Othon Joseph Vandenbroek
(1758-1832)
Grave – Allegro assai
Adagio
Presto assai
One of the authors of that still informative series of books The Record Guide (1951-56) recalled that when he was an undergraduate, he and his friends used to describe as ‘Dittersdorf’ that enjoyable game which consists of playing something unfamiliar on the piano or gramophone, and making the others guess the composer. This was because Dittersdorf’s string quartets could be described as brilliant imitations of those by his friend and contemporary Joseph Haydn.
This symphony has been advertised for tonight’s concert as being by Dittersdorf, and its only recording (by Concerto Köln) is under his name. But someone has guessed wrongly. Its actual composer was Othon Joseph Vandenbroek, a Flemish-born horn player and composer who made his career in Paris. Many pieces of music of the late 18th century have been mis-attributed. We may speculate that the composer’s name didn’t appear on the orchestral parts. A curious fact about Vandenbroek is that although his symphonies were premiered in Paris, there are no copies of most of them in libraries there. The majority, including this one, are in the library of the Princely house of Thurn and Taxis in Regensburg. Dittersdorf was active a composer at the time this symphony is supposed to have been composed (1795 or 1797), and composed programmatic symphonies (notably those based on Ovid’s Metamorphoses), so it was not unreasonable to suppose that one of his 120 symphonies could have been composed with this Parisian subject, the symbol of the major historical event of the era, the French Revolution. And that this music by an Austrian composer should have made its way into a German collection.
For this is a programmatic symphony, or so the title suggests. That is as far as it goes: there is no clue to what the music represents. The title page says, ‘La Prise de la Bastille – Symphonie à grand orchestre dédiée à la Nation. Composée par Othon Vandenbroek, Cor de l’Opéra Nationale’. The Bastille (the word means a fortified place) was originally built in the 14th century at the eastern entry to medieval Paris. In the 17th century Cardinal Richelieu converted it into a state prison for the upper class. The use of the lettre de cachet (an arbitrary warrant of arrest with the royal seal) made the Bastille one of the most hated symbols of royal despotism. Among the famous prisoners in the 18th century were Voltaire, the swindler Cagliostro, and the Marquis de Sade. When Louis XVI took action to overturn the actions of the National Assembly in June 1789, a popular uprising stormed several prisons, and the weapons of the Royal armed forces were captured. The gunpowder, however, was transferred to the Bastille. The uprising moved to the fortress, whose governor ordered his veterans and the Swiss guards to fire on the people. At first the siege by citizens armed mainly with pikes, axes and knives was an unequal combat, but soldiers of the National Guard began to join the crowd, and when they brought up cannon, the Bastille surrendered and opened its doors. The conquerors found only seven prisoners to liberate. Immediately after the victory, it was decided to demolish the fortress, and its stones were sold as souvenirs. The events of July 14 1789, the fall of a bastion of despotism, were hailed as a milestone of liberation, and the date is celebrated as the French national day.
Vandenbroek lived in Paris through the French Revolution, which was reflected in his music. His ‘Festival of the Supreme Being’, of 1794, is a set of ‘patriotic scenes mixed with songs, pantomimes, and danses’. His instrumental music includes symphonies, symphonies concertantes, and concertos and other works for his main instrument, the French horn. ‘La Prise de la Bastille’ begins with a slow introduction in C minor, which could be influenced by Haydn’s symphonies (Vandenbroek drew on music by Haydn and Pleyel in a stage work of 1793). This sombre opening could be heard as the grimness of the prison and the gloom of its inmates. In the Allegro which follows, there are build-ups to stormy and martial confrontations, with a retrospective glance at the opening. The horn fanfare in the middle section may well allude to the loyal Royal defenders, as many of the other themes have a cheerful, popular cast, and after several noisy clashes of different kinds of material, the two elements are blended by the end. Whether there are references to popular songs of the time in this symphony is uncertain, but possible.
The slow movement, which functions as a comparatively brief link to the finale, is elegiac, which fancy suggests may be a reflection on the 97 killed and 70 wounded among the assailants of the Bastille. The last movement begins with a gigantic crescendo dealing with martial matters and culminating in cheerful music, repeatedly punctuated by portentous outbursts – liberty celebrated through victory in conflict?
The attribution to Dittersdorf may be a tribute to the piece’s symphonic substance. Now that its true authorship is known, it is easy to relate it not only to the influence of Haydn and his Austrian contemporaries in France, but even more to the characteristic French taste for representational music, and to French composers’ use of the orchestra’s capacity for dynamics and colour to suggest weighty matters of human destiny and freedom, a pre-Romanticism which was to influence Beethoven so much, through Cherubini and Méhul, in the composition of Fidelio, whose programmatic Leonore Overtures are prefigured here.
First published for a concert in the Sydney Symphony Orchestra Mozart in the City series, 2003.