A reflection on the brevity and toils of life, even when you are a puppet
French composer Charles Gounod entered the Paris Conservatoire at 18, and by 21 he was on his way to Rome as a prizewinner of the coveted Prix de Rome. There he focused on 16th-century sacred music with such intensity that he considered becoming a priest. But in the end, music won out.
On his return to Paris, the composer met the mezzo-soprano Pauline Viardot, a renowned diva in the artistic circles, who secured the commission for his first opera, Sapho, from the Paris Opera. It was the beginning of his career as a composer of operas, with Faust and Romeo and Juliet, the most outstanding and for which he is remembered today, in addition to the most famous of the Ave Maria, the one built on the first prelude of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier.
But the war was to come. Between 1870 and 1874 (well past age 50) Gounod lived in England, fleeing the upheavals of the Franco-Prussian war. While there, he composed a lot of music, mainly religious. But he also took the time to compose a short piece for piano, light natured, although, curiously, it is a funeral march.
In 1872, Gounod had begun writing a piano suite which he called Suite Burlesque, a satirical work intended to mock the personality of a music critic of the time. Gounod wrote the first piece, Funeral March of a Marionette, but the critic died, and Gounod abandoned the suite.
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| Charles Gounod cartoon, 1879 (1818 - 1893) |
Later, aware of its popularity, Gounod orchestrated it in 1879. Others made arrangements of it for various instruments. In the first half of the 20th century, it was recorded many times, incorporated into the cinema, and used as a musical curtain in several radio programs, and later, on television.
According to Alfred Hitchcock, he heard it for the first time in a 1927 film. He loved it, and thirty years later, he incorporated it as a theme song in his television series "Alfred Hitchcock Presents", which began in 1955. From that appearance, the little work acquired great popularity, although no one could identify its author, a similar experience to the overture to Rossini's Guglielmo Tell, made known to the general public by the series "The Lone Ranger".
Funeral March for a Marionette
The little piece, barely five minutes in length, has never lost its charm, and also tells a story:
The marionette has died in a duel held with another member of the puppet troupe, and the funeral procession begins in the direction of the cemetery, in a march rhythm, of course. As the piece progresses, the music takes on a more cheerful character because some members of the procession, exhausted by the march, seek relief at an inn on the road where they have a drink, commenting on the many virtues of the deceased. After a while, they rejoin the procession, which is already entering the cemetery, once again in marching time. The final closing of the gates, later, invites a reflection on the brevity and toils of life, even when you are a puppet.
The performance is by the Orquesta Sinfónica del Principado de Asturias, conducted by Óliver Díaz.
