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Posted on 07/05/2013 10:49:35 AM PDT by Borges
Cookouts, fireworks and the "1812 Overture." On the Fourth of July, we hold these truths to be self-evidently American, right?
Don't light the cannon fuses just yet.
The "1812 Overture" may be an American tradition, with its patriotic strains and thunderous battery. But while orchestras across the land, including the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra tonight at Point State Park, will perform it with clanging bells and cannon fire, the music could hardly be any more distant from the Stars and Stripes.
That's because the overture, written by famed composer Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, depicts Napoleon's retreat from Russia in 1812, not America's battles against the British, as many might think.
(Excerpt) Read more at old.post-gazette.com ...
Well, sort of: from a geopolitical stand point, the War of 1812 was part of the Napoleonic Wars. Of course, having chosen to fight Britain rather than France over the impressment of American sailors (they were both doing it), we were effectively on the same side as France against Britain, Russia, and Austria, so it’s an odd choice for American patriotic celebrations, as it commemorates Napoleon’s defeat.
Of course there is a good excuse for playing Tsarist patriotic music on 4 July: 4 July is the Feast of the Royal-Passion Bearers of Russia, commemorating Nicholas II, Alexandra and the members of their family and household murdered by the Bolsheviks.
For once, an answer to a question that I have been asking about for years! Glad to read it and a reason to continue enjoying the “Cannon’s Roar!”
***I’ve never heard of the 1812 Overture being associated with the 4th of July. ****
I remember it being used in an advertisement for puffed wheat or rice years ago.
The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra has been playing the 1812 Overture for July 4 fireworks for as long as I can remember (I’m 55).
That is its only association with July 4 that I know of, and apparently (from reading this thread) it’s not just a Baltimore thing.
We like the 1812 Overture because it is loud.
The better versions have massed choirs and carillons too.
Americans like the 1812 overture on the 4th of July because the composition puts to pure music, without words, the imagery of the scenes sung about in the Star Spangled Banner.
“the twighlight’s last gleaming”
“the dawn’s early light”
“the perilous fight”
“the rockets red glare”
“the bombs bursting in air”
“And [the] “our” [star-spangled] banner in triumph shall wave”
It matters not - to most of us - that the Russian composer wrote the composition in homage to the Russians expelling Napoleon. Without words it “sings” a tune of any great heroic battle, whether our revolutionary battles or others.
Cultural ICONs have a life of their own divorced from their originators; even if just borrowed or adopted by those they speak to in some way.
Maybe in a 100 years, the 1812 Overture will be known globally as “that symphony music Americans play on their Independence Day” more than as “Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture”. Who cares?
“Did the media do a “memory hole” thing again?”
They always do. The media likes to say how the Revolution was about the USA fighting to be independent from Britain and they portray the war as if Britain was an occupier.
Britain was NOT an occupier. THIS was Britain!
The war did not start out as a war for independence. The British in their history books get this one right: The war started out as an uprising by British subjects AGAINST THEIR OWN GOVERNMENT which had become tyrannical.
See, the liberal media doesn’t want anyone getting it in their heads that people should overthrow their own government when it gets tyrannical. If so, then we’re overdue for a revolution right now.
It’s also kept the piece alive. Classical connoisseurs hold the piece in very low regard as pure music.
They play it because it’s fun and loud and what more appropriate day to play something fun and loud.
I’m all for exposing more of the masses to classical music by any means possible, so this is good by me.
I can think of quite a few patriotic hymns:
Even the Communists have a patriotic hymn:
“It’s also kept the piece alive. Classical connoisseurs hold the piece in very low regard as pure music.”
I know.
And there are many pieces of high priced “fine art” hanging on the walls of galleries and private homes that most people consider junk.
Do we care? No. Do they care what the art experts think? No.
Or, like us technophobes that just love some piece of now obsolete technology that never quite took hold, because it was such a brilliant design, from a technology or engineers viewpoint. It matters only in the history books. We like it; it was brilliant and yet most everyone ignore it, forgot it or never heard of it. No big deal; it’s the way life is.
The church in question was the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, one of the world's largest houses of worship. In 1931, Joseph Stalin ordered it destroyed to make room for a "Palace of the Soviets," which was never built. You can watch a film of its destruction here
After the Soviet Union fell, the cathedral was rebuilt, with modern facilities such as air conditioning, elevators, telecommunication facilities and underground parking. It reopened in 2000.
Bump!
on the wings of gentle zephyrs,
seek thou o tender song
my native country
Its best when accompanied by howitzers.
Our war with Britain was NEVER a Napoleonic war, and there was more to it than just the impressment of seamen. In fact, Brits still get unctuous about how dare we bother them with ANOTHER war when we Americans knew darn well they were already occupied! LOL. IOW, we have to wait until they are unoccupied.
Of course pretty early I learned the piece was about Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow. But I still like it for OUR 1812 purposes, even if in my mind it meshes best with events in 1814.
Hmm. Where do we put the cannon in the arrangement?
Yet the anthem is specifically tailored from exactly the event I best associate with the overture - battle of Baltimore form the “war of 1812”!
I could but never really put the piece together with the Rev.
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