John Philip Sousa’s “The Liberty Bell” march was first published in 1893.
Sousa originally wrote the music for an unfinished operetta called The Devil’s Deputy. The theatrical project collapsed, but the music was reshaped into a standalone march. Its title was inspired by the Liberty Bell imagery Sousa saw at Chicago’s World’s Columbian Exposition, where a spectacle called America featured a large Liberty Bell backdrop.
The march’s first performance took place in Chicago on 4 July 1893, during the exposition period. That date is sometimes confused with the composition or publication year, but both the march’s standard historical dating and its early public life place it in 1893.
Monty Python made the piece famous to a new generation by using it as the opening theme for Monty Python’s Flying Circus. The ringing-bell sound and brisk brass arrangement became inseparable from the show’s surreal opening titles, even though the music predates Python by more than seven decades.