As a new runner, I need all the help I can get. Here, I’ll talk about the songs on my running playlist and what makes them — and me — tick.

Playlist Song #2
Gioacchino Rossini — William Tell Overture; Finale

One of the most recognizable snippets of classical music, the Finale of the William Tell Overture has most famously been used as the theme for the Lone Ranger since its days as a radio serial during the Great Depression.

Despite its official title (March of the Swiss Soldiers), the piece utilizes successive triplets that mimic horses at a full gallop rather than the tromp tromp tromp of a traditional march on foot. Rossini’s original 1829 opera doesn’t include any horseplay, but instead nods to the galoppades, or country folk dances, that were popular in Paris, Vienna in that decade. The footloose melody makes the Finale’s pairing with the famous cowboy lawman a natural fit; it has come to define Rossini’s final overture in the modern era as symbolic of the Wild West.

In truth, the full Overture is 12 minutes long, and includes four movements — that prancing pony part that you know from popular culture is just the last three and a half minutes — so I snipped the Finale in GarageBand for running purposes. My running version starts with a trio of trumpets heralding the galop, and ends with about 90 seconds of increasingly dramatic false endings before the final TA-DA.

Usually when random order hits up this track, I bump up the pace by about 30 seconds a klick. Those false endings are like Rossini coaching from beyond the grave — “keep pushing, you soft git… No, you’re not done yet! There will be no stopping!”

Queue it up, and it’s hi ho silver away, indeed.

Album: Great Rossini Overtures; the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Piero Gamba
Release date: 1988 CD remaster of 1950s recordings
Beats per minute: 138
Subject: War / History / Classical
Content warning: None
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