Wellington's Victory

Wellington's Victory, or, the Battle of Vitoria, Op. 91 (Wellingtons Sieg oder die Schlacht bei Vittoria) is a minor orchestral work composed by Ludwig van Beethoven to commemorate the Duke of Wellington's victory over Joseph Bonaparte's forces at the Battle of Vitoria in Spain on 21 June 1813. It is also known sometimes as "The Battle Symphony" or "The Battle of Vitoria", and was dedicated to the Prince Regent, later George IV of the United Kingdom. The piece proved to be a substantial moneymaker for Beethoven.

A common (and understandable) misconception among commentators is that the piece commemorates Wellington's defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte at the Battle of Waterloo, but it does not.

Premiere

Fol­low­ing a major military vic­tory over Joseph Bonaparte's armies in Spain at the Battle of Vitoria on 21 June 1813, Beethoven’s friend Johann Mälzel talked the com­poser into writ­ing a com­po­si­tion com­mem­o­rat­ing this bat­tle which he could notate on his ‘mechan­i­cal orches­tra’: the panharmonicon. Beethoven, how­ever, wrote a com­po­si­tion for large band – an instru­men­ta­tion so large that Mälzel could not build a machine large enough to per­form the music. As an alter­na­tive plan, Beethoven rewrote the Siegess­in­fonie for orches­tra, added a first part and renamed the work, Wellington’s Vic­tory. In this form it was pre­miered in Vienna, together with the pre­mière of the Sym­phony No. 7 and a work per­formed by Mälzel’s mechan­i­cal trumpeter.

The piece was first performed in Vienna on 8 December 1813 on a concert programme to benefit Austrian and Bavarian soldiers wounded at the Battle of Hanau. Beethoven himself conducted the orchestra. Running about 15 minutes in duration, the piece was an immediate crowd-pleaser and met with much enthusiasm from early concertgoers. Also on the programme was the world premiere of his masterful and oft-performed Symphony No. 7.

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, a contrabassoon, 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. It is interesting to note the greater number of trumpets than horns, and the expansion of brass and percussion forces.

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', English and French, both playing the same instruments: 2 side drums (englisches/französisches Trommeln in the score), 2 bass drums (Kanone in the score), 2 (4) rattles, played by 8 to 10 instrumentalists.

The music simulates approaching opposing military regiments and contains extended passages depicting scenes of battle.

It uses older themes, such as "God Save the King," "Rule Britannia" for the British, and "Marlbrough s'en va-t-en guerre" ("Marlborough Has Left for the War") for the French – the tune now known as "The Bear Went Over the Mountain" or "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow."

The panharmonicon

The first version of "Wellington's Victory" was not written for an orchestra at all. Johann Mälzel, known today primarily for patenting the metronome, convinced Beethoven to write a short piece commemorating Wellington's victory for his invention, called the panharmonicon. A kind of mechanical contraption that was able to play many of the military band instruments of the day, the panharmonicon never caught on as anything more than a curiosity. Nonetheless, Mälzel toured around 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 composition work stretched through August and September and was completed in the first week of October 1813.

The composition today

The novelty of the work has worn down over the last two-hundred years; as a result, "Wellington's Victory" is not much heard in concert halls today. Many critics lump it into a category of so-called "battle pieces" along with Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture and Franz Liszt's Battle of the Huns: Charles Rosen writes that 'Beethoven's contribution lacks the serious pretentiousness or the incorporation of ideology of Mendelssohn's Reformation Symphony, or of Berlioz' Symphonie Funèbre et Triomphale, but it is only the less interesting for its modesty.'

In their book Men of Music, authors Wallace Brockway and Herbert Weinstock termed the piece an "atrocious potboiler".

Beethoven, having no illusions about the merits of this particular piece, responded protectively to similar criticism in his own time: "What I sh*t (scheisse) is better than anything you could ever think up!"

The composition has had somewhat of a renaissance in recent years as it forms the centre-piece of the Battle Proms Concerts which takes place at a number of stately homes around the UK. This is the only concert series known to play the piece with the full complement of 193 live cannon. Modern technology has allowed this piece to be played in this way using electronic firing devices, which are operated by the orchestra percussionist.

External links

• Free scores by Wellington's Victory at the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP)