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- Excerpt from http://www.lacw.org/programs/2006-02-25_By_Request.pdf
- Often called "The Austrian March King," the Austrian military bandmaster Josef Franz
- Wagner wrote some 400 compositions, 250 of which have been published.. The title of
- his most famous march, Unter dem Doppeladler - "Under the Double Eagle" - refers to the
- double eagle in the old coat of arms of the Austro-Hungarian empire, one head of which
- looked out toward Austria and the other toward Hungary. Unter dem Doppeladler became
- the official regimental march of the 1st Austrian Artillery Regiment, Number 2.
- J.F. Wagner took the title for this march from the state emblem of the Austro-
- Hungarian Empire. The eagle has been a symbol of strength and courage since ancient
- times; it was the emblem of the Sumarians 5,000 years ago and of Imperial Rome many
- centuries later. The double-headed eagle was the symbol of the Byzantine Empire for
- over 2,000 years before it appeared on the imperial coat of arms in Austria-Hungary.
- The march itself has been extremely popular for nearly a century. By 1910 Franz Pazirek
- was listing approximately fifty different instrumental and vocal arrangements of the
- work published by a dozen different firms. Beginning in 1903, Under The Double Eagle
- March was recorded by the Sousa Band four times before Wagner's death in 1908. Like
- Sousa's Washington Post and numerous other marches around the turn of the century, this
- march has probably motivated more dancers than marchers.
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