All right, we've been talking about
program music. Let's take a look now at the concert overture which is one of our
types of program music.
So there are two ways we can think about a concert overture.
One might be that we take an overture that was written for something else like
an opera
or maybe for part of the incidental music to a play and we just take it away from the opera or
play and perform it as part of a concert
and that would be, technically, a concert overture. Now we see that
often with Beethoven. He only wrote one opera, Fidelio,
and it has an overture, but he was kind of dissatisfied with it so he actually wrote, I
think, four overtures for
Fidelio and they're all called (I think) the Leonore
overtures because that's the main character, the female character, in
story. So that overture actually gets performed in concerts a lot; the opera
itself, almost never gets performed. So that would be one way we could think of a
concert overture.
But when we get to the 19th century and we're talking about program music, concert
overture has a slightly different meaning.
In this case it's still a one-movement work just like an overture would be from
an opera.
But instead of connecting to some particular
story you're going to see, it may tell a story that you're going to have to
imagine for yourself. So that's what the programmatic part is, of course.
So there are two basic things that are generally used as a basis for
concert overtures. One is
to make a commemorative sort of a
storyline. So Brahms wrote a piece called Academic Festival Overture.
And you think, "Well, what's an academic festival? What kind of event is that?"
It was was actually written because a university gave him an honorary
degree and they wanted him to write a piece of music that sort of commemorated
that;
and so he wrote this overture which is full of references to
songs that students at universities in
Germany would have sung; so if you were a German college student at the time
you would have recognized the tunes.
So that was his contribution to
the festivities, we'll say. The piece that we're going to talk about today,
the 1812 Overture, is also an example of that type of work commemorative kind
of work.
The other kind of concert overture that we often see is one that
has its basis in literature or in some visual art
form. Liszt wrote a piece that some people call concert overture and some call
a symphonic poem.
It doesn't really matter what they call it. It's still a great piece of music.
That was. the English title is The Battle of the Huns,
which was his musical interpretation
of a painting by the same name. Another example,
taking the literary side of it, is Dvorak's
Othello. So he took Shakespeare's play Othello and
wrote his musical impression of that piece in a concert overture.
So we're going to talk today about the 1812 Overture, which is an
extremely famous concert overture, and before I have you
go listen to the entire piece we're going to look at it segment by segment
so you can kind of see how the themes work together,
and then you can go listen to the entire piece which is about 18 minutes long.
So this is a piece by
Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, who is obviously a Russian composer.
He wrote this piece in 1880 but the title is Overture 1812,
well, we usually call it the 1812 Overture. So what is he commemorating here?
It's not talking about the War of 1812, which was an American thing and the
Russians didn't really care much about that.
But what happened in 1812 in Russia is that Napoleon
invaded, so this was an important historic event in
Russian history. So
Napoleon came in to invade,
came into Russia. Unfortunately, Napoleon wasn't smart about his timing that he
did it in the winter
and so they basically just froze and starved them out and then the
the French weren't necessarily defeated but they
were defeated by the Russian weather and
went back back and the Russians considered that a victory.
So Tchaikovsky about sixty, seventy years later
is commemorating that. So in the piece itself we hear different things
that connect to that whole story,
the idea of the battle and the war with the French.
So at the beginning of the piece, which
most people don't hear very often--you usually hear the ending where you hear the finale
with all the exciting bits--
opens very quietly. It's a little cello choir.
So we have this little section of cellos playing. The music that they're playing
is actually a Russian hymn and the
the title of that hymn is "Oh God, Preserve Thy People." So you can see that would be a
really good setup
for a piece of music that is supposed to be about this invasion of our country. So
we have this hymn. We would go to church, we would sing
to save us from our enemies. So go listen now just to that opening section
of the 1812 Overture for this little hymn, which is going to appear
again
later in the piece.
All right, so now you've heard the opening. The next section
is just sort of a building up of tension. So you know
it sets like they're waiting because they know Napoleon is coming, so they're waiting.
You get progressively more intense, a lot more
rhythmic vigor coming into it. You know that hymn is very solemn
and not rhythmically active, we might say.
So as we
progress into the piece what we hear
next that's recognizable is the French national anthem
"La Marseillaise." So when it's
heard the first time it sounds like it's off in the distance. So you might
imagine
that that you're the Russians and you're waiting and you can hear them
coming.
So listen now to the first time that we hear
the French national anthem in 1812 and think about how
Tchaikovsky makes it sound like it's perhaps a little bit distant.
All right. So now we know that the French are coming. The next part that I want you to listen to
is a section
that sounds rather like folk music. Remember, this is
the Romantic period and lots of composers are doing nationalist kinds of things
and this is really
actually a good example of that as well. So Tchaikovsky incorporates
some music that sounds like French, sorry, not French, but Russian, folk
songs
to sort of represent the people. So
you might think
as you're listening to this, OK, the French are here. This is the cold
dark Russian winter. Listen to these folk songs and see if they
conjure up for you the idea of that sort of dark, cold side
of Russia.
Okay, so now you've heard the folk part of this.
What happens next is that we hear the French national anthem
again and it starts out very much like it does the first time.
But then what Tchaikovsky has done is added
cannon fire so we actually have battle
happening here; whether there was a battle at the time I'm not quite sure
but he's going to throw that in because, you know, this is a war between
the French and the Russians. So what Tchaikovsky actually intended
was cannon fire here, and in lots of places they still do it that way. Obviously it's
better if it's an outdoor concert when you do that!
When I lived in Utah I used to play in an orchestra and every
Fourth of July we would do a concert in the park and this was our finale piece.
So we would play the 1812 Overture and there was a
re-enactment group that had all these different sorts of cannons
and they would set them up in a field across from where we were.
And as we played the piece they would start shooting off those
cannons
and I knew it was going to happen. I mean, I had played this thing for years and I
knew it was gonna happen and every time it happened it made me jump!
So I want you to listen now to the section where the French national anthem happens
and the section through the part where the cannons actually start going off.
All right, so now we've had this big dramatic moment and as we know
the Russians were victorious (however you'd like to define that)
in this particular battle. So what we have is a return of that
opening hymn, you know, "Oh God, Preserve Thy People." So now it's more
of a Thanksgiving
that he's preserved his people in Russia.
So it's
a little more energetic, perhaps, has more instruments playing than just the
cellos.
So listen now to how the opening hymn comes back into this piece
of music.
So now we have the big rousing finale. So we have this
hymn tune going, we have cannons, we have
church bells. If it's performed outside and you have a
church nearby that actually has a carillon with bells that's how they do
it;
and so the bells are ringing, you know, the celebratory bells
that the battle is over and we've won. So we've incorporated all these things that are really
not what you would think of as an orchestral sort of thing
but makes a highly dramatic piece of music.
But what happens at the very end is that Tchaikovsky brings in a new tune. He brings
in what
at the time of 1812 was not actually the Russian national anthem, didn't
become
the national anthem until a little bit later, but "God Save the Tsar"--which
is the same tune as "God Save the Queen" which is also the same tune as "My
Country tis of Thee," so it's a very popular tune.
You have to listen sort of carefully here because the rhythms are
stretched out a little bit differently than they are in the
original and it sort of starts in the middle of the tune.
But it's in the bottom instruments so you can hear that the
the low, really powerful trombones,
low strings, they've got this melodic line. So we've got
"God save the Tsar" playing, we've got cannons going off, we've got the
little elements of the French national anthem still throwing around in there--
so just this big dramatic ending. So
I want you to go now and listen to the entire piece, which lasts
almost 20 minutes. So sit back and enjoy yourself
and enjoy this really highly dramatic concert overture.