Wellington's Victory

The piece was first performed in Vienna on 8 December 1813 at a concert to benefit Austrian and Bavarian soldiers wounded at the Battle of Hanau, with Beethoven conducting.

Musicologist Frédéric Döhl described performances of this work as "not like an evening at the Berlin Philharmonie, but rather like a modern-day rock concert".

The full orchestration calls for two flutes, a piccolo, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, six trumpets, three trombones, timpani, a large percussion battery (including muskets and other artillery sound effects), and a usual string section of violins I and II, violas, cellos, and double basses.

The first part is programme music describing two approaching opposing armies and contains extended passages depicting scenes of battle.

This is followed by the re-exposition of "God Save the King", now in the main key (D major) and adopting the pace of a "Tempo di menuetto moderato".

Again the final cadence (E) is avoided and replaced by successive repetition of motif D, this time leading to a coda in imitative style.

Mälzel, known today primarily for patenting the metronome, convinced Beethoven to write a short piece commemorating Wellington's victory for his invention, the panharmonicon.

Many critics lump it into a category of so-called "battle pieces", along with Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture and Liszt's Hunnenschlacht (Battle of the Huns): Charles Rosen wrote that "Beethoven's contribution lacks the serious pretentiousness or the incorporation of ideology of Felix Mendelssohn's Reformation Symphony, or of Hector Berlioz's Symphonie funèbre et triomphale, but it is only the less interesting for its modesty.