Rossini's March for the Sultan: A Birthday Serenade for Queen Victoria
Osborne House, situated on the Isle of Wight off England’s southern coast, presents itself as a palazzo inspired by the Italian Renaissance. Seen from a distance, it appears almost as if a stately palace had been borne on the back of a giant from Italy and gently set down amidst England’s verdant pastures. Designed by Prince Albert, Queen Victoria’s consort—who was also responsible for the plans of Balmoral Castle in Scotland—Osborne House was constructed between 1845 and 1851.
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| "Osborne House on the Isle of Wight was constructed between 1845 and 1851" |
In contrast to Balmoral, with its Gothic windows and turrets that seem lifted straight from a tale by the Brothers Grimm, Osborne embraces the Mediterranean. Its gardens, adorned with cedar pines, evoke the brushstrokes of a southern landscape, and Prince Albert’s architectural vision here warmly embraces Italy. On summer evenings, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert would often sit on the balcony adjoining the Queen’s sitting room, listening to the nightingales in song. Far from the pressures of London, they would feel as though they had invited southern Italy into England through this seaside retreat.
With its expansive terraces and sea-facing gardens, Osborne House served as a cherished sanctuary for both Victoria and Albert. Following the Prince’s death in 1861, the Queen continued to visit frequently, viewing Osborne as a place of solace and seclusion.
Indeed, it was here that Queen Victoria spent her final days; she passed away at Osborne on 22 January 1901, at the age of 81.
Nearly half a century before the Queen’s death, Victoria was once again at Osborne. It was 24 May 1854—her thirty-fifth birthday—and on the morning of that day, members of the Royal Marine Band, resplendent in their uniforms, had taken their places upon the terrace at Osborne. During breakfast, they performed a concert for Her Majesty. According to the programme later published in the newspapers, the concert opened with a march by Rossini.
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| Queen Victoria by Sir George Hayter |
Yet this was no ordinary march for Osborne—nor was it what one might have expected to hear resonating across the terrace overlooking the sea on a spring morning. The lively strains that filled the air that day were those of The Sultan’s March, a composition which the Ottoman court had embraced long before Queen Victoria ever heard it. The piece had been composed by Rossini in 1852 as a military march for Sultan Abdülmecid and had been sent in manuscript to Giuseppe Donizetti, the Sultan’s bandmaster, who resided on Asmalımescid Street in Constantinople.
It is one of those extraordinary episodes—absent from the history books, which so often confine themselves to chronicles of wars, conquests, and calamities—that unfolded quietly yet symbolically on that morning at Osborne.
Why should the birthday celebrations of Queen Victoria have opened with a march written for an Ottoman sultan?
In my article Rossini’s March for Sultan Abdülmecid and the US President’s Own Marine Band (Andante, Issue 180, October 2021), I explored the full tale of this composition, whose inclusion in the Queen’s birthday festivities was by no means coincidental. It was, of course, linked to the Crimean War. Hostilities between the Ottoman Empire and Russia had broken out on 4 October 1853, and on 28 March 1854, the United Kingdom and France had formally entered the conflict as allies of the Ottomans.
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| "It was, of course, linked to the Crimean War"; Turkey, Britain and France as allies |
As a result, Turkish marches featured frequently in newspaper announcements in the British press of the period, and arrangements of such works were published and sold in printed editions. Tracing the Queen’s birthday concert back through the British press of 1854 in search of Rossini’s March for the Sultan soon opened up unexpected and previously unrecorded windows into a fascinating chapter of musical history.
For a music historian drawn less to the chronicles of destruction and disaster than to the echoes of friendship and alliance, this journey—rich in unexpected discoveries—offers a far more vivid and harmonious counterpoint to the drab monochrome of black, white, and grey that so often characterises the aesthetic sensibilities of our time.
In the Morning Herald of 4 February 1854, I came across a brief notice announcing that Rossini’s march for the Sultan had just been published and was available for purchase from Cramer, Beale and Co., located at 201 Regent Street. This distinguished publishing house, which remained active until 1964, had been established in 1824 by the German-born English composer and pianist Johann Baptist Cramer. A pupil of Muzio Clementi and a contemporary of Beethoven, Cramer had appeared on many of the same concert stages as the great master. Though they were artistic rivals, Beethoven held Cramer’s piano technique in the highest esteem. It was, indeed, Cramer who first published Beethoven’s Fifth Piano Concerto in England—and it was he who bestowed upon it the title by which it is still known today: The Emperor.
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| Regent Street in the early 19th century, engraved by J. Woods after J. Salmon |
Though Cramer formally severed his ties with the publishing house in 1833, his partner, Thomas Frederick Beale, retained Cramer’s name as the firm’s enduring imprint. One can only wonder who may have passed through the doors of their elegant shop on Regent Street, just a few doors down at No. 210. By 1854, judging from the advertisement in the Morning Herald, the window display boasted a rather splendid edition of Rossini’s march, its cover adorned with the imperial tughra and a lithographic portrait of Sultan Abdülmecid, depicted in gold-braided military uniform by the celebrated illustrator John Brandard.
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| Cover of Rossini's March for the Sultan, designed by John Brandard (© Emre ARACI) |
Brandard, a master of chromolithography, was known for his lavish and meticulously detailed designs, which mirrored the opulent aesthetic of his era. His covers were often enlivened with vivid colours, graceful figures and scenes of heightened theatricality. Indeed, the French Impressionist painter Edgar Degas numbered among Brandard’s admirers, particularly for the composer’s portraiture and dance imagery gracing sheet music covers and theatrical posters alike.
I cannot help but wonder whether Brandard’s original cover for Rossini’s March for the Sultan—the very edition that is preserved in my own collection and has adorned the pages of Andante magazine on numerous occasions—might have peered out from a Regent Street shop window during those February days of 1854, meeting the gaze of passing Londoners.
As this thought lingers in my mind, I find myself walking past the very corner once occupied by Cramer, Beale and Co., long since surrendered to yet another indistinguishable global brand amidst the interchangeable shopfronts that now line Regent Street like cloned installations in every city across the world. Crossing Oxford Street, I make my way towards Manchester Square, home of the Wallace Collection. Within Hertford House, where the collection has been housed since 1897, one finds a delicate trace of Istanbul in the so-called Smoking Room, where Iznik-inspired tiles—produced at the Minton Porcelain Factory in Stoke-on-Trent—still whisper of the East. Though the original Ottoman-themed room was dismantled in 1937, a fragment remains: a corner in which stylised carnations and tulips entwine in subtle homage to a vanished age.
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| "I have an original postcard of Hertford House from Edwardian times" (© Emre ARACI) |
I have an original postcard of Hertford House from Edwardian times, a charming relic that has somehow survived the passing decades. I turn it over in my hands and read the looping script, faded but still legible after more than a century: “Very handsome collection of paintings, old clocks, snuff-boxes, jewels & beautifully carved furniture…”. It was written on the 23rd of June, 1910—by someone who signed simply A. M. I picture them now: a gentleman, perhaps, in a straw boater and summer suit, or a lady in a high-waisted Edwardian gown, gloved and veiled against the London dust. They would have arrived by horse-drawn carriage to Hertford House, stepped through its cool interior from the bustling square, and wandered quietly through the rooms—pausing before glinting snuffboxes, shimmering Sèvres porcelain, and oil paintings thick with time. There’s a sense of awe in the words, a reverence almost, and I wonder what stirred in their heart that day. Did they feel the pull of history, as I do now, holding this card like a whisper from the past?
From time to time, I too step through the doors of Hertford House simply to stand before A Dance to the Music of Time by Nicolas Poussin, one of the finest masterpieces of French Baroque painting.
Completed in the 1630s, this allegorical canvas depicts the cyclical nature of life, the passage of time, and the human condition in its perpetual orbit. At its centre, four figures, joined hand-in-hand, dance in a circle—symbolising the stages of life or perhaps themes such as pleasure, toil, wealth and poverty. Behind them, the winged figure of Time plays his lyre, underscoring his dominion over all things. Overhead, Aurora, goddess of the dawn, steers the chariot of the Sun across the heavens.
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| A Dance to the Music of Time by Nicolas Poussin, (© Wallace Collection) |
This painting would later inspire one of the great literary monuments of twentieth-century English prose: A Dance to the Music of Time, the twelve-volume novel sequence by Anthony Powell—often referred to as the English Proust—for whom Poussin’s vision of time and memory offered the perfect metaphor.
As you leave Hertford House and cross to the far corner of the square, you come to No. 2, a Georgian brick-fronted residence before which the original eighteenth-century gas lamps still stand, resolutely in place. A blue plaque greets you at the entrance, bearing the name of Sir Julius Benedict. And here, quite unexpectedly, the Sultan’s March finds you once more—for, as the plaque records, Benedict (1804–1885) was a “musician and composer” who lived in this house for many years and died within its walls.
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| Sir Julius Benedict |
Born in Germany, Benedict began his musical training at a young age as a pupil of Carl Maria von Weber, and rose to prominence as both conductor and pianist. He had met Beethoven and enjoyed a close friendship with Mendelssohn. It was none other than Benedict who arranged Rossini’s March for the Sultan for solo piano, an adaptation announced in newspaper advertisements and printed on the covers of the published score. Moreover, though Rossini’s original was composed for military band, Benedict also prepared a duet version for piano four hands. Considering that he moved into this house in 1845, one may well imagine the strains of the march drifting from his piano through the windows, spilling out into Manchester Square.
Today, I witness with quiet regret how that drab grey paint has begun to creep across the façades of these historic buildings, dimming their former charm. And yet, even here—where tastes and sounds have shifted over the past two decades, as they have with people—it seems, as in Poussin's painting, that we have no choice but to surrender our spirits to the music of times past, and to carry on with that private dance of life.
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| "A blue plaque greets you at the entrance of Benedict's home at No. 2" (photo © Emre ARACI) |
Benedict’s solo piano arrangement soon caught the attention of one of the most brilliant young pianists of the day, Arabella Goddard. According to a report in The Illustrated London News dated 7 January 1854, Goddard performed at the “Réunion des Arts” Society on Harley Street on Wednesday, 28 December 1853. Her programme included Rossini’s march, “arranged for piano by Benedict,” which was described as “remarkably impressive in this form.” So enthusiastic was the audience’s response that Goddard repeated the piece as an encore. Over the course of that season, she would feature The Sultan’s March frequently in her concert repertoire.
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| "Arabella Goddard was among the most gifted female musicians of her generation" |
Arabella Goddard (1836–1922) was among the most gifted female musicians of her generation. Born into an English family living in France, she showed such prodigious talent on the piano that by the age of seven she found herself performing a recital before none other than Chopin and George Sand. Following the Revolution of 1848, the family settled in London, and the young pianist—soon hailed as a “child prodigy”—gave performances before Queen Victoria and Prince Albert themselves. When she embarked upon her professional concert career in 1853, she chose to make her debut with Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata, a bold decision that quickly won her widespread acclaim.
Years later, George Bernard Shaw would recall hearing Goddard and write of her, “She was less a musician performing music at the piano than a Lady of Shalott at her loom”.
The allusion, of course, was to Tennyson’s famous poem The Lady of Shalott, a favourite of Queen Victoria herself. Tennyson, who made his seat on the Isle of Wight at a house called Farringford, would occasionally meet with the Queen. He followed the events of the Crimean War closely and composed his celebrated poem The Charge of the Light Brigade in honour of the Battle of Balaclava, which took place on 25 October 1854.
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| "Tennyson, who lived at Farringford on the Isle of Wight would occasionally meet with the Queen" |
Farringford today stands as a quietly dignified witness to the poetic imagination of the Victorian age. Nestled near Freshwater Bay and framed by windswept trees and rolling downs, the Gothic Revival house became Tennyson’s principal residence from 1853, offering the poet both solitude and inspiration. From its ivy-clad verandas, he would pace the grounds in deep contemplation, often accompanied by his walking stick and dog, composing verses that would come to define a national voice. It was here that many of his most celebrated works—including Maud, Idylls of the King, and The Charge of the Light Brigade—were either written or revised. Farringford was not only a literary haven, but also a place of pilgrimage for artists, thinkers and dignitaries of the era, from Edward Lear to Prince Albert. Preserved today as a house museum, Farringford remains imbued with the melancholy grandeur and lyrical spirit of its former occupant.
Osborne House, where all these historic threads once intertwined so vividly, remains today under the care of English Heritage as a palace open to the public.
And if ever you should find yourself upon its terrace overlooking the sea, listening for the lost music of another age, I am certain that amid the potpourri of forgotten sounds, the strains of Rossini's March for the Sultan, once played in celebration of Queen Victoria’s birthday, will rise softly to your ears—from somewhere, some corner of the past.
© Emre Aracı 2025. All rights reserved.
The content of this blog is the intellectual property of the author. No part of these writings may be reproduced, quoted, or distributed without prior written permission.
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