The circumstances behind the composition of Cortège, one of Arnold Bax's many orchestral marches, are obscure. After its creation in 1925 in Geneva—where Bax was working on his Symphony No. 2 while his companion, pianist Harriet Cohen, was receiving treatment for tuberculosis—the work apparently lay unpublished and unperformed for several decades. It was finally given its first hearing at a Vaughan Williams Centenary Concert at St. John's Smith Square on January 29, 1972, with Leslie Head conducting the Kensington Symphony (Head, a great enthusiast of Bax's music, has revived and premiered many of his compositions with the largely amateur Kensington Symphony that he helped found).

The Cortège is dedicated to Herbert Hughes, a composer and critic known for his arrangements of Irish folk songs. There is a folk flavor to the work's opening melody, which is first presented by the cornet and then taken up by the full orchestra. After this forceful introduction, with its rather ominous march rhythm, a more restrained minor-key episode appears with descending woodwind figures as decoration. The brass then take up the opening melody again, leading to a splashy and extravert conclusion.

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