by: Tamara Yawno, Hudson Institute of Medical Research, Australia

[^2]: Reviewed by: Laura Baroncelli, Consiglio Nazionale Delle Ricerche (CNR), Italy; Christina Gross, Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, United States
enthusing over “those exquisite long-drawn
notes on the wind instruments which induce in the listener
a strange ecstasy, the marvellous interweaving of flutes
and clarinets”.

The Marche
réligieuse was written to be played while Charles X
took communion on the occasion of his coronation in the
cathedral of Rheims on 29 April 1825. This was a thoroughly
lavish occasion, designed to reaffirm the sacred nature
of the monarchy. Charles sought to return to the old absolutist
ideal of monarchy – a vision out of tune with the times
and one of the reasons for his being overthrown only five
years later in the July Revolution of 1830. For a king
with such ideas of himself and his position, the Coronation
had to be, to put it mildly, a grand affair. The music
Cherubini composed for the Coronation Mass was certainly
grand.

The
Mass, indeed, is a