March Of The Kings: A Song History
The "Marcho di Rèi" is a Provençal noël of the Three Kings; an 1892 article in the Provençal-language newspaper Aiòli calls it the most popular of the region's traditional airs and describes the yearly custom of playing it with great ceremony at vespers in Saint-Sauveur Cathedral in Aix.[1] The article notes that every collection signs the words with the name of Domergue, dean of Aramon, and it identifies him with Joseph-François Domergue, a priest who began signing Aramon's parish records in 1724 and died in Avignon in 1728, which led the writer to date the text to those years.[1] The tune's origin is less certain: Castil-Blaze had credited it to Lully, Louis XIV's musician, as a triumphal march for Turenne's return from his victories, because carol books gave its air as the "March of Turenne," but the composer Henri Maréchal told the paper that the librarian of the Paris Conservatoire had searched for that march without finding any trace of it, and Maréchal judged that the melody's style belonged to the late eighteenth century, about a hundred years after Lully.[1] The writer, noting that Domergue's dates would make the tune older than that, was inclined to believe that it had been written for the words, perhaps by a musician in Avignon or by Domergue himself; the sources consulted here do not settle the question.[1]
Jean Antoine Constantin, called Constantin d'Aix, View of Aix-en-Provence, pen and black ink with brush and gray wash, ca. 1773–92. A view of Aix-en-Provence, where the march was played each year at Saint-Sauveur; it has no connection to the music.
The melody reached concert audiences through Georges Bizet's incidental music for Alphonse Daudet's play L'Arlésienne, which opened on October 1, 1872, and closed after only 21 performances.[2] The march is heard at the start of the score: Bizet's Prelude, the same music as the play's overture, states it five times, alternating three full-orchestra variations with two softer ones.[3] Britannica notes that each of the two concert suites quotes the melody, and in the second, arranged by Bizet's colleague Ernest Guiraud, the Farandole first introduces the march and then combines it with a lively dance tune.[2][3] The 1892 article adds that the composer Audran drew on the march in Gillette de Narbonne.[1]
Judy House and Kirk House score "March Of The Kings" in five parts for group playing in The Whole Is Greater Than The Sum Of Its Parts, Book 1, their self-published set of eleven ensemble pieces.[4]
Sources
- CIEL d'Oc: "Aiòli 1892" (no. 37, January 7, 1892: Gui de Mount-Pavoun, "Quau a fa la marcho di rèi?").
- Encyclopaedia Britannica: "L'Arlésienne".
- UC Davis Arts: "Bizet: L'Arlésienne".
- Judy House And Kirk House: "The Whole Is Greater Than The Sum Of Its Parts, Book 1".
- Image: Jean Antoine Constantin, called Constantin d'Aix, View of Aix-en-Provence, pen and black ink with brush and gray wash, ca. 1773–92. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.