Marceline: The Clown - Score Only Concert Band - Digital Sheet Music

SKU: A0.1333010

With this composition I wanted to pay tribute to an artist who was famous in his time and fell into oblivion until recent times when his figure has been recovered by various research works.
May this work serve as a vindication of the great Marceline.
The piece has an optimistic character and in its nearly five minutes of duration I make nods to circus music and the atmosphere of the shows in which Marceline participated.

Marceline is the stage name of Marcelino Orbés. He was a Spanish clown, mime, acrobat, comic actor and circus artist, with American nationality since 1922, who is considered the best clown in the world of his time.

Marceline was Spanish artist born in 1873 who performed in several European countries. Around 1895 he had success at the London Hippodrome and then enticed by producers Thompson and Dundy to come to the New York Hippodrome, where he arrived with great fanfare in 1905. He was a part of shows at the Hippodrome through 1915, by which time his pantomime routine and falling gags were falling out of favor with the public. He did reappear at the Hippodrome for some later shows in 1920-21 and 1922-23.Attempts to succeed in the restaurant business in New York and Connecticut both failed, and he lost money in real estate ventures. Out of work and out of savings, Marceline was found dead by suicide in his hotel room on November 5, 1927, with photographs of his glory days on the bed.

Marceline was long admired by Charlie Chaplin, who worked with Marceline at the London Hippodrome from December 1900 to April 1901, and is one of just a few performers from this period of his life that Chaplin discusses in his autobiography. Chaplin recounts seeing him years later in the United States with a circus, and though expecting to see him be a featured star, was surprised to see him only amongst other clowns.