Review Summary: “Ah You Pitiful Scoundrel, What I S*** is Better than Anything You’ve Ever Thought!”
Composer Disasterpiece Series No. 1
Towards the end of the Composer Masterpiece Series, which I have decided to finish after five reviews, the idea to write a Composer Disasterpiece Series struck me. A new and fun challenge this oughta be, right¿ But before I began writing I realized that this series will present me with new and unique challenges. Instead of being able to harness the energy that my favorite pieces by my favorite composers give me, and then waxing poetic about them, I’ll have to discuss the intricacies of pieces that are frankly just plain boring and/or not any good. The good thing, though, is that this doesn’t necessarily mean I can’t feel strongly about these pieces. So, I’ll have to choose pieces that aren’t any good, but nevertheless give me a lot to say. Enjoy!
Let me just first say that I don’t doubt the following reviews will demonstrate my general bias in certain composers, genres, and eras. So, in an effort to display some semblance of impartiality, my first review will take on a piece by a composer whom I review frequently, feel deeply about, and consider to quite possibly be the best musician to have ever lived, classical or not; Ludwig Van Beethoven.
The year is 1813 and the piece is the Wellington’s Victory Symphony, or Battle Symphony, Op. 91. As the name implies, Beethoven wrote Wellington’s Victory to commemorate a "victory" by a guy named "Wellington". The particulars deal with the end of the Napoleonic Wars, the Iberian Peninsula, a river, and other specifics regarding the battle itself like flanking maneuvers, strategic retreats, etc. etc. So, why would Beethoven, ever concerned with big-A art, be drawn to a war, let alone a single battle, taking place some thousand miles away¿ Well…. money. At the time Beethoven was in considerable financial straits. Among various reasons that led to his financial misfortune at that point in time, two of the three aristocratic patrons whom payed Beethoven a yearly annuity could no longer provide, one was dead and the other bankrupt. Patronage, right¿
Desperate for cash, Beethoven was convinced to compose a battle symphony by the gifted inventor of mechanisms and trifles of all sorts, including the metronome, Johann Nepomuk Maelzel. Maelzel had recently put the finishing touches on his newest invention, the panharmonicon, an automatic playing machine that could not only imitate all the sounds of an orchestra, but also all the sounds of war. Perhaps it should first be underscored that the 18th century had witnessed a craze for “living machines”. The industrial revolution was only beginning. Obviously, there were not yet mass scale factories, mass scale electricity, or computers. There were only the trees and your imagination. So, quite naturally, any sort of automatic mechanism that could reproduce features of the living world was not only novel, but downright hypnotizing. In those days, then, reproductions of field battles featured regularly in concert halls across Europe.
Skyrocketing the popularity of the battle symphony were the battles of the Napoleonic Wars. The French Revolution and Napoleon himself had shaken the foundations of the old European order down to its bones, and so in 1813 Europe enthusiastically embraced the news of Napoleon’s defeat at Vittoria, the defeat that signaled Napoleon’s likely surrender in the coming months (which is indeed what happened). It is at this point that Beethoven, no doubt, saw the logic in Maelzel’s argument for not just a battle symphony, but a battle symphony composed for the panharmonicon and written to celebrate Napoleon’s defeat at Vittoria.
Written right at the tail end of his “heroic period”, Wellington’s Victory is almost universally considered to represent the nadir of Beethoven’s creativity. Although I would argue that that statement is quite problematic and requires discussion, Wellington’s victory is just flat out shoddy. In typical Beethovenian fashion, the original sketch of Op. 91 proved too large for Maelzel’s panharmonicon to handle. Not willing to do away with the panharmonicon entirely, the men settled on using the sketch at the conclusion of a more traditional orchestral piece. The full score calls for an unusually big orchestra, including four horns, six trumpets, three trombones, and a large percussion battery that runs the gamut of war noise reproduction including all variants of muskets, artillery fire, war drumming, and bugle calls.
Wellington’s Victory is broken down into three phases: battle, charge, and “Victory Symphony.”
Signaling the arrival of the English to the battlefield, the piece begins in the drums and trumpets. In nothing more than standard war-march fashion, the drums drum and the trumpets trumpet. After about a minute or so, the English “Marcia” (march) section begins. Obviously, this section represents the marching English, and again in quite typical fashion, Beethoven has them step to a patriotic tune, in this case, “Rule Britannia”. This section is followed by the French trumpet and drums, not varied from the English T/D whatsoever, and then the French March stepping to the tune of “Marlborough”.
Following is the brief “Invitation and Response”, which is nothing more than the two sides engaging in horn calls. At around the four-minute mark the “Battle” begins. Finally, the orchestra enters and breathes some much needed life into the piece. What results is a cacophony of endlessly volleying musket fire over a furious orchestra sprinting uncontrollably this way and that. To his credit, Beethoven reproduces what must be the sonic equivalent of the pandemonium of war; dark (French) and light (English) tonalities constantly wrestle for supremacy, darkness seemingly reigning supreme in one moment, lightness the next.
After about two and a half minutes, the “Battle” ends and the “Storm/March” begins. Clearly demarcated from the “Battle”, the “Storm/March” begins with an instantly recognizable march pattern in the drums and strings. As the march progresses the tempo gets faster and faster, obviously signaling the pace at which each side is hurling themselves. Once the march can get no faster, we’ve reached the point of bayonet and hand to hand combat. Again, the orchestra furiously darts in all directions, one moment here, the other moment there. If you didn’t know any better, the outcome of the battle might not be so obvious; sonic tugs and tussles abound. Obviously, though, the English won in real-life, and so the English win in the realms of sound. The last minute or so of this section sees the volume lowered and melody picked up by the winds, which probably, to me anyway, represents what it must be like for a general to survey the battlefield with its dead bodies and wounded soldiers.
Now that the battle at Vittoria is over, it’s time for the over the top jubilee that is the “Victory Symphony”. To say that the “Victory Symphony” is a cliché is an understatement; it’s the cliché of clichés. Much of it begins monophonically, which is to say that all the instruments play the same notes in the same rhythm. The effect is supposed to be one of dynamic unity, “We have won! We have won!” When Beethoven finally decides to diverge the strings from the winds the orchestra steps to more hollow pomposity. Here and there, there are allusions to the 5th piano concerto and what would become the 9th symphony, but they represent only pale shades of the 5th’s vibrancy and the 9th’s sublimity. The music, very transparently might I add, lacks any depth whatsoever, let alone that quintessential Beethovenian conflict-resolution paradigm. Beethoven separates this section from the next with an insertion of the British tune, “God Save the Queen”. Add a couple more minutes of hollow pomp and a repeat of “God Save the Queen” and you’ve got all the ingredients for an instant moneymaker.
Included in the February 1814 program which saw the premiere of Wellington’s Victory was the premiere of the newly finished 7th symphony. How strange it is that the piece that made the concert such a success, and led to an impromptu repeat concert only four days later, was the former and not the latter. Beethoven, however, had no illusions about the merits of Wellington’s Victory; he declined to comment on it publicly (strange for him) and promoted it vigorously to publishers. Years later, responding internally to a newspaper article criticizing the WV, Beethoven wrote in the margins, “Ah you pitiful scoundrel, what I s*** is better than anything you’ve ever thought!” 2.2-2.3 / 5
