The 1812 Overture

Synopsis

Weather permitting, there’s a good chance you’ll be attending an outdoor symphonic concert tonight that will close with Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, complete with a volley of booming cannon shots, church bells, and dazzling fireworks.

It’s become an American tradition to perform the 1812 Overture on July 4, even though it has nothing to do with the 1776 War of Independence — or America’s War of 1812, for that matter.

No, it’s all down to Arthur Fielder and the Boston Pops.

For years, a wealthy American businessman named David Mugar financed an outdoor Pops concert on Boston’s Esplanade on the Fourth of July. But by the mid-1970s, attendance started to decline, so Mugar suggested that if Fiedler would close the annual concert with the 1812 Overture, people might be lured back by the live cannon fire Tchaikovsky asks for in the piece.

Well, it worked. Outdoor concerts with the 1812 Overture plus cannons quickly became a tradition, and in 1976, 400,000 people attended the Boston Pops’ outdoor Bicentennial Fourth of July concert — setting a Guinness World Record for best-attended classical concert.

And, a year after his death in 2022, a bronze statue of Mugar was unveiled on the Boston Esplanade.

Music Played in Today's Program

Peter Tchaikovsky (1840-1893): 1812 Overture; Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra; Antal Dorati, conductor; Mercury Living Presence 434360

On This Day

Births

• 1694 - French composer and organist, Louis Claude Daquin, in Paris

• 1826 - American song composer Stephen Collins Foster, in Lawrenceville, Pennsylvania

• 1903 - Belgian composer and organist and teacher Flor Peeters, in Thielen

Deaths

• 1623 - English composer William Byrd, 80 (the exact date of his birth is not known) in Stondon, Essex

Premieres

• 1831 - The patriot hymn “America” (to the tune of the British patriotic song “God Save the King/Queen” with new words supplied by Samuel Francis Smith) sung by a children’s choir at a Fourth of July service at the Park Street Church in Boston. This premiere performance is commonly (but incorrectly) listed as 1832.

• 1900 - final version of Sibelius: Symphony No. 1, in Stockholm by the Helsinki Philharmonic on tour, with Robert Kajanus conducting. An earlier version of the symphony had been premiered in Helsinki on April 26, 1899, with the same orchestra conducted by the composer.

• 1923 - R. Vaughan Williams: English Folk Song Suite, in London, by the band of the Royal Military School of Music

• 1964 - Piston: Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra, at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire

• 1983 - David Amram: Honor Song for Sitting Bull for cello and orchestra, by the Long Island Philharmonic, Christopher Keene conducting, and William Da Rosa the soloist

Others

• 1827 - Opening of Niblo’s Gardens, an important 19th century American concert venue, at Broadway and Prince Street in New York City

• 1828 - The U.S. Marine Band first performed Hail to the Chief for a living President at the ground-breaking ceremony for the excavation of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal attended by President John Quincy Adams

• 1986 - Amid fireworks and celebration, the Marine Band performed in New York City for the rededication of the Statue of Liberty, recreating the band’s performance under John Philip Sousa for the original dedication ceremonies 100 years earlier