Wellington's Victory
"Wellington's Victory", Op. 91 (Wellington's 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 the French at the Battle of Vitoria in Spain on June 21, 1813. It is also known sometimes as "The Battle Symphony" or "The Battle of Vitoria".
The piece was first performed in Vienna on December 8, 1813 on a concert program 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 program was the world premiere of his masterful and oft-performed Symphony No. 7.
"Wellington's Victory" is a bit of a novelty piece. The full orchestration calls for a large percussion battery including muskets and other artillery sound effects. The music simulates approaching opposing military regiments and contains extended passages depecting scenes of battle.
The first version of "Wellington's Victory" wasn't 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 the panharmonicon. A kind of mechanical contraption that was able to play many of the military band intstruments 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 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 cynically lump it into a category of so-called "battle pieces" along with Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture and Franz Liszt's Battle of the Huns. Yet, like Beethoven's Choral Fantasy, another popular hit of its day that has lost some of its luster recently, "Wellington's Victory" is a welcome listen for those who think they've heard all that Beethoven has to offer.