The 4th and the 1812

The 4th of July has come and gone and that means you have probably gotten your fair share of patriotic music. A good brass section is right up there with hot dogs and sparklers on the must-have list for an Independence Day celebration. Every city or town that can scrape together a band or an orchestra does so on the Fourth of July to accompany their firework celebration. The very image of a marching band leading the parade or a community orchestra playing under a band shell at the end of an open field is distinctly American. (The Music Man, anyone?)

One of the reasons that the marches of John Phillips Sousa, undoubtedly one of America’s most populist composers, became so famous is simply because they could be heard. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that Sousa’s marches don’t hold a roman candle to Rachmaninoff’s concertos when it comes to technical nature, but they are a lot more hum-able. While the high art music of the turn of the century was heard by a wealthy few that could amass in concert halls, the marches of Sousa and his contemporaries were blaring down the streets and parks of America for free or little charge. You could literally hear them a mile away.

Sousa and his marches paved the way for the boisterous marches and brass songs we now hear on the 4th, like Yankee Doodle Dandy, Stars and Stripes Forever, etc. However, you can almost always count on the concert ending with the same song – the 1812 Overture. Now don’t get me wrong, I love the 1812 Overture as much as the next music appreciation blogger, but why the heck has this piece come to be so closely associated with our Independence Day? For one thing, the piece was composed by Tchaikovsky (seen at the right), a composer hailing from a country that for the better part of the 20th century, had quite a few nuclear missiles aimed at us. Although he did visit a few times, I imagine that Tchaikovsky, like many other European artists of the time, thought very little of American art.

As I said, I do like many things about the 1812. Chief among them is the thematic progression of the piece. In brief, Tchaikovsky is musically portraying Napoleon’s failed attempt to take Russia in 1812. The sounds of La Marseillaise (France’s ever-popular national anthem) can clearly be heard intermingled with the melody of The Tsar’s Hymn, just as the Russian and French armies were clashing in battle. At times, the French theme sounds quite triumphant, as it did indeed seem that Napoleon would win the day. At the last second, the Russian artillery (the famous cannons at the end of the Overture) unleashes on the French army as the bitter winter decimates their numbers. The Overture ends with the Russian theme completely overpowering the French theme.

You might notice that America does not enter into that story, although a cursory memory of high school American History might tell you that we were involved in the War of 1812. We were fighting off the British, who were also fighting the French, and thus allied with Russia. In fact, Britain’s army successfully invaded the good ol’ USA in 1812 and burned Washington D.C. to the ground. So, all and all, we’re using a song that celebrates the victory of one of our enemies against us as the center piece of our Independence Day celebration…

And why is this? One reason is that Arthur Fiedler, the famous conductor laureate of the Boston Pops, wasn’t going to let a bit of music history (or the Cold War, for that matter) get in the way of a good show. Since there aren’t too many pieces out there that call for a percussion section to be augmented with howitzers, he added the piece to The Boston Pops’ Fourth of July line-up in the 1970’s. As the Boston Pops is the country’s premiere pops orchestra, many other bands and orchestras followed their lead. (For more history and discussion on this, here is a great article from Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

Another reason might be that as a country, we just aren’t secure with ourselves yet, musically. Our musical tradition is not nearly as old or as deep as many of the other western powers. Austria’s Radetzky March was written in 1848, La Marseillaise of France is from 1792, and Great Britain’s Rule, Britannia! dates to 1740. Stars and Stripes Forever was premiered in 1896, and many of the other pieces that are so closely associated with America’s “classical” cannon are even more recent, as they are rooted in jazz, show tunes, or even movie music. To say that the US needs a deeper appreciation of its own classical contributions is a tall order, and one that I have already made, so I’ll go down the easier path and say that maybe time will work this one out. Perhaps in my older days I’ll see more 4th of July concerts where Rhapsody in Blue is the headliner.