Tsar’s marches are presented on the Presidential Library web site

Russian Institute of Art History provided scores of the marches approved by Nicholas II to the Presidential Library for digitization. This unique material from the special collection of the Institute will join the digital collection of the Presidential Library, will be made fully available on the website and in electronic reading rooms in Russia and abroad.

Military or parade march as a genre has its roots in the age of Peter I. The regular march music appeared with the development of the regular army: in 1711, a decree was issued on the staff of regimental bands. The Preobrazhensky Life Guards Regiment, founded in 1691 by Peter the Great, was the first to have a march raising the spirits for parades, see to the war and support the soldiers' spirits during the long tedious marches. When the legs of soldiers failed, they were supported by music. Before the appearance of march this function was performed by a marching song. By 1716, the Preobrazhensky Regiment orchestra included 40 musicians, and from 1722 all the regiments were obliged to have orchestras - wind or mixed type.

File from the manuscripts room, Russian Institute of Art History, which includes the marches, is an unpublished album of notes containing 252 sheets of musical notations of marches with the author's marks and blots. The best works of this genre were selected for the regiments personally by Emperor Nicholas II and were supposed to raise the morale of the Russian army.

Muses, alas, fell into silence when guns spoke and the revolutionary broke out. As a result, the album was not published. And only now, owing to the innovative technologies of the Presidential Library, it got a chance to be published in electronic form.

Among the scores, which are being digitized, there are such marches as, "Martial Spirit" by Fr. Von Blon, "A Dashing Unit" by Yu. Lengardt, the famous march of 1914by I. Walch "Marching into Paris," which glorifies the victory over Napoleon. Most of the scores were written for brass bands of mixed composition.

Basically, the Russian Institute of Art History delivered to the Presidential Library military marches, which, according to the Emperor Nicholas II, who select them, “would give moral support the soldiers going up the line.”

The extensive collection of scores, which are currently digitized by the Presidential Library, will also feature "Montenegrin" march by L. Minkus from the ballet "Roxanne" and Cesare Pugni's march from the ballet "The Little Humpbacked Horse."