Compositions descriptive of battles form a minor but distinctive category of 16th-century music, both vocal and instrumental, with a sporadic continuation, mainly instrumental, down to the early 19th century. The Italian term ‘battaglia’ has sometimes been applied to the whole of this repertory, but the composers themselves generally used titles in their own languages (Fr. guerre, bataille; Ger. Schlacht; Sp. batalla). This article deals with musical representations of battles, rather than the music that might have accompanied actual battles (for which see Military calls). Battle-pieces do, however, incorporate fragments of military music from time to time, such as the ‘tan-ta-ra, tan-ta-ra’ motif in Byrd's keyboard work The Battle; the words are written in the manuscript (My Ladye Nevells Booke, 1591) just before ‘the battels be joyned’.
Some of the typical devices of battle music – rallying-cries, imitations of fanfares – are anticipated in 14th-century cacce (see HAM, i, no.52), and in chansons such as the four-part A l'arme, a l'arme by Grimace and the three-part Alla bataglia in the Pixérécourt Chansonnier (F-Pn fr.15123). Isaac's four-part A la battaglia (likely to have been performed in 1485) makes modest use of ostinato figures and has several alternations of duple and triple time (a regular feature later). It lacks words in its only complete source but elsewhere is associated with a text exhorting the soldiers of Florence to take arms against the Genoese.
The most famous and influential of 16th-century battle-pieces was Janequin's four-part chanson La guerre, written to commemorate the Battle of Marignano (1515), at which François I secured a victory over Swiss mercenaries employed by Duke Ercole Sforza of Milan. First published by Attaingnant in 1528, it was frequently reprinted, once (by Susato in 1545) with an optional fifth voice added by Verdelot. Janequin's own five-part version of the work (1555) is a substantial revision. The prima pars, preliminary to the battle itself, is set in fairly straightforward chanson style; the longer secunda pars is a vivid portrayal of the course of the battle, with a largely onomatopoeic text, triadic motifs, and lively rhythms set against a relatively static harmonic background. La guerre depended for much of its effect upon the text; nevertheless, Francesco Canova da Milano made a lute arrangement of the whole work (1536 and many reprints). No doubt more amenable to instrumentalists was a ‘reduced version’ in the form of a pavan of four strains, the first three being derived from the prima pars; like its model this enjoyed long popularity. What is perhaps the earliest version, for four-part consort, was printed in Jacques Moderne's Musicque de joye (c1544). In Hans Neusidler's Ein new künstlich Lautten Buch (1544) the pavan is entitled Sula bataglia and the fourth strain is separately labelled ‘Der hupff auff’ (ed. in DTÖ, xxxvii, Jg.xviii/2, 1911/R, p.56). At Castell'Arquato is a keyboard arrangement of the pavan from c1600, followed by a saltarello and La tedeschina, the latter based on a single chord (like the lute piece La guerre in Attaingnant's Introduction of 1529).
One of many pieces written in imitation of the chanson La guerre is La bataglia taliana by Matthias Hermann Werrecore, a riposte to Janequin's piece in that it describes a victory of Francesco Sforza, most probably the Battle of Pavia (1525), at which François I was taken prisoner. Werrecore set his piece a 4 and in the same F Ionian mode as Janequin and, like him, made extensive use of onomatopoeic syllables. The distinctive musical motif at the start of Janequin's secunda pars, to the words ‘Fan frere le le lan fan fan’, is quoted within the first of Werrecore's three partes. Whereas La guerre had a fragment of German at the end (1528 version: ‘toute frelore bigot’ – all is lost, by God), La bataglia taliana has text in Italian, French, German and Spanish. The work was first published in Vienna in 1544 (RISM 154419) and reprinted in Venice in 1549 and 1552 with considerable variant readings. It seems that Neusidler lost little time in making his lute arrangement (154423: ed. in DTÖ, xxxvii, p.46).
The influence of La guerre (both text and music) is still apparent in Andrea Gabrieli's eight-part madrigal Sento un rumor/Alla battaglia, published posthumously in 1587 (RRMR, li, 1984, nos.10–11). The battle concerned (if there was one) cannot be identified from the text. Gabrieli and Annibale Padovano also each wrote an Aria della battaglia for wind instruments in eight parts, published in Dialoghi musicali (159011). Banchieri's La battaglia (in his Canzoni alla francese, 1596; ed. in RRMR, xx, 1975) is once again unspecific as to the event. It is in a single section, within which the same music (with the two four-part choirs reversed) is used to portray trumpets (to the syllables ‘Ta ra ra tun ta ra’) and drums (‘Tra pa ta pa ta pa’). According to the title-page, the music could be either sung or played.
Janequin appears to have been the starting-point too for the substantial repertory of keyboard battle-pieces by 17th-century Spanish and Portuguese composers. Among the earliest examples, Correa de Arauxo's Tiento de 6o tono (MME, vi, 1948, no.23; said to be based on the first part of a batalla by Morales) and two Batallas del 6o tono by José Ximénez (CEKM, xxxi, 1975, nos.14–15) all adopt Janequin's mode and reflect his opening gesture. Later examples by Cabanilles and others were no doubt intended to exploit the trumpets en chamade and echo effects of the Iberian organ, but they remain essentially grounded in Renaissance techniques.
Byrd's The Battle owes no particular debt to Janequin; the earliest English example of the genre, it still appears in sources of the mid-17th century. Nevertheless, the item that follows it in the Nevell book, The Barley Break, with its characteristic battle-piece scenario (the marshalling of forces, the contest, the retreat from the field) is an altogether more engaging work. Other examples for virginals are the strange A Battle, and No Battle attributed to Bull and The Batell of Pavie set by William Kinloch (GB-En 9447); the latter betrays only the most tenuous links with La bataglia taliana. English lute sources contain a number of battle-pieces, including one for two lutes (in GB-Lbl Eg.2046).
Battle music of the Baroque period is only occasionally linked to recent events. Rather, composers cultivated the genre for its expressive potential, or for dramatic or allegorical purposes. The allegorical usage, already seen in Vecchi's ten-part vocal Battaglia d'amor e dispetto of 1587, is evident in Monteverdi's Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda (1624) and the other canti guerrieri of his eighth book of madrigals (1638). The stile concitato developed by Monteverdi proved a valuable resource in opera and in instrumental compositions such as Biber's Battalia of 1673 for strings in nine parts and continuo. This employs special effects including rebounding pizzicato in the double basses as well as the expected rapid note repetitions; the suite ends on a subdued note with the descending semitones of Lamento der vernundten Musquetirer. A comparable English work (referring to an actual event) is Jenkins's Newark Siege (MB, xxvi, 1969, 2/1975, no.23), the minor-key ending reflecting the royalist composer's view of the outcome. Battle music was quite often used as religious allegory. Banchieri, in L'organo suonarino (1605), recommended the performance of a battaglia at Easter to symbolize Christ's victory over death; and, where his text called for it, Bach drew on the conventions of battle music, most wonderfully perhaps in the St John Passion aria ‘Es ist vollbracht’, at the words ‘Der Held aus Juda siegt mit Macht’.
A final spate of battle-pieces describing recent events occurred between about 1780 and 1815. Examples are František Kocžwara’s The Battle of Prague, a sonata for piano or harpsichord with optional violin, cello and drums (c1788), and J.B. Vanhal's programmatic keyboard sonata Le combat naval de Trafalgar et la mort de Nelson (c1806). Other conflicts of the Napoleonic era are depicted in Beethoven's Wellingtons Sieg, oder Die Schlacht bei Vittoria (op.91, 1813); in Peter Winter's Schlachtsymphonie with chorus and J.F. Reichardt's Schlachtsymphonie (both 1814); and Weber's cantata Kampf und Sieg (1815), celebrating the Battle of Waterloo. But Beethoven's piece caused some embarrassment even among his own circle, and more familiar to modern listeners are the trumpets and drums whose use underlines the prayer for peace in his Mass in D. A musical battle from the Romantic period is Liszt's symphonic poem Hunnenschlacht (1857), inspired not directly by the event (which supposedly took place in the year 451) but by a painting by Wilhelm Kaulbach. As far as battle music is concerned, the 20th century has lost its naivety, and unquestioning portrayals in music of military conquests are hardly to be expected. Kodály's Háry János suite (1927) includes a movement entitled ‘The Battle and Defeat of Napoleon’ in which march tunes and trumpet calls are treated in a spirit of caricature. On another plane are the unforgettable evocations of battle sounds in Britten's War Requiem (1961), the true nature of what they represent being starkly revealed in the poems of Wilfred Owen.
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MGG2 (‘Battaglia’; W. Braun)
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M. Brenet: ‘Essai sur les origines de la musique descriptive’, RMI, xiv (1907), 725–51; xv (1908), 457–87
M.E. Sutton: A Study of the 17th-Century Iberian Organ Batalla: Historical Development, Musical Characteristics, and Performance Considerations (diss., U. of Kansas, 1975)
O.W. Neighbour: The Consort and Keyboard Music of William Byrd (London, 1978)
T.J. McGee: ‘“Alla battaglia”: Music and Ceremony in Fifteenth-Century Florence’, JAMS, xxxvi (1983), 287–302
K. Schulin: Musikalische Schlachtgemälde in der Zeit von 1756–1815 (Tutzing, 1986)
D. Nutter: Preface to Orazio Vecchi: Battaglia and Mascherata, RRMR, lxxii (1987)
H.C. Slim: ‘Commentary to Keyboard Music at Castell' Arqunto’, CEKM, xxxvii (1991)
A. Silbiger, ed.: Keyboard Music before 1700 (New York, 1995)
ALAN BROWN