4 - The Marche militaire at War and Peace

Summary

Whether or not the Marche militaire was part of the repertory of German service bands remains a matter of conjecture. The notice of 1846 in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik aside, a blurb for a subscription concert of the regimental band in Constanz in 1881 lists “Marche milit. f. Orch. v. Schubert,” a shorthand that leaves one uncertain as to whether the music was played by what was sometimes called a military orchestra—that is, an ensemble whose proportions included brass band instruments that were not in the standard symphony orchestra of the period. There is nonetheless one remarkable instance that may refer to a performance of Schubert's march by a German service band in an atmosphere redolent with militant nationalist pride. It was one that, even if it were grounded in fiction, resonated in the French collective consciousness through two world wars. In so doing, the symbolic accretions that the Marche militaire acquired would transcend any particular type of arrangement.

Inventing the Marche triomphale : The Franco-Prussian War

On March 1, 1871, elements of the victorious Prussian Third Army entered Paris, symbolically signaling the city's capitulation and ending the Franco- Prussian War. The writer Alphonse Daudet—a member of the French national guard and witness to his country's humiliation—was immediately moved to write the short story “Le siège de Berlin,” which was anthologized in a collection of his tales published at the end of that year. The story concerns Colonel Jouve, an aged and infirm veteran of the Napoleonic wars, whose memory of past campaigns is juxtaposed against the reality that Prussian troops are advancing on the city. His granddaughter endeavors to forestall his recognition of their uniforms and insignia. In a denouement of touching irony, the colonel, believing that victorious French regiments are about to appear, looks out from his balcony only to behold the triumphant arrival of German forces:

But no! Yonder, behind the Arc de Triomphe, there came an indistinct rumbling, a black line that advanced in the morning light. Then, little by little, the points of the helmets shone, the little drums of Jena started to beat, and under the Arc de Étoile, punctuated by the heavy tread of the divisions and the rattling of sabers, the triumphal march [marche triomphale] of Schubert burst forth!