John Dalmas:

>Weber wrote his cantata "Battle and Victory" (Kampf und Sieg) following
>the Battle of Waterloo as a kind of celebratory piece, where the good
>guys (the English) win out over the bad guys (the French), and the theme
>in question is the ultimate paean for victory (similar to God Save the Czar
>at the end of the 1812 Overture).  If these words were used with the theme
>for the first time in Weber's cantata, then Sam is right.

I exhumed an old LP of this work because even though I haven't heard it
for years, I didn't remember it ending in this way.  The Urania record is
by forces from Leipzig and would have been recorded during the dark days
of the Communist regime.  The notes tactfully point out that references
to anything which might have been seen as politically unfortunate were
removed, including the section to which John refers.  Some excerpts from
what is presumably the same recording are included on a Forlane CD with Abu
Hassan.  Battle and Victory is not, it must be said, one of Weber's better
works.

Richard Pennycuick
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