Wellington's Victory facts for kids
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Wellington's Victory, or the Battle of Vitoria (also called the Battle Symphony; in German: Wellingtons Sieg oder die Schlacht bei Vittoria), Op. 91, is a 15-minute-long orchestral work composed by Ludwig van Beethoven to commemorate the Marquess (later Duke) of Wellington's victory over Joseph Bonaparte at the Battle of Vitoria in Spain on 21 June 1813 and the German campaign of 1813 in Germany thus ending the rule of Bonaparte's Confederation of the Rhine and the birth of the German Confederation. It is known sometimes as "The Battle Symphony" or "The Battle of Vitoria", and was dedicated to the Prince Regent, later King George IV. Composition stretched from August to first week of October 1813, and the piece proved to be a substantial moneymaker for Beethoven.
The autograph manuscript of the work is preserved in the Berlin State Library.
Orchestration
Wellington's Victory is something of a musical novelty. The full orchestration calls for two flutes, a piccolo, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, six trumpets, three trombones, timpani, a large percussion battery (including muskets and other artillery sound effects), and a usual string section of violins I and II, violas, cellos, and double basses.
In the orchestral percussion section one player plays the timpani, the other three play the cymbals, bass drum and triangle. On stage there are two 'sides', British and French, both playing the same instruments: two side drums (englisches/französisches Trommeln in the score), two bass drums (Kanone in the score), two (four) ratchets, played by eight to ten instrumentalists.
Structure
The work has two parts: the Battle (Schlacht) and the Victory Symphony (Sieges Sinfonie). The first part is programme music describing two approaching opposing armies and contains extended passages depicting scenes of battle. It uses "Rule Britannia" for the British side and "Malbrough s'en va-t-en guerre" ("Marlborough has left for the war", also popularized today as "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow") for the French side. Beethoven may have elected to not use "La Marseillaise" to represent the French forces, as Tchaikovsky later did in the 1812 Overture, perhaps because playing "La Marseillaise" was considered treasonous in Vienna at the time.
If this first part is pictorial music, the second is far from vulgar and exhibits some typical Beethoven composing techniques. It can be considered as a sonata form that, stripped of the development section, features an extended coda. The first theme is a fanfare in D major, which switches to the distant key of B-flat major for the second theme. This is "God Save the King", the British national anthem:
However, the final cadence (bars marked E in the score above) is not played. Instead, motif D is repeated so as to switch back to D major and to the re-exposition of the fanfare theme. This is followed by the re-exposition of "God Save the King", now in the main key (D major) and adopting the pace of a "Tempo di menuetto moderato". Again the final cadence (E) is avoided and replaced by successive repetition of motif D, this time leading to a coda in imitative style. This fugal section ("Allegro") starts as a string octet (later joined by the full orchestra) with the phrase
stemming from phrase A of the "God Save the King" tune. Later a second phrase joins in, still in imitative style,
derived from the anthem's phrase B, thus building up a little double fugue. It all ends with a section based on motif
(which reworks motifs C+D of the original theme) and at last by a final derivative of phrase A:
The panharmonicon
The first version of "Wellington's Victory" was not written for an orchestra. Mälzel, known today primarily for patenting the metronome, convinced Beethoven to write a short piece commemorating Wellington's victory for his invention, the panharmonicon. It never caught on as anything more than a curiosity. Nonetheless, Mälzel toured Europe showing off Beethoven's work on the mechanical trumpeter and the enthusiasm for the music convinced Beethoven to turn it into a full-blown "victory overture".
The manuscript of the second part of this version was discovered by Willy Hess in a revised copy by the author (Hess 108).
The composition today
The novelty of the work has waned, and "Wellington's Victory" is not performed often today. Many critics lump it into a category of so-called "battle pieces", along with Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture and Liszt's Hunnenschlacht (Battle of the Huns): Charles Rosen wrote that "Beethoven's contribution lacks the serious pretentiousness or the incorporation of ideology of Felix Mendelssohn's Reformation Symphony, or of Hector Berlioz's Symphonie funèbre et triomphale, but it is only the less interesting for its modesty."
In their book Men of Music, Wallace Brockway and Herbert Weinstock termed the piece an "atrocious potboiler". .....
