Rossini On Parade Concert Band - Digital Sheet Music

SKU: A0.1764594

When I first encountered Nibelungen Marsch in high school, I found it peculiar that anyone would base a march on opera themes. I still find it peculiar. Of course, I have to acknowledge that Wagner's music is more macho than most opera music, and thus may lend itself to the march form more easily than others.

Wagner also had a much more expansive concept of "music drama" than the conventional thinking about opera of his time. I suspect he would have thrived in an era of multimedia productions combining live action on stage with special effects like smoke machines, lasers, and pyrotechnics, enhanced with computer-generated video, presented with immersive audio and perhaps haptic feedback in the seats.

Even so, Gottfried Sonntag's arrangement of Wagnerian opera themes as a march has always struck me as a little absurd. I enjoy absurdity, but one can pass the point of diminishing returns with anything. Year after year, school and community bands insisted on playing the silly thing again and again. The time came when I needed to unload. The result was a march based on opera themes by a composer whose music is arguably less macho than Wagner's.

I feel much better now.

This march, which is not to be taken too seriously, is based on the music of the prolific Italian opera composer, Gioachino Rossini. Just in case pounding these themes out as a march isn't sufficiently ridiculous to make the point, I've included some unmistakable quotes from John Philip Sousa.