Pre-Owned French Military Marches (CD 0076637033124) by Various Artists

0076637033124. Pre-owned: Good condition. CD. For centuries repetitive drumming and music with a strong rhythmic pulse has been used by Europeans to coordinate and facilitate military exercises, reviews, parades, maneuvers and attacks. While the same could be said for most cultures worldwide, the northern European nations specialized in carefully composed and grandly executed marches. Although the French tradition traces back to the martial works of Jean-Baptiste Lully and Andre Philidor, the truly majestic style was developed during the early 19th century. Decorated with a detail from Delacroix's "Liberty Leading the People," Legacy's budget sampler of French Military Marches opens with the obligatory "Marseillaise" (originally titled "Chant de Guerre Pour l'Armee du Rhin") by C.J. Rouget de Lisle. There are marches for the Rifle Regiment, the Gendarmerie and even for the "Parachutistes," a category apparently deemed deserving of less bombast and lighter instrumentation. Most of the marches on this collection are driven by booming drums and crashing cymbals. Sound quality is OK, with occasional LP surface noise betraying the source. Ideal music for scrubbing the bathtub, removing wallpaper, chopping wood or digging trenches. ~ arwulf arwulf, Rovi