BATTLE MUSIC Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 - 1827) Battle Symphony Opus 91 (Wellingtons Sieg oder Die Schlacht bei Vittoria) Two Marches for Military Band...
BATTLE MUSIC
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 - 1827)
Battle Symphony Opus 91
(Wellingtons Sieg oder Die Schlacht bei Vittoria)
Two Marches for Military Band
Franz Liszt (1811 - 1886)
Hungarian Attack March
Battle of the Huns
Mikhail Mikhaylovich Ippolitov-lIanov
(1859 - 1935)
Georgian War March (from Iveria
.)
Nikolay Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov
(1844 - 1908)
King Dodon on the Battlefield (from The Golden Cockerel)
Nikolay Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov
(1844 - 1908)
Massacre at Kerzhentz (from Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh)
Robert Volkmann (1815 - 1883)
(Overture) Richard III
Pyotr lI'yich Tchaikovsky (1840 -
1893)
Battle of Poltava (from Mazeppa)
Music has a long and close association
with warfare, whether in imitation, celebration or, as in Marco Polo's China, to strike
fear into the heart of the enemy, a function apparently echoed by some orchestras today.
Beethoven's much maligned Battle Symphony, Wellington's
Victory or the Battle of Vittoria,
is a piece of programme music, topical at the time of its composition in 1813, the year of
the victory of the Duke of Wellington over the forces of Napoleon at Vittoria, and
designed for a newly invented machine, the Panharmonicon. The inventor Malzel, Vienna
court mechanician and later developer of the new pendulum metronome, had designed his
machine on the lines of the traditional music-box, and planned Beethoven's addition to its
repertoire as a further patriotic attraction. Circumstances led to a change of plan, and
Beethoven was asked to orchestrate the work, free of the technical restrictions imposed by
the Panharmonicon, for use in a charity concert in aid of those wounded at the battle of
Hanau. The first performance of a work that won immediate popularity with the public was
on 12th November in a programme that included, for the connoisseurs, the first performance
of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony, followed by
Malzel's Mechanical Trumpeter, with
accompaniment by Dussek and by Pleyel. The event, intended to raise money also for the
expenses of Malzel and Beethoven in a planned journey to London, was important in drawing
public attention to Beethoven and, at the second performance in December, raising more
money. Beethoven quarrelled with Malzel over the attribution of the piece, and the latter
drew little advantage from the affair, and no credit for his part in planning the outline
of the Battle Symphony, which Beethoven used
for his sole profit in a third concert in January 1814. The work includes trumpet signals
for battle from the English and French armies, Rule
Britannia, Marlborough s'en va-t-en guerre, (otherwise known as For he's a jolly good fellow), gun-fire and a fugue
based on God Save the King, and was
dedicated to the Prince Regent, later George IV of England, in an effort by Beethoven to
anticipate Malzel's arrival in London and deprive him of any possible credit in the
matter, which became a matter of litigation. The two Beethoven marches, characteristic of
the mood and idiom of the time, were written in 1809 and 1810 for Archduke Anton.
Liszt's Second Hungarian march, the so-called Ungarischer Sturmmarsch, was originally written for
the piano in 1843 and arranged for orchestra in 1875, making use of the Hungarian cimbalom
in an emotively patriotic Hungarian context. The symphonic poem Die Hunnenschlacht, the Battle of the Huns, was
written in 1857, one of the series of orchestral works in which Liszt, settled in Weimar
as Director of Music Extraordinary to the Grand Duchy, sought to translate into musical
terms what one hostile critic described as the greatest productions of the human mind, a
process that the same critic, Eduard Hanslick, found both impertinent and objectionable.
The origin of Die Hunnenschlacht was a mural
by Wilhelm von Kaulbach representing the great fifth century battle between Attila and his
Huns and the Roman Ernperor Theodoric, the chorale Crux
fidelis representing the Christian victory.
The Russian composer Ippolitov-Ivanov,
a graduate of Moscow Conservatory, spent a number of years in Georgia, an area the music
of which he drew on in later life, after his return to Moscow, where he died in 1935. His
preoccupation with the relatively exotic music of remoter republics in the Soviet Union
and her neighbours continued an earlier tradition followed by nationalist composers such
as Rimsky-Korsakov, whose exotic opera The Golden
Cockerel, a controversial satire on the conduct of the Russo-Japanese war that
earned him official displeasure, was completed in 1907, published in 1908 and only
performed in Moscow in 1909, after the composer's death. Based on Pushkin, the plot
concerns old King Dodon and the Astrologer's gift of a Golden Cockerel that crows at a
hint of danger. When his sons are defeated in battle, the King goes to war himself, but is
deterred from his projected attack by the appearance of a mysterious Queen, of whom he had
dreamed, and who becomes his wife. She and the Golden Cockerel disappear, after the latter
has killed the King, payment for his harsh treatment of the Astrologer, whom he has
killed.
Rimsky-Korsakovs' Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and the Maiden Fevroniya was completed in 1905 and first
staged in Moscow in 1907. The battle of Kherzenetz,
frorn the third act of the opera, represents the conflict between the soldiers of Kitezh,
a city granted invisibility through the prayers of Fevroniya, and the Tartars, who had
taken Fevroniya, wife of Prince Vsevolod, prisoner.
The plays of Shakespeare have provided
composers and librettists with a ready source for opera and incidental music. Richard III
has proved a less popular subject than many, with only two later 19th century full
operatic settings by minor composers. The Dresden composer Robert Volkmann, who died in
Budapest in 1883 after spending some 35 years in the city, wrote incidental music for the
play and a concert overture. Shakespeare's play ends with the battle of Bosworth at which
Richard was defeated by Henry Tudor, the future Henry VII. The musical content of the
overture makes its own surprising suggestion as to the national origin of some of the
soldiery involved described by Shakespeare's hunchback King as "these bastard
Bretons'.
Tchaikovsky based his opera Mazeppa, completed in 1883, on Pushkin's Poltava. The old hetman Mazeppa marries his
goddaughter Mariya, the match opposed by the girl's father, who denounces Mazeppa to the
Tsar as a traitor, but is not believed and handed back, a prisoner, to his son-in-law, to
be put to death. The third act is introduced by music representing the battle of Poltava,
in which Mazeppa, who has sided with Sweden against the Tsar, in the hope of establishing
the independence of the Ukraine, has been defeated, later to meet again his young wife
Mariya, who has heard of her father's cruel death and is now out of her mind. The battle
symphonic tableau includes the hymn of the victorious army of Peter the Great, and the
rout of the forces of Charles XII.
Czechoslovak Radio Symphony Orchestra
(Bratislava)
The Czechoslovak Radio Symphony
Orchestra (Bratislava), the oldest symphonic ensemble in Slovakia, was founded in 1929 at
the instance of Milos Ruppeldt and Oskar Nedbal, prominent personalities in the sphere of
music. The orchestra was first conducted by the Prague conductor Frantiek Dyk and in
the course of the past fifty years of its existence has worked under the batons of several
prominent Czech and Slovak conductors. Ondrej Lenard was appointed its conductor in 1970
and in 1977 its conductor-in-chief. The orchestra has given many successful concerts both
at home and abroad, in West and East Germany, Russia, Bulgaria, Denmark, France, Spain,
Italy and Great Britain. It records extensively for the Naxos and Marco Polo labels.
Ondrej Lenard
Ondrej Lenard was born in 1942 and
had his early training in Bratislava, where, at the age of 17, he entered the Academy of Music and Drama, to study under Ludovit Rajter.
His graduation concert in 1964 was given with the Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra and during
his two years of military service he
conducted the Army Orchestral Ensemble, later renewing an earlier connection with the
Slovak National Opera, where he has continued to direct performances.
Lenard's work with the Czechoslovak
Radio Symphony Orchestra in Bratislava began in 1970 and in 1977 he was appointed
Principal Conductor. At the same time he has travelled widely abroad in Europe, the
Americas, the Soviet Union and elsewhere as a guest conductor, and during his two years,
from 1984 to 1986, as General Music Director of the
Slovak National Opera recorded for Opus
operas by Puccini, Gounod, Suchon and Bellini.
For Naxos Lenard has recorded
symphonies by Tchaikovsky and works by Glazunov, Johann Strauss II, Verdi and
Rimsky-Korsakov.