Waterloo Festival, June 2015

[Richard Tarleton]

On the night [Major Henry] Percy arrived with the Waterloo Dispatch, Sir Edwin Sandys, director of music at Vauxhall, raised his baton and the band struck up with a Handel aria from Judas Maccabeus, dedicated in 1747 to George ll's son William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, known as Butcher Cumberland after his brutal suppression of the Jacobite rising the previous year. Subsequently used as an anthem to any victorious commander, after 18 June 1815 it would be inextricably identified with the Duke of Wellington:

See the conquering he-he-he-he-hero comes
Sa-a-a-ound the trumpets,bea-ea-eat the drums."

from Paul O'Keeffe, Waterloo - The Aftermath, Penguin Random House, 2014.

In the Bondarchuk film, the band strikes up See the Conquering Hero upon the arrival of Wellington (Christopher Plummer) at the Duchess of Richmond's Ball on 15 July, but this may be filmic license along with a lot else in that great film! But clearly no Waterloo concert would be complete without it.

[Flosshilde]

Perhaps this thread should be re-titled 'Not the Battle of Waterloo Festival'

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Perhaps this thread should be re-titled 'Not the Battle of Waterloo Festival'

No, no, no, no, no, no.


I agree.

[Dave2002]

Just to re-inforce that the Festival is not commemorating the battle - the railway station doesn't either, but was named after the nearby Waterloo Bridge, which was called the Strand Bridge between its design in1809-10 and opening in 1817. So possibly the Kinks' Waterloo Sunset would be more appropriate music for the Festival than Beethoven's Wellington's Victory, which isn't about the Battle of Waterloo at all (as has been pointed out several times already - although I have to admit that I thought it was until I read this thread )

But whatever the bridge used to be called, it was apparently renamed Waterloo Bridge in commemoration of the battle.
I didn't realise that the current bridge is actually only about 70 years old, having been rebuilt in the 1940s and completed in 1945 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterloo_Bridge

[Roehre]

I was wondering, surely there's some work that was written in 1815 or perhaps The Battle of Waterloo or even Beethoven's Battle Symphony?

See my msg #15

The Dutch composer Wilms wrote a De Slag bij Waterloo op.43 in 1815.
Waterloo and present-day Belgium were part of the Kingdom of the United Netherlands (1813/1815-1830 de facto/1840 de jure)

Apart from that:
von Weber's Kampf und Sieg op.44/J.190
Beethoven's Der glorreiche Augenblick op.136
Spohr: Notturno für Harmonie- und Janitscharenmusik,

ofcourse there are many other -not napoleonic war related- works, like a host of Schubert and other Beethoven (Sonatas op.102, An de ferne Geliebte op.98 e.g.) next to Weber, Cherubini, Rossini, et al.

[Roehre]

But whatever the bridge used to be called, it was apparently renamed Waterloo Bridge in commemoration of the battle.
I didn't realise that the current bridge is actually only about 70 years old, having been rebuilt in the 1940s and completed in 1945 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterloo_Bridge

Which is a completely story for the Waterloo bridge in Betws-y-Coed, where there will be some nice celebrations coming week, and which was actually built in 1815 (and part of the A5, like the London one)