Battaglia (music)

A battaglia is a form of renaissance and baroque programme music imitating a battle. The renaissance form is typically in the form of a madrigal for four or more voices where cannons, fanfares, cries, drum rolls, and other noises of a battle are imitated by voices. The baroque form is more often an instrumental depiction of a battle.^[1]

Vocal battaglia works

• Janequin La Guerre or 'La Bataille' - chanson written to commemorate the Battle of Marignano in 1515, first printed in 1529,
• Matthias Werrecore La Battaglia Taliana or Die Schlacht vor Pavia 1544, for 4 voices - after the Battle of Pavia 1525.
• Orazio Vecchi Battaglia d'Amor e Dispetto - an extended madrigal dialogue - allegorical and not related to any battle. But closer to the original battaglia genre than Monteverdi's amor versus guerra, contrasts in that composer's 8th Book of Madrigals.
• Mateo Flecha La Guerra - an ensalada (music) in Spanish
• Claudio Monteverdi Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda (1624)

Instrumental battaglia works

• Andrea Gabrieli Battaglia à 8 per strumenti da fiato
• William Byrd "The Battell", for keyboard
• Annibale Padovano Battaglia à 8 per strumenti da fiato
• Heinrich Biber: Battalia à 10 for solo violin, strings, and continuo

Later battle music not called battaglia

• Franz Christoph Neubauer: Sinfonie 'La Bataille' - Battle of Focșani 1789
• Beethoven: Wellington's Victory - requiring muskets and cannons. To be contrasted with Haydn's tribute Battle of the Nile which does not sonically attempt to depict the battle.
• Tchaikovsky: 1812 Ouverture
• Prokofiev: Battle on the ice from Alexander Nevsky - Battle of Lake Peipus, 1242
• Shostakovich: first movement of Leningrad Symphony, despite Shostakovich's disclaimers^[2]

References

1. Harvard dictionary of music - Page 86 Willi Apel - 1969 "Battaglia [It.]. Name for a composition in which the fanfares, cries, drum rolls, and general commotion of a battle [It. battaglia] are imitated. This was a favorite subject of *program music from the 16th through the 18th centuries. Late 14th-century ..."
2. Robert Cowley, Geoffrey Parker - The Reader's Companion to Military History - Page 390 2001 "In the first movement of his Seventh (Leningrad) Symphony (1941), Dmitri Shostakovich's (1906-1975) musical portrayal of the German invasion of the Soviet Union is obvious, his disclaimer not to have written battle music notwithstanding."