Forest of Arden, a space near West Circle Drive, where a review by the Lansing State Journal declared, “It is amazing what Leonard Falcone has done with the material at hand and the small amount of time devoted to practice.”
By 1934, the marching band was performing before audiences as large as 3,000.
Who the band was playing in front of was also impressive: In 1930 when it accompanied the football team to Georgetown University, the band performed on the White House lawn for President Herbert Hoover.
On top of all the work he was doing at MSU, in 1935 when his brother Nicholas took medical leave, Falcone spent part of the year as band director for both MSU and the University of Michigan, driving back and forth between campuses to teach and conduct.
Rose Bowls, kicksteps and fight songs
As Michigan State’s musical reputation grew, so did Falcone’s vision. The construction of the campus Band Shell in 1938 and the inclusion of women musicians during World War II broadened the music programs’ reach. But the 1950s brought seismic changes.
In 1953, Michigan State joined the Big Ten Conference and, with it, came even larger audiences for Spartan musicians. The era was a defining time for the Spartan Marching Band, as its members began wearing new green and white nonmilitary uniforms and implemented the band’s famous “kickstep.”
The concert band began a series of successful tours and, with the football team thriving in the Big Ten, the marching band made appearances at the Rose Bowl in 1954 and 1956. It was around that time that the Falcone Fight arrangement of “Victory for MSU” became standard.
In the ’60s, along with another Rose Bowl appearance in 1965, the band would perform at major national events, including at the New York World’s Fair and Rockefeller Center and at President Lyndon B. Johnson’s inaugural parade.
The virtuoso behind the baton
While generations of Spartan fans knew Falcone for halftime shows, his heart remained rooted in classical artistry, and growing MSU’s other music programs demonstrated that devotion.
“I believe that if you had asked Falcone what he was known for,” says Sedatole, who has been at MSU for 21 years and oversees 700 student musicians across campus, “he would say the concert band because that’s where the music is.” Off the field, he served as MSU’s tuba and euphonium studio teacher and gained international attention as a soloist and author.
He retired as director of bands in 1967 but continued in his role instructing the tuba until 1980. In his 50-plus years at MSU, the music program went from a marching band with 65 members to a program with multiple bands and hundreds of students.
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Iconic arrangements and skill
In the fall of 1967, Falcone directed the Spartan Marching Band at a football game halftime for one of the final times. Over the loudspeaker, the announcer thanked Falcone for his time at MSU. The band performed “The Sound of Music,” “Auld Lang Syne” and, of course, “Victory for MSU.”
The arrangement is not the only tune Falcone is known for at MSU; he also arranged the current version of MSU’s iconic “Shadows.”
While Falcone had high standards when it came to performance, he also understood the importance of setting up the next generation for success. “Our role is to train teachers who are going into the field of public school music as conductors,” he said. “If the caliber of the band is mediocre, you have mediocre students with mediocre training. But if the band is first class, then the students get a first-class training in turn, and after graduation they go on to train their own students well.”
The Falcone legacy
Falcone passed away in 1985, but his spirit and memory remain in the places he touched. In his hometown of Roseto Valfortore in Italy, a plaque in a hillside amphitheater honors his achievements.
His reputation remains strong at MSU and beyond. Today, the MSU Alumni Band is an active group that builds off the camaraderie of its alums. It also provides scholarships to students in the form of the Leonard Falcone Endowed Memorial Scholarship and the Leonard Falcone Memorial Bands Scholarship Endowment.
Each year in Twin Lake, Michigan, the Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp hosts the Leonard Falcone International Euphonium and Tuba Festival, which attracts talents from around the globe.
And in the MSU College of Music, which is celebrating 20 years as the College of Music, students and faculty still embrace the conductor who helped put the program on the map.
“When someone is at a place for 40-plus years,” Sedatole says, “you know that something is going well.”
As Spartan fans hear the beloved rhythm of “Victory for MSU” played by a new generation of musicians, it is Leonard Falcone’s standard still leading the way.
