Popularity
The song was popular during the remainder of the First Empire, popular with Hortense in her exile, and with the Bonapartists during the Bourbon Restoration. During the Second Empire Partant pour la Syrie was the unofficial national anthem, while La Marseillaise was forbidden but for the very end. With the collapse of Napoleon III’s rule, the popularity of the song waned. The song was played to the emperor Napoleon III as he departed from Schloss Wilhelmshöhe to his exile in England in 1871. It remains part of the repertoire of French military music.
Read more about this topic: Partant Pour La Syrie
Famous quotes containing the word popularity:
“The nation looked upon him as a deserter, and he shrunk into insignificancy and an earldom.... He was fixed in the house of lords, that hospital of incurables, and his retreat to popularity was cut off; for the confidence of the public, when once great and once lost, is never to be regained.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“There are few cases in which mere popularity should be considered a proper test of merit; but the case of song-writing is, I think, one of the few.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1845)
“In everything from athletic ability to popularity to looks, brains, and clothes, children rank themselves against others. At this age [7 and 8], children can tell you with amazing accuracy who has the coolest clothes, who tells the biggest lies, who is the best reader, who runs the fastest, and who is the most popular boy in the third grade.”
—Stanley I. Greenspan (20th century)