Unknown Ruins

It's one of those familiar little snippets of classical music that many music lovers can hum along when they hear it being played.  It's been featured in TV shows and movies, played in the background of commercials, and often heard on radio.  You probably recognize it too -- the "Turkish March".  Yes, that Turkish March. 

When I was a little boy, we had a book of simplified arrangements of Beethoven on our piano, and so I knew from an early age that the March was from a bigger piece called The Ruins of Athens, and of course I also knew who had written it!

In our high school library, I found a recording of the complete incidental music to The Ruins of Athens, and it's been a favoured item in my collection ever since.  But this definitely qualifies as a rare bird.

In the nineteenth century, plays were often presented in theatres that had a full orchestra, and so music to go along with those plays was an important angle of the composing business.  Think of Mendelssohn's A Midsummer Night's Dream as perhaps the best-known example.  Despite the promising title, The Ruins of Athens is definitely not in the same theatrical league.  As a theatre piece, it could best perhaps be described as a "pageant" rather than a play. 

My recording included in the program notes a brief synopsis of the action.  After being condemned to sleep for a thousand years by Zeus, Athene awakens and returns to Athens, her ancient home.  There, she finds the ancient city in ruins and the Turks in occupation.  Dismayed, she journeys instead to Pest (Hungary's capital), where she calls upon the aid of the muses Melpomene and Thalia (the Muses of tragedy and of comedy and pastoral poetry respectively).  The people build an altar with statues of the muses on it and invoke the might of Zeus.  A thunderclap is heard and a third statue appears between the other two, a statue of the Emperor of Hungary.  General rejoicings end the piece.

Are your eyes rolling?  Mine are!

This kind of patriotic pageantry appealed on many levels.  The piece was written by August von Kotzebue for the opening of a splendid new theatre in Pest.  The opportunity for spectacular new sets and costumes was the obvious corollary of such an occasion.  If the Emperor wasn't a patron of either the theatre or the author, I'd be very surprised because this kind of kitschy material was typical of compliments paid by an author to a patron.  The "Athens" angle -- bringing in the glories of the ancient world -- was also valuable to supply the opportunity for Turkish exotica in settings, costumes and music.  Since the Ottoman Empire had been knocking at the gates of Vienna and Pest not too many years earlier, this was a timely and topical feature, another opportunity to contrast the supposed "barbarism" of the Ottomans with the "civilized" Europeans.

Beethoven did compose a lot of what might politely be termed "hack work", like this, and for the usual reason: it paid well.  But Beethoven was a great artist and his artistic greatness keeps on sneaking in even when the motivating cause is money.  The Ruins of Athens is no exception.

The score opens with an overture which is rather lightweight, but at least has the virtue of being well-constructed and not using any of the musical material still to come in the play itself.  Believe it or not, von Kotzebue's play actually got staged a second time in Vienna, at the opening of a new theatre 10 years later.  For that occasion, Beethoven composed a new, and much more solemn and powerful overture which was published separately as The Consecration of the House.  (You can read about that work here:  A Relatively Rare Pair of Beethovens)

The incidental movements (apart from the famous Turkish March and one short entr'acte) are all sung, and this may be a big part of the reason why this music has not been better known.  The first is a chorus of invocation, sung to awaken Athene after her long sleep.  This is followed by a masterly duet of a Greek man and a Greek girl, bemoaning their fate as slaves of the Turks.  This is a deeply felt and moving lament, with the repeated cries of "Ah!" eventually rising to a climactic repetition of "What has befallen you, my poor fatherland?"

With the next movement the Turks enter, and so does the Turkish music.  At least, so does what was thought  to be Turkish music in central Europe, which actually just consists of the repeated use of a bass drum, cymbal, and triangle all beating out the same rhythmic pattern.  Think of Mozart's Abduction From the Seraglio and you'll know exactly what I mean.  These instrumental sounds usher in a Chorus of Dervishes which is another powerful conception, the music plainly depicting the procession entering, crossing the stage, and disappearing on the other side.  The violins are tasked with obsessive triplets repeated at high speed throughout the piece, while the men's voices raise their triumphant cries to fortissimo.  What gives this movement such unexpected distinction is the subtle use of key changes at two key points.

Following this chorus you get the famous Turkish March.  No analysis required!

There follow several less distinguished vocal movements, and then comes a solemn and stirring aria for the High Priest (bass solo) which leads into the moment when the statue of the Emperor appears and the subsequent chorus of thanks to Zeus.  This again is a movement of real musical power, leading to a conclusion of genuine grandeur.  It always seems to me that this point, musically, feels like the ending.  But there is one more movement, a final chorus of celebration, and with this we are (sadly) back again in Potboiler-Land, right to the final brief coda which feels like it was stuck on as an afterthought.

But no matter.  The Ruins of Athens is certainly not out of Beethoven's top drawer as a whole, but the duet, the Chorus of Dervishes, and the High Priest's aria and subsequent chorus all deserve to be heard more often.  Sadly, recordings are as thin on the ground as hen's teeth.  The one I have is an old DGG LP conducted by the young Bernhard Klee, which probably dates in original release from around 1960 (that information isn't given on the reissue jacket).  In 1989, Dennis Russell Davies recorded the music for EMI with the Orchestra of St. Luke's in New York, and copies of that one may still be available.  As far as I know, those are the only recordings of the complete music ever made.