La Marseillaise
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This article is about the anthem "La Marseillaise". A sculpture popularly called "La Marseillaise" is part of the sculptural program of the Arc de Triomphe.
"La Marseillaise" (IPA: [la maʁsɛjɛz]; in English The Song of Marseille) is the national anthem of France.
History"La Marseillaise" is a song written and composed by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle in Strasbourg on April 25, 1792. Its original name was "Chant de guerre pour l'Armée du Rhin" ("War Song for the Army of the Rhine") and it was dedicated to Marshal Nicolas Luckner, a Bavarian-born French officer from Cham. It became the rallying call of the French Revolution and received its name because it was first sung on the streets by volunteers (fédérés) from Marseille upon their arrival in Paris after a young volunteer from Montpellier called François Mireur had sung it at a patriotic gathering in Marseilles. A freshly graduated medical doctor, Mireur later became a general with Bonaparte and died in Egypt at 28. Music was adapted from "Variazioni sulla Marsigliese per violino e orchestra" written by the Italian composer Giovanni Battista Viotti in 1784. Its lyrics are heavily oriented toward Prussian and Austrian armies which were attacking France at the time (Strasbourg itself was attacked just a few days after). The Battle of Valmy turned the tables. The Marseillaise was sung during the Levée en Masse and met with huge success. The Levée en Masse allowed it to become famous across all of France. The Convention accepted it as the French national anthem in a decree passed on Bastille Day, 1795, but it was then banned successively by Napoleon I, Louis XVIII, and Napoleon III, only being reinstated briefly after the July Revolution of 1830 and then permanently in 1879.[1] During Napoleon III's reign Partant pour la Syrie was the unofficial anthem of the regime. Re-arrangementsMozart piano concerto n° 25 (KV 503), composed a few years before, was probably an inspiration for Rouget de Lisle, as the first 12 notes of the anthem are played at the end of the first movement allegro maestoso (16th-17th minutes). "La Marseillaise" was re-arranged by Hector Berlioz about 1830. Robert Schumann, while setting some Heinrich Heine poems to music, used part of the Marseillaise for Heine's "The Two Grenadiers" poem at the end of the piece when the old French soldier dies (Opus 49, No.1). Wagner also quotes from the Marseillaise in his setting of a French translation of the poem. Schumann also incorporated the Marseillaise as a major motif in his overture, 'Hermann und Dorothea' inspired by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Liszt also wrote a piano transcription of the anthem. In 1882, Pyotr Tchaikovsky used extensive quotes from the Marseillaise to represent the invading French army in his 1812 Overture. This was an anachronism, as the Marseillaise was the French anthem in Tchaikovsky's day, but not Napoleon's. Edward Elgar quoted the opening of La Marseillaise in his choral work The Music Makers, based on Arthur O'Shaughnessy's Ode, at the line "We fashion an empire's glory", where he also quotes the opening phrase of Rule, Britannia!. Serge Gainsbourg recorded a reggae version in the late 1970s. Henrik Wergeland wrote a Norwegian version of the song in 1831, called The Norwegian Marseillan. Unofficial versions
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