Music with Ease > Classical Music > Concert Guide: Nationalist Era > Marche Slave (Tchaikovsky)

The "Marche Slave" was written by Tchaikovsky in 1876, during the war between Turkey and Servia (Serbia). It opens with a theme in the bassoons of a somewhat melancholy character, which is soon changed by trumpet flourishes and the strains of the Russian National Hymn, into an impressive march, purely Slavic in rhythm and color. It was first played at a concert given for the benefit of the wounded and though a "piece of occasion" and comparatively short, it is one of Tchaikovsky’s most successful minor works. It bears some relation to the "1812 overture," but is a more enthusiastically patriotic composition than the latter.