Russell Alexander (1877–1915) was an euphonium player in a circus band at the age of 17 and later made a living by composing music for the famous Barnum & Bailey Circus. In just a few years he wrote 33 marches and various music before forming his own musical show, joined by two brothers and a friend.
Alexander’s Olympia Hippodrome March of 1898 refers to the Hippodrome in London’s Leicester Square (now a casino), where the Barnum show played. The original Hippodrome was an arena built for chariot races and athletic contests in Olympia, Greece, around 776 B.C.
It is worth noting that in the summer of 1906, 48 members of the St. Olaf College Band of Northfield, Minnesota, sailed to Norway on their first European tour. They played 26 concerts under the batton of their 35-year-old conductor, Fredrik Melius Christiansen (#4 in second row), who had emigrated from Norway at the age of 17.
One Oslo newspaper said: ‘When we remember that these musicians are young students, not professionals, it is hard to understand how it is possible for them to reach such perfection.’
The band even impressed King Haakon VII, who thanked Christiansen in person after the band had played the Olympia Hippodrome March for him during the coronation celebrations in Trondheim that summer.
Before the Norway tour, Christiansen had drilled the band intensely. One of the clarinettists compared him to a Prussian general, because he made the musicians repeat the same phrases over and over again until the music came out ‘half polished’.
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Russell Alexander (1877–1915) was an euphonium player in a circus band at the age of 17 and later made a living by composing music for the famous Barnum & Bailey Circus. In just a few years he wrote 33 marches and various music before forming his own musical show, joined by two brothers and a friend.
