Josef Franz Wagner was an Austria

Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

n military bandmaster and composer

Composer

A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...

. He is sometimes known by the sobriquet 'The Austrian March King'.

He is best known for his 1902 march

March (music)

A march, as a musical genre, is a piece of music with a strong regular rhythm which in origin was expressly written for marching to and most frequently performed by a military band. In mood, marches range from the moving death march in Wagner's Götterdämmerung to the brisk military marches of John...

 Unter dem Doppeladler or Under the Double Eagle, referring to the double eagle in the coat of arms of Austria-Hungary

Coat of arms of Austria-Hungary

The coat of arms of Austria-Hungary was that country's symbol during its existence from 1867 to 1918.-National coat of arms:- Coat of arms of the two constituent countries :-Regional coat of arms:...

. The march became a favourite part of the repertoire of American composer and bandleader John Philip Sousa

John Philip Sousa

John Philip Sousa was an American composer and conductor of the late Romantic era, known particularly for American military and patriotic marches. Because of his mastery of march composition, he is known as "The March King" or the "American March King" due to his British counterpart Kenneth J....

, whose band recorded it three times. The piece was the official regimental march of the Austrian Artillery

Artillery

Originally applied to any group of infantry primarily armed with projectile weapons, artillery has over time become limited in meaning to refer only to those engines of war that operate by projection of munitions far beyond the range of effect of personal weapons...

 Regiment Number 2 till its dissolution in 2007. The first one-third part of the march song is featured in the 1992 computer game Great Naval Battles: North Atlantic 1939-1943 when Germany is being selected in the gameplay.

Wagner's other most popular pieces are the Holzhackerbuam march and the Jolly Lumberjack polka

Polka

The polka is a Central European dance and also a genre of dance music familiar throughout Europe and the Americas. It originated in the middle of the 19th century in Bohemia...

. In 1895, his only opera

Opera

Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

, Der Herzbub, premiered in Vienna

Vienna

Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

.

The tune "Under the Double Eagle" was also used for the well known animation segment "Conrad Pooh And His Dancing Teeth" in Monty Python's Flying Circus

Monty Python's Flying Circus

Monty Python’s Flying Circus is a BBC TV sketch comedy series. The shows were composed of surreality, risqué or innuendo-laden humour, sight gags and observational sketches without punchlines...

. (http://montypython.wikia.com/wiki/Conrad_Poohs)

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