January 3rd - Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture

Well I'm having a little trouble sleeping so I might as well continue on with the posts to catch up.

Once again here's a song and composer that most people have either hard of, or could recognize when hearing (most likely at Fourth of July recognized by the canons in the finale). Although this piece was somewhat adopted for the American independence holiday (for reasons to be discussed shortly), let's take a look at why it was really written and why it's still important today.

Why's it's so important:

This piece was written in 1880 and was commissioned for a grand opening of a church in Moscow and was written to commemorate Russia's stand against Napoleon at the Battle of Borodino. Because of this piece's historical association, it proved to be a great source of Russian nationalist pride. Beginning in the 1800's with the Romantic movement, many Russian composers began to seek out and compose specifically "Russian" music. The main innovators of this Russian nationalism were Mily Balakirev, Cesar Cui, Modest Mussorgski (we'll talk about him another day), Nikolai Rimski-Korsakov, and Alexander Borodin.

This Russian nationalist style of compositions normally would include Russian folk songs, asymetrical meters, and tried to separate themselves from well-known German Counterpoint.

Well that last bit was a lot to take in... so hear are the Fun Facts:

1. Tchaikovski actually considered this work as rather "loud and noisy" and is known to not have enjoyed this piece as much as some of his others.

2. La Marseillaise along with God Save the Tsar are played throughout the work. However La Marseillaise was just reinstated as the French national anthem a year before Tchaikovski finished the work after being banned by Napoleon in 1795.

3. The piece largely began being associated at the Fourth of July when the Boston Pops played it under Arthur Fielder in 1974 with hopes that adding the canons and fireworks would help ticket sales.

Here's an outstanding performance of the piece by the Berlin Philharmonic under Seiji Ozawa.