Musical Forms

March

Music for marching is essentially an ornamentation of a regular and repeated drum rhythm. The earliest extant military marches are those by Lully and Andr� Philidor l'a�n� for the bands of Louis XIV. Many early military marches were adapted from popular tunes. The French Revolution and Napoleonic wars lent a new impetus to the genre; marches for particular regiments and armies were composed by Cherubini, Hummel, Beethoven and others. Most of the marches now in the military band repertory were written between 1880 and 1914, among the most original and lasting being those of J.P. Sousa and K.J. Alford.

The march seems to have entered art music through Lully's operas and ballets, and processional marches appear in operas by Handel, Mozart, Verdi, Wagner and others. March music for keyboard can be traced back at least to Byrd's Battell; the piano literature of the 19th century includes many marches, e.g. those of Schubert, Schumann and Chopin. Marches introduce and conclude many 18th-century serenade-type works, representing the players' entry and departure. Haydn wrote a march as the slow movement of his 'Military' Symphony, no.100, the fourth movement of Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique is a 'Marche au supplice', and funeral marches are included in Beethoven's Third Symphony and Mahler's First. Examples of orchestral marches intended as separate concert pieces include Liszt's Rakoczy march and the five Pomp and Circumstance marches of Elgar.

This project was created by Ahmed Azab.
Since �2001

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