“MARSEILLAISE” AUTHOR

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 79, Issue 238, 8 October 1936, Page 10

“MARSEILLAISE” AUTHOR

Centenary of His Death

June 28, 1836, Rouget de Lisle, who wrote the words of the Merseillaise, and is generally credited with having composed the tune also, died ?.t the age of seventy-six in the modest house in which he lived his retired old age at Choicey-le-Roi, about nine miles south-east of Paris. The centenary was celebrated on the appropriate date in the little town, which has now almost become a suburb of Paris, and also at {Strasburg, where the revolutionary marching song, which is now the French national anthem, was written, in 1792, some months before it was brought to Paris by the Marseillais battalion, which had learnt it and after which it Las since been named. In 1792 Rouget de Lisle was a captain in the engineers in his early thirties, and he was stationed at Strasburg, where the news had just arrived of the French declaration of war against Austria. The mayor of the town was entertaining a number of officers at dinner, and he suggested to Kouget de Lisle, who was already the author and composer of au opera, since forgotten, that he might supply the Army with a patriotic marching song. That very night Rouget de Lisle is said to have written both the words and the music. He sang the song next day to his brother officers, and he published it in Strasburg under the title of “Wai Song of the Army of the Rhine,” and with a dedication to Marshal Lukner. who commanded that Army. Nobody has ever disputed Rouget dr Lisle’s authorship of the words of the Marseillaise—except the last verse which he admitted as not his. But il

las been suggested that, consciously or unconsciously, he took the tune from one or other of certain religious musical compositions of earlier date which contain passages closely resembling it. In any case, its success in France was immediate and complete. Even Napoleon, though he preferred another song, “Veilions au Salute de I’Empire,” to what had become its rather inconveniently revolutionary sentiments, could not displace it as the national anthem. As for Rouget de Lisle, he left the Army in 1796 and returned to literature, playwriting, and musical composition. He was responsible for a comedy and for a collection of fifty songs. He. lived very quietly, however, and little would probably have been heard again of this quiet civilian in a black wig if he had not been a friend of the popular poet Beranger, who, after the success of the July Revolution of 1830, persuaded Louis Phillippe to give him a modest pension. It was during this Revolution that he is said to have made a remark which showed how very peaceable a person he had become—and had indeed always been, for he was never violently revolutionary and had even altered two lines in the famous verses because he had thought them on consideration to be too strong. He heard the sound of distant street fighting, and he said to a neighbour, “That is a bad sign. Listen. They are singing the Marseillaise.” His death passed almost unnoticed; but in a few lines devoted to it in the ; papers of the day it is recorded that ' some workmen, his neighbours, placed a • wreath upon the coffin, and then sang ■ his famous hymn as a last farewell.