| Movements/SectionsMov'ts/Sec's | 8 |
|---|---|
| Genre Categories | Variations; For 2 violins, viola, cello; Scores featuring the violin; |
| Related Works | Based on La Marseillaise by Rouget de Lisle |
| Work Title | Variations Déconcertantes |
|---|---|
| Alternative. Title | Variations Déconcertantes sur un Thème connu (=La Marseillaise) |
| Composer | Anonymous |
| I-Catalogue NumberI-Cat. No. | IA 910 |
| Key | C major |
| Movements/SectionsMov'ts/Sec's | 8 |
| First Performance. | Mid Lent 1894 |
| Piece Style | Romantic |
| Instrumentation | String Quartet |
| Related Works | Based on La Marseillaise by Rouget de Lisle |
A mysterious, sly, and perhaps prudently anonymous unidentified Suite (in the literary style of Erik Satie ?) on a "Well Known Theme" (The French National Anthem !). The score, for string quartet with an arrangement for piano duet, from the uploader's personal library, is very incomplete. The title page bears a hand written mention S.Moulis, Souvenir de grand-papa, 1897. The first violin part bears the inscription, in shaky handwriting : A Suzanne Moulis, souvenir de son grandpapa, Mai 1897, not necessarily the composer's. The signature is practically illegible (Gauckler ?)... The score ends with a "Vive la République" salvo (and symbolically crossed hands for the duettists) which places the work during the 3rd French Republic, i.e. after 1870 and before the handwritten inscriptions (1897). Unfortunately, the viola part was found missing. More precisely, from the inserted instruction at the end : "criez confusément Vive la Russie etc." one may assume this composition was intended as a musical tribute following the Franco-Russian alliance treaty signed on January 4th 1894 directed against the German Kaiser and his allies with an intent to eventually retrieve the Alsace-Moselle lost in 1870. The fact that this work was in the hands of a francophile Alsatian family (the Gaucklers were from Strasbourg) clinches this point.
According to [1] it was first heard in 1894.
