This study was born as a poor orphan to the hefty manuscript that ultimately became the two volumes of my Schubert in the European Imagination. During the research for that work, I repeatedly encountered the composer's Marche militaire no. 1 (D. 733, op. 51) in contexts that were both unexpected and alluring. I succumbed to the temptation to add to the account a final chapter on its performance and reception history, even as I was loath to acknowledge that its material (my fascination with the topic aside) did not quite fit snugly into the narrative I was constructing. Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed; a reader of the manuscript, in an otherwise positive response, recognized that it made an incongruous appendage to the overarching theme, which traced and analyzed the concept of Schubert's girlish character (Mädchencharakter) over three quarters of a century. Given the length of the final text, I did not require much persuasion to remove this material. I was confident that in the future, I would find the proper vehicle for the subject and return to it.

I suspect no musicologist relishes setting aside, even temporarily, the results of untold hours of research. Due for a sabbatical in the 2010–11 academic year, I found the opportunity to return to this “chapter” with the expectation that I could extract from its contents several articles, each devoted to one aspect of the composition's reception, notably as a dance created by Isadora Duncan and as a quotation in Igor Stravinsky's Circus Polka. Prior to considering these two topics, I desired to learn the paths along which Schubert's march reached a status so that two of the most significant figures in twentieth-century culture found it a ready source for creative exploitation. Exploring these avenues yielded an unforeseen hoard, so large that by the end of my leave I had produced some two hundred thousand words. Another book was in the offing, one whose thesis represented something of a novelty in musicological studies: the life of a single work—the history of its composition, performance, reception, interrelations, and influence—even though at first blush the score itself would not seem to qualify for such a project.