Originally composed by
Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle (10 May 1760 – 26 June 1836) was a French army officer of the French Revolutionary Wars. Lisle is known for writing La Marseillaise and it became the French national anthem.
La Marseillaise
Rouget de Lisle composed “La Marseillaise” in Strasbourg in 1792, though its tune matches a 1781 work by Italian composer Giovan Battista Viotti. Inspired by the mayor’s lament over France’s lack of a national anthem during the war with Austria, de Lisle wrote the piece as a war song for the Army of the Rhine. It was later renamed “La Marseillaise” after volunteers from Marseille sang it during the storming of the Tuileries Palace on August 10, 1792.
Many guitar composers have arranged the anthem for guitar. As a result, there are four different arrangements.
