Marches are Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Music that is written to accompany marches. While marches were originally written to provide cadence for marching soldiers, Marches have also been written for parades, funerals, processions, graduation ceremonies, political rallies, circuses, opera... just about anything that requires a steady rhythm between 60 and 120 beats per minute, though concert marches can be significantly faster and circus marches, also known as "Screamers", can really rip. Marches were considered the world's popular music at the turn of the 20th century and the bread and butter of famous composers like Kenneth Alford, Edwin Eugene Bagley, Julius Fucik, Roland F. Seitz and "The March King" himself, John Philip Sousa.
The standard march form tends to be written in duple meter, with an introduction, two strains, a triple and a stinger...but here at TV Tropes we don't particularly care about that. If you want to know about that stuff, or the usages of theme and counterpoint, consult the other wiki
. No, our concern is with the use of march music to set theme and tone in other media, for nothing says that things have gotten serious, as in military-grade industrial mobilization serious, as a march tempo. The Empire will almost always have a march as their leitmotif, and the hero will too if he needs an especially rousing theme tune. And there was a period during the late 1950s where marches were very popular as movie and TV themes. Some marches have become so ingrained in our popular consciousness that one cannot hear them without envisioning the scenes that they evoke, inspiring creators to include them (or a close knockoff) in order to set the scene.
While it's impossible to select one march as the most iconic ever written, for most people in the English speaking world the term "March" usually calls to mind three pieces: Alford's Colonel Bogey, Sousa's Stars and Stripes Forever, and Edwin Eugene Bagley's National Emblem. Interestingly, Sousa himself listed National Emblem as one of the three most effective street marches ever written.
Marches that are associated with common themes and tropes:
- "American Patrol" (the swing version): Eagleland type One
- "Anchors Aweigh" by Charles A. Zimmerman: Naval and nautical tropesnote
- Also "Columbia, Gem of the Ocean".
- "Colonel Bogey March" by Kenneth Alford: uniting against a common oppressor
- "Entry of the Gladiators" (a.k.a. Thunder and Blazes) by Julius Fucik: The Circus!
- "Pomp and Circumstance no. 1" by Sir Edward Elgar: Graduation ceremonies in the United States, patriotic moments in the United Kingdom.
- "The Thunderer" by John Philip Sousa: Parades.
- "The Empire March" by John Williams: The Empire.
- "The Raider's March" by John Williams: Adventure!
Media using marches as theme or important music:
- Girls und Panzer: Each school uses the march of the country they represent. See their Awesome Music page for details.
- Madagascar Three: Chris Rock's "Circus Afro" is a thinly disguised version of Thunder and Blazes
- Ben-Hur (The March of The Charioteers)
- The Bridge on the River Kwai (Colonel Bogey March)
- Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze (The Thunderer)
- The Great Race (The Great Race)
- Hot Shots! (The National Emblem)
- Protocol (The National Emblem, again)
- Raiders of the Lost Ark (Raider's March)
- Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade used Der Königgrätzer Marsch in the scene with Hitler and the book burning rally.
- Star Trek: The Motion Picture has an interesting variation: while the original Star Trek theme wasn't that bad in a 1960s polyester pants kind of way, it cetainly wasn't weighty enough to anchor a film, especially after the orchestral majesty that was Star Wars. So the original theme was rewritten into a stirring march, which became the theme for the entire franchise.
- Star Wars (The Empire March)
- Stripes (The National Emblem, yet again)
- Superman
- The Ten Commandments (the exodus scenes)
- Von Ryan's Express
- The A-Team
- Hogan's Heroes
- Monty Python's Flying Circus (The Liberty Bell)
- Star Trek: The Next Generation used the march theme from Star Trek: The Motion Picture
- Richard Rodgers wrote two for Victory at Sea: the Guadalcanal March and Allies on the March.
- Carmen (March of the Toreadors overture)
- The Music Man: Set smack in the middle of the march era, and about the founding of a brass band, "Seventy-six Trombones led the big parade..."
- "Hell March" and its sequels serve as something of a theme song to the Command & Conquer franchise, the last three to Red Alert 2 and Red Alert 3, respectively. 3 even gets two extra ones.
- The Dreamstone (War Song of the Urpneys)
