Abstract
This book appears in the series of the Centro Studi Opera Omnia Luigi Boccherini, Music, Criticism and Politics. The editor introduces it as a work that investigates ‘the relationship between music and war from the end of the XVIII century to WWI’ (p. ix). This is to be understood in a broad range of connections: from studies of wind band music, protest songs, and composition for military use, publishing business and its survival during military conflicts, composers and their creative work during wartime, connections between music and power, influences of war on genres such as opéra-comique and singspiel in terms of subject matter, and institutions that contributed to supplying warring sides with specially trained musicians and music.
The editor had a difficult task to bring together 24 chapters, each written by a different author, to form a coherent volume. The task was not made easier by the fact that the books is presented in several languages – English, French, Italian, and German – something that has obvious benefits as well as obvious drawbacks.
In the introduction, the editor states that the premise of the book is to enhance our understanding of nineteenth-century European musical history by describing several phenomena that occurred during wartime. The book is divided into five unequal sections, dealing with the following topics: the Sound of War; Military and Political Music; Publishing and Teaching Music during Wartime; Echos (sic) of War in the Repertoire; and Mourning. The geographical scope of the book encompasses France, Italy, Germany, Ireland, Austria, Spain, Czechoslovakia, and Russia.
For a book that focuses predominantly on the nineteenth century, it is striking that none of the writers mention Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Such a mention would be particularly relevant in the first chapter by Martin Kaltenecker, who explores the actual sounds of war, investigating how war can change the soundscape of a location. It immediately brings to mind the sounds of war described in War and Peace, which would have corroborated the author’s point about soldiers and people living in wartime making war sounds into something more familiar (canons snore or speak, the bullets sing and buzz, and the cannonades are linked to the sound of orchestras).
Generally, it is obvious that all contributors have committed themselves to producing well-researched chapters, with much fascinating material. Among them is Morag Josephine Grant’s chapter, which raises important questions regarding the strategic role of music in warfare, the role of war reporting, and how they contribute to the construction of national identity. David Rowland’s well-researched study shows how the state of music publishing, which was entering into an ever-increasing cooperation and internationalism, was negatively affected by the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. Particularly revealing is his account of Beethoven’s dealings with music publishers during the war period. James Garratt’s chapter on the role of organ music in war is thought provoking. He successfully argues that organ music contributed to strengthening patriotic sentiment, and helped uphold the ideas of heroic sacrifice by focusing on transcendence and transfiguration. Some chapters, however, are less obviously connected to the book’s topic. Nancy November’s contribution looks at the string quartet boom through an examination of publishing catalogues at the turn of the eighteenth century, but this sits somewhat oddly with its explanation of the trade of string quartets in Napoleonic Vienna primarily in commercial terms.
Chapters on individual composers are worth noting, as they contribute to our further understanding of the wartime relationship of music and power. Bella Brover-Lubovsky’s work on Giuseppe Sarti provides an insight not only into his friendship with Prince Potemkin and Catherine the Great, but also shows how important the role of music was to the rulers of Russia, who carried on with musical entertainment and commissions during conflicts. Catherine’s creative side was tied to her desire to promote the flourishing of her empire and increase its military power and to show it in her stage works, for which she desired Sarti’s music because she considered him to be the best composer available to her at the time.
The popularity of military wind band music in Europe dating from the Napoleonic era had far-reaching influences. Later military bands would serve as a training ground, or at least as a support base for such composers as Oscar Straus and Franz Lehár, who came to worldwide fame as operetta composers in the early twentieth century. Patrick O’Connell’s chapter clearly argues for the significance of wind band music in Ireland, which manifested in its migration to home music making. It may be of interest to the reader to know how the military songs were used, with different texts, as subversive anti-British songs, as was the case with the French Revolutionary song ‘Ah ça ira’, adopted as a military march by the West Yorkshire Regiment of the British Army. The author does a fine job of showing the importance of military bands, and their significant influence on the cultural and political life in Ireland during the time of unrest on the cusp of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: from purely military to concert, theatre, folk, and amateur music making.
Wind band music was also an important tool in promoting national identity. The names of Beethoven, Salieri, and Haydn are not often, if at all, associated with their compositions for wind band, and yet each wrote a number of military marches. David Gasche’s chapter includes some useful lists of such works, as well as collections of music for military wind bands dating from the Napoleonic era.
Wartime and the need for patriotic, energizing music has also enabled a different kind of creativity: invention of instruments that are suited to this type of repertoire, and that can be played in spaces other than concert halls. Michaela Freemanová discusses the Czech instrument maker Václav František Červeny and his innovations, which include the building of the first ever bass tuba, and which may have influenced Wagner to use the instrument in his orchestra. This was not the only innovation that is attributed to him: there are the Kaiserinstrumente and Contrabasso ad ancia, still used by the Italian military today.
On the presentation of the book it must be noted that there are a number of inconsistencies that stand out. The first is the title itself, which is given in all related publicity as Music and War in Europe from French Revolution to WWI, and yet ‘in Europe’ is missing from the title on the dust jacket. The editor states in the introduction that this book is composed of 25 chapters, and yet there are 24. Although it is understood that the book is a compilation of selected papers presented at an international conference in Lucca in the autumn of 2014, some chapters are referred to as papers, some as studies, and some as articles.
Among a number of irritating inaccuracies is a regrettable editorial neglect on p. 9: the author describes a pun on the French word son, which means ‘sound’ as well as ‘bran’. But having been translated as ‘brand’, the pun ‘Dans le palais du son on fait de la farine’ does not make sense. A number of similar editorial blemishes would benefit from a keener editorial eye cast over the final version to eliminate discrepancies and inaccuracies.
That said, with worldwide celebrations of the First World War centenary between 2014 and 2018, the appearance of this book is timely, and will be of interest to both scholars and a general readership in providing much interesting and thought-provoking material in relation to music and war.