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Wellington's Victory, Op. 91 Once upon a time, Beethoven’s Wellington’s Victory topped the classical charts. The year was 1960; Antal Dorati and the London Symphony Orchestra won a gold medal for their recording, which was the first to utilize the original orchestral scoring with two cannons – and high fidelity stereo. Not surprisingly, it was paired with Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture. The Napoleonic wars were hard on the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The French army repeatedly threatened Vienna, and even occupied it for a while in 1809-10. With Napoleon’s defeat in his Russian campaign in 1812 (history tends to repeat itself), the tide of battle turned, and by 1815 the Napoleonic Empire was finally defeated. One of the secondary fronts of the war was the Iberian Peninsula. In June 1813, the English, Spanish and Portuguese armies under the Duke of Wellington finally broke the French power in Spain at the battle of Vitoria. The victory was a great boost to the morale of Europe’s people, tired after 15 years of incessant warfare. Beethoven was elated by the victory, and for a December 8, 1813 gala benefit concert of primarily Beethoven’s own works to aid the wounded of the latest battles against Napoleon, he composed Wellington’s Victory, alternately known as The Battle of Vitoria. Also on the program was the premiere of the Symphony No. 7. Wellington’s Victory started life as a short Battle Symphony for the Panharmonicon – a mechanical contraption that was able to play many of the military band instruments of the day – the creation of mechanical genius and tinkerer Johann Mälzel, the inventor of the metronome. And it was Mälzel who urged Beethoven to orchestrate it. Beethoven complied, expanding the short work into two parts: Part I – Battle; Part II – Victory Symphony. The work became at once a smashing success throughout Europe – and a bone of contention and source of lawsuits between Beethoven and Mälzel. Battle music, or Battaglia, a composition that attempts to imitate the cries and noises of battle, has been known since the late fourteenth century. Among the best known works in this genre are Clement Janequin’s a cappella choral work La guerre, commemorating the Battle of Marignano of 1515, and some of Monteverdi’s Madrigali guerrieri et amorosi of 1638. In Part I Beethoven opens with a trumpet fanfare,  then capitalizes on two themes, “Rule Britannia” and the French anti-British folksong “Marlborough s'en va-t-en guerre,” (Marlborough goes off to war) – not “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.” He pits the two songs and other battle effects against each other using special placement of the “instruments” on stage. We know the French have had it when the “Marlborough” theme turns up in the minor. Part II is a Classical symphonic sonata allegro form with an interpolated reverent interlude of “God Save the King.” The coda is a fugue and fantasy on the theme. | ||||||||||
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An der schönen blauen Donau The Austro-Hungarian Empire never really recovered from the devastation of the Napoleonic wars. All through the 19th century it fought a rearguard action to maintain its integrity against nationalist movements from within and encroachment by its neighbors from without. Then, in 1866, came the Austro-Prussian war to settle who was the dominant power in the German-speaking countries. Austria lost resoundingly and never again would have a major say in German affairs. But in Vienna, the capital, you would have seen little of that instability and disintegration. For those at the Habsburg court, the well-to-do and the upper class of civil service, it was a time of glitter and joie de vivre, ostensibly the most brilliant and prosperous period of the monarchy. Opulent parties, balls and dancing were all the rage while the empire disintegrated. Johann Strauss II, by far the best known of nineteenth century Vienna’s composers of dance music, was adored by high society who fondly named him the Waltz King. He was by nature shy, self-effacing and insecure, far removed in nature from the light-heartedness and exuberance expressed in his music. He was a close friend of Brahms, who always tried to convince him that posterity will remember his music, but to no avail. Brahms, however, got it right. An der schönen, blauen Donau, known here as the “The Blue Danube,” was composed in 1867, and became Vienna’s consolation prize for the defeat of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the hands of Prussia the year before. It was originally composed for the Viennese Men’s Choral Society for a Society celebration but when premiered in Vienna the response was only lukewarm. It was the orchestral version that became a best seller, selling millions of copies in Johann Strauss´s lifetime. Later generations have also been fascinated by the melancholy grace of this unintentional “requiem” for the Austrian monarchy. When a music lover once asked Brahms for an autograph, the composer wrote down the first two bars of the waltz and signed “Leider nicht von Brahms” (Regrettably not by Brahms). The Viennese waltz was basically an ABA form with the A section consisting of a single theme and the B section including an arbitrary number of sections of new music. each one repeated. The effect was of constantly changing music and a resulting forward momentum. To give further shape to the work, any of the subsidiary sections could be repeated. The Blue Danube opens with a slow introduction, typical for Strauss’ major waltz number, in this case, revealing the principal theme. After the main theme, there follow eight sections of new music, one of them repeated at the end of the series and leading back to the famous theme and a coda. | ||||||||||
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Suite from Der Rosenkavalier Despite the disdain with which most opera plots are regarded, occasionally, an opera composer and librettist form a winning partnership where each member of the team complements the skills of the other to create a masterpiece of musical and dramatic integrity. Mozart and Lorenzo da Ponte come immediately to mind, as do Giuseppe Verdi and Arrigo Boito. In the last century, composer Richard Strauss and playwright Hugo von Hofmannsthal found a kinship and mutual understanding that produced a series of successful operas starting in 1908 with Elektra. Following the success of that grim and bloody piece, Strauss was searching for something considerably lighter, a Figaro-style comedy. It was von Hofmannsthal who came up with a totally new type of libretto, an amalgam of various French eighteenth-century farces. In a note to the compose he wrote: “I have...worked out a complete and entirely new scenario for a grand opera with downright comic figures and situations, and action as colorful and almost as obvious as a pantomime.” The result was the immensely successful Der Rosenkavalier, premiered in 1911. Set in the eighteenth-century Vienna of Maria Theresa, it is an extravagantly complicated plot, including a string of farcical situations and characters. The core plot involves the youth Octavian, who has been sexually initiated by the Marschallin, the neglected young wife of an elderly field marshal. When her bumbling old cousin Baron Ochs barges in on the couple to announce to her his intention to rectify his finances by marrying Sophie, daughter of a successful merchant with pretensions, Octavian – nearly caught in flagrante delicto – is forced to dress as a chambermaid to hide his identity. As he flirts with the disguised Octavian, Ochs states his intention to woo Sophie by presenting her with a silver rose from the hand of an aristocratic emissary. After more comic business, the Marschallin entrusts Octavian with Ochs’s silver rose and its mission. At a grand ball, Octavian presents the rose to Sophie, at which point both, of course, succumb to love at first sight. Then it’s more classic comic intrigue to extricate the young heroine from her elderly fiancé. Finally, Ochs is outwitted and the Marschallin, a gracious dea ex machina, relinquishes Octavian to Sophie. Strauss laced Der Rosenkavalier with waltz tunes at the request of his librettist – in spite of the fact that at the time of the action the waltz didn’t even exist in aristocratic ballrooms. Strauss himself extracted from the opera two Walzerfolgen (waltz sequences), and many conductors have put together their own suites from the opera. The title “Waltz Sequence,” however, is misleading; Strauss’s Suite is a medley recalling most of the important themes and events of the opera, conjuring the magic of young love embodied in the silver rose and the Marschallin’s renunciation of love. Strauss’s father was a professional orchestra horn player. The orchestration of the Suite features some beautiful solos – especially for the horn, but also for oboe and violin – as well as chamber ensembles. Although not always in the order in which they appear in the opera, melodies from the Suite refer to specific incidents in the plot or themes associated with particular characters. Among the most familiar waltzes are: from Act 3. And, of course, Strauss includes the theme associated with the erotic power of the silver rose on Octavian and Sophie. The Suite ends with the famous duet between the lovers that ends the opera. | ||||||||||
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| Copyright © Elizabeth and Joseph Kahn 2008 | ||||||||||
