“Bonaparte Crossing the Rhine” is a traditional march and fiddle tune. Though its title points to Napoleon, the melody is largely of American making, with parts traceable to older Irish, Scottish, and English marches; it circulated in the nineteenth century under many names.
The tune is a stately march rather than a fast breakdown, and it has long been a favorite among old-time fiddlers. It belongs to a whole family of Bonaparte-titled tunes that fiddlers have traded and reshaped over the generations.
The tune carries the older, more solemn side of the old-time repertoire.
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