William Tell Overture
Encyclopedia
The William Tell Overture is the instrumental introduction
to the opera
Guillaume Tell (in English, William Tell
) by Gioachino Rossini. William Tell premiered in 1829 and was the last of Rossini's 39 operas, after which he went into semi-retirement, although he continued to compose cantatas, sacred music and secular vocal music. The overture is in four parts, each following the next without pause. There has been repeated use (and sometimes parody) of parts of this overture in both classical music and popular media, most famously as the theme music
for the Lone Ranger
radio and television shows. Franz Liszt
prepared a piano
transcription of the overture in 1838 (S.552) which became a staple of his concert repertoire. There are also transcriptions by other composers, including versions by Louis Gottschalk
for two and four pianos and a duet for piano and violin.
, a flute
, two oboes
(first or second oboe doubles a cor anglais
), two clarinets
in A, two bassoons
, four horns
in G and E, two trumpets
in E, three trombones
, timpani
, triangle
, bass drum
and cymbals
, and strings
.
, the setting of the opera. It was described by Berlioz (who usually loathed Rossini's works) as "a symphony in four parts", but unlike a symphony
with its discrete movement
s, the overture's parts transition from one to the next without any break.
Prelude, Dawn
The Prelude is a slow passage in E major
, scored for five solo cello
s accompanied by double bass
es. It begins with a solo cello which is in turn 'answered' by the remaining cellos and the double basses. An impending storm is hinted at by two very quiet timpani rolls resembling distant thunder. The section ends with a very high sustained note played by the first cello.
Storm
This dynamic section in E minor
is played by the full orchestra. It begins with the violins and viola
s. Their phrases are punctuated by short wind instrument interventions of three notes each, first by the piccolo, flute and oboes, then by the clarinets and bassoons. The storm breaks out in full with the entrance of the horns, trumpets, trombones, and bass drum. The volume and number of instruments gradually decreases as the storm subsides. The section ends with the flute playing alone.
Ranz des Vaches
This pastorale
section in G major
signifying the calm after the storm begins with a Ranz des Vaches
or "Call to the Cows", featuring the cor anglais (English horn). The horn then plays in alternating phrases with the flute, culminating in a duet with the triangle accompanying them in the background. This segment is often used in animated cartoon
s to signify daybreak, most notably in Walt Disney
's The Old Mill
.
Finale
The Finale (in E major like the Prelude), "March of the Swiss Soldiers" is an ultra-dynamic "cavalry charge" galop
heralded by trumpets and played by the full orchestra. This segment is often used in popular media to denote galloping horses, a race, or a hero riding to the rescue, and it became the Lone Ranger theme music. It is also quoted by Dmitri Shostakovich
in the first movement of his Symphony No. 15
.
s in the years during which they dominated the American musical landscape", the overture features prominently in Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse
cartoon, The Band Concert
. It has also been used in cartoons parodying classical music (e.g. Bugs Bunny's Overtures to Disaster
in which the overture's finale is performed by Daffy Duck
and Porky Pig
) or Western
s (e.g. Bugs Bunny Rides Again
).
One of the most frequently used pieces of classical music in American advertising, the overture (especially its finale) appears in numerous ads, with psychologist Joan Meyers-Levy suggesting that it is particularly suitable for those targetting male consumers. It was used in a hip-hop version by DJ Shadow
to accompany the 2001 "Defy Convention" advertisement campaign for Reebok
athletic shoes, in an electronic version for a 2008 Honda Civic
campaign and the video game Catherine
.
Overture
Overture in music is the term originally applied to the instrumental introduction to an opera...
to the opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
Guillaume Tell (in English, William Tell
William Tell (opera)
Guillaume Tell is an opera in four acts by Gioachino Rossini to a French libretto by Etienne de Jouy and Hippolyte Bis, based on Friedrich Schiller's play Wilhelm Tell. Based on the legend of William Tell, this opera was Rossini's last, even though the composer lived for nearly forty more years...
) by Gioachino Rossini. William Tell premiered in 1829 and was the last of Rossini's 39 operas, after which he went into semi-retirement, although he continued to compose cantatas, sacred music and secular vocal music. The overture is in four parts, each following the next without pause. There has been repeated use (and sometimes parody) of parts of this overture in both classical music and popular media, most famously as the theme music
Theme music
Theme music is a piece that is often written specifically for a radio program, television program, video game or movie, and usually played during the title sequence and/or end credits...
for the Lone Ranger
The Lone Ranger
The Lone Ranger is a fictional masked Texas Ranger who, with his Native American companion Tonto, fights injustice in the American Old West. The character has become an enduring icon of American culture....
radio and television shows. Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt ; ), was a 19th-century Hungarian composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher.Liszt became renowned in Europe during the nineteenth century for his virtuosic skill as a pianist. He was said by his contemporaries to have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age...
prepared a piano
Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...
transcription of the overture in 1838 (S.552) which became a staple of his concert repertoire. There are also transcriptions by other composers, including versions by Louis Gottschalk
Louis Moreau Gottschalk
Louis Moreau Gottschalk was an American composer and pianist, best known as a virtuoso performer of his own romantic piano works...
for two and four pianos and a duet for piano and violin.
Instrumentation
The overture is scored for: a piccoloPiccolo
The piccolo is a half-size flute, and a member of the woodwind family of musical instruments. The piccolo has the same fingerings as its larger sibling, the standard transverse flute, but the sound it produces is an octave higher than written...
, a flute
Western concert flute
The Western concert flute is a transverse woodwind instrument made of metal or wood. It is the most common variant of the flute. A musician who plays the flute is called a flautist, flutist, or flute player....
, two oboes
Oboe
The oboe is a double reed musical instrument of the woodwind family. In English, prior to 1770, the instrument was called "hautbois" , "hoboy", or "French hoboy". The spelling "oboe" was adopted into English ca...
(first or second oboe doubles a cor anglais
Cor anglais
The cor anglais , or English horn , is a double-reed woodwind instrument in the oboe family....
), two clarinets
Clarinet
The clarinet is a musical instrument of woodwind type. The name derives from adding the suffix -et to the Italian word clarino , as the first clarinets had a strident tone similar to that of a trumpet. The instrument has an approximately cylindrical bore, and uses a single reed...
in A, two bassoons
Bassoon
The bassoon is a woodwind instrument in the double reed family that typically plays music written in the bass and tenor registers, and occasionally higher. Appearing in its modern form in the 19th century, the bassoon figures prominently in orchestral, concert band and chamber music literature...
, four horns
Horn (instrument)
The horn is a brass instrument consisting of about of tubing wrapped into a coil with a flared bell. A musician who plays the horn is called a horn player ....
in G and E, two trumpets
Trumpet
The trumpet is the musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments, dating back to at least 1500 BCE. They are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air...
in E, three trombones
Trombone
The trombone is a musical instrument in the brass family. Like all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player’s vibrating lips cause the air column inside the instrument to vibrate...
, timpani
Timpani
Timpani, or kettledrums, are musical instruments in the percussion family. A type of drum, they consist of a skin called a head stretched over a large bowl traditionally made of copper. They are played by striking the head with a specialized drum stick called a timpani stick or timpani mallet...
, triangle
Triangle (instrument)
The triangle is an idiophone type of musical instrument in the percussion family. It is a bar of metal, usually steel but sometimes other metals like beryllium copper, bent into a triangle shape. The instrument is usually held by a loop of some form of thread or wire at the top curve...
, bass drum
Bass drum
Bass drums are percussion instruments that can vary in size and are used in several musical genres. Three major types of bass drums can be distinguished. The type usually seen or heard in orchestral, ensemble or concert band music is the orchestral, or concert bass drum . It is the largest drum of...
and cymbals
Cymbal
Cymbals are a common percussion instrument. Cymbals consist of thin, normally round plates of various alloys; see cymbal making for a discussion of their manufacture. The greater majority of cymbals are of indefinite pitch, although small disc-shaped cymbals based on ancient designs sound a...
, and strings
String section
The string section is the largest body of the standard orchestra and consists of bowed string instruments of the violin family.It normally comprises five sections: the first violins, the second violins, the violas, the cellos, and the double basses...
.
Structure
The overture, which lasts for approximately 12 minutes, paints a musical picture of life in the Swiss AlpsSwiss Alps
The Swiss Alps are the portion of the Alps mountain range that lies within Switzerland. Because of their central position within the entire Alpine range, they are also known as the Central Alps....
, the setting of the opera. It was described by Berlioz (who usually loathed Rossini's works) as "a symphony in four parts", but unlike a symphony
Symphony
A symphony is an extended musical composition in Western classical music, scored almost always for orchestra. A symphony usually contains at least one movement or episode composed according to the sonata principle...
with its discrete movement
Movement (music)
A movement is a self-contained part of a musical composition or musical form. While individual or selected movements from a composition are sometimes performed separately, a performance of the complete work requires all the movements to be performed in succession...
s, the overture's parts transition from one to the next without any break.
Prelude, Dawn
The Prelude is a slow passage in E major
E major
E major is a major scale based on E, with the pitches E, F, G, A, B, C, and D. Its key signature has four sharps .Its relative minor is C-sharp minor, and its parallel minor is E minor....
, scored for five solo cello
Cello
The cello is a bowed string instrument with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is a member of the violin family of musical instruments, which also includes the violin, viola, and double bass. Old forms of the instrument in the Baroque era are baryton and viol .A person who plays a cello is...
s accompanied by double bass
Double bass
The double bass, also called the string bass, upright bass, standup bass or contrabass, is the largest and lowest-pitched bowed string instrument in the modern symphony orchestra, with strings usually tuned to E1, A1, D2 and G2...
es. It begins with a solo cello which is in turn 'answered' by the remaining cellos and the double basses. An impending storm is hinted at by two very quiet timpani rolls resembling distant thunder. The section ends with a very high sustained note played by the first cello.
Storm
This dynamic section in E minor
E minor
E minor is a minor scale based on the note E. The E natural minor scale consists of the pitches E, F, G, A, B, C, and D. The E harmonic minor scale contains the natural 7, D, rather than the flatted 7, D – to align with the major dominant chord, B7 .Its key signature has one sharp, F .Its...
is played by the full orchestra. It begins with the violins and viola
Viola
The viola is a bowed string instrument. It is the middle voice of the violin family, between the violin and the cello.- Form :The viola is similar in material and construction to the violin. A full-size viola's body is between and longer than the body of a full-size violin , with an average...
s. Their phrases are punctuated by short wind instrument interventions of three notes each, first by the piccolo, flute and oboes, then by the clarinets and bassoons. The storm breaks out in full with the entrance of the horns, trumpets, trombones, and bass drum. The volume and number of instruments gradually decreases as the storm subsides. The section ends with the flute playing alone.
Ranz des Vaches
This pastorale
Pastorale
For Beethoven's Pastoral symphony, see Symphony No. 6 Pastorale refers to something of a pastoral nature in music, whether in form or in mood....
section in G major
G major
G major is a major scale based on G, with the pitches G, A, B, C, D, E, and F. Its key signature has one sharp, F; in treble-clef key signatures, the sharp-symbol for F is usually placed on the first line from the top, though in some Baroque music it is placed on the first space from the bottom...
signifying the calm after the storm begins with a Ranz des Vaches
Ranz des Vaches
A Ranz des Vaches or Kuhreihen is a simple melody traditionally played on the horn by the Swiss Alpine herdsmen as they drove their cattle to or from the pasture...
or "Call to the Cows", featuring the cor anglais (English horn). The horn then plays in alternating phrases with the flute, culminating in a duet with the triangle accompanying them in the background. This segment is often used in animated cartoon
Animated cartoon
An animated cartoon is a short, hand-drawn film for the cinema, television or computer screen, featuring some kind of story or plot...
s to signify daybreak, most notably in Walt Disney
Walt Disney
Walter Elias "Walt" Disney was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, entertainer, international icon, and philanthropist, well-known for his influence in the field of entertainment during the 20th century. Along with his brother Roy O...
's The Old Mill
The Old Mill
The Old Mill is a 1937 Silly Symphonies cartoon produced by Walt Disney, directed by Wilfred Jackson, scored by Leigh Harline, and released to theatres by RKO Radio Pictures on November 5, 1937...
.
Finale
The Finale (in E major like the Prelude), "March of the Swiss Soldiers" is an ultra-dynamic "cavalry charge" galop
Galop
In dance, the galop, named after the fastest running gait of a horse , a shortened version of the original term galoppade, is a lively country dance, introduced in the late 1820s to Parisian society by the Duchesse de Berry and popular in Vienna, Berlin and London...
heralded by trumpets and played by the full orchestra. This segment is often used in popular media to denote galloping horses, a race, or a hero riding to the rescue, and it became the Lone Ranger theme music. It is also quoted by Dmitri Shostakovich
Dmitri Shostakovich
Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich was a Soviet Russian composer and one of the most celebrated composers of the 20th century....
in the first movement of his Symphony No. 15
Symphony No. 15 (Shostakovich)
The Symphony No. 15 in A major , Dmitri Shostakovich's last, was written in a little over a month during the summer of 1971 in Repino. It was first performed in Moscow on 8 January 1972 by the All-Union Radio and Television Symphony Orchestra under Maxim Shostakovich.-Form:The work has four...
.
Cultural references
Described by David Wondrich as a "frequent target of plunder by brass bandBrass band
A brass band is a musical ensemble generally consisting entirely of brass instruments, most often with a percussion section. Ensembles that include brass and woodwind instruments can in certain traditions also be termed brass bands , but are usually more correctly termed military bands, concert...
s in the years during which they dominated the American musical landscape", the overture features prominently in Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse
Mickey Mouse
Mickey Mouse is a cartoon character created in 1928 by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks at The Walt Disney Studio. Mickey is an anthropomorphic black mouse and typically wears red shorts, large yellow shoes, and white gloves...
cartoon, The Band Concert
The Band Concert
The Band Concert is an animated short film produced in Technicolor by Walt Disney Productions and released to theaters on February 23, 1935 by United Artists. The film was the first Mickey Mouse film produced in color and remains one of the most highly acclaimed of the Disney shorts...
. It has also been used in cartoons parodying classical music (e.g. Bugs Bunny's Overtures to Disaster
Bugs Bunny's Overtures to Disaster
Bugs Bunny's Overtures to Disaster is a 1991 Looney Tunes Television special directed by Greg Ford and Terry Lennon. In new animation, Jeff Bergman voiced Bugs, Daffy, Porky, Elmer and Sylvester.-Shorts used:...
in which the overture's finale is performed by Daffy Duck
Daffy Duck
Daffy Duck is an animated cartoon character in the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons, often running the gamut between being the best friend and sometimes arch-rival of Bugs Bunny...
and Porky Pig
Porky Pig
Porky Pig is an animated cartoon character in the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons. He was the first character created by the studio to draw audiences based on his star power, and the animators created many critically acclaimed shorts using the fat little pig...
) or Western
Western (genre)
The Western is a genre of various visual arts, such as film, television, radio, literature, painting and others. Westerns are devoted to telling stories set primarily in the latter half of the 19th century in the American Old West, hence the name. Some Westerns are set as early as the Battle of...
s (e.g. Bugs Bunny Rides Again
Bugs Bunny Rides Again
Bugs Bunny Rides Again is a 1947 Warner Bros. Merrie Melodies short, released in 1948, directed by Friz Freleng, and written by Tedd Pierce and Michael Maltese. Voice characterizations are performed by Mel Blanc. The cartoon features Bugs Bunny and Yosemite Sam. This is a sequel, of sorts, to the...
).
One of the most frequently used pieces of classical music in American advertising, the overture (especially its finale) appears in numerous ads, with psychologist Joan Meyers-Levy suggesting that it is particularly suitable for those targetting male consumers. It was used in a hip-hop version by DJ Shadow
DJ Shadow
Joshua Paul Davis better known as DJ Shadow is an American music producer, DJ and songwriter. He is considered a prominent figure in the development of instrumental hip hop and first gained notice with the release of his highly acclaimed debut album Endtroducing....., which was constructed...
to accompany the 2001 "Defy Convention" advertisement campaign for Reebok
Reebok
Reebok International Limited, a subsidiary of the German sportswear company Adidas since 2005, is a producer of Athletic shoes, apparel, and accessories. The name comes from the Afrikaans spelling of rhebok, a type of African antelope or gazelle...
athletic shoes, in an electronic version for a 2008 Honda Civic
Honda Civic
The Honda Civic is a line of subcompact and subsequently compact cars made and manufactured by Honda. The Civic, along with the Accord and Prelude, comprised Honda's vehicles sold in North America until the 1990s, when the model lineup was expanded...
campaign and the video game Catherine
Catherine (video game)
is a horror puzzle-platformer adventure game developed by Atlus Persona Team and published by Atlus for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. The game is Atlus' first internally-developed game for seventh-generation consoles in high definition, and is described as an "adult-oriented" title by the game's...
.
See also
- William Tell Overture (Spike Jones song)William Tell Overture (Spike Jones song)Spike Jones and his City Slickers recorded a cover of Gioachino Rossini's William Tell Overture. This version reproduces the original with significant modification of style and replaces the conclusion with the imitated horse race calls of the famous announcer Clem McCarthy.Jones released his...
- William Tell Overture (Mike Oldfield instrumental)
External links
- Tell. Free scores at the International Music Score Library ProjectInternational Music Score Library ProjectThe International Music Score Library Project , also known as the Petrucci Music Library after publisher Ottaviano Petrucci, is a project for the creation of a virtual library of public domain music scores, based on the wiki principle...
, including Rossini's original score and variations and transcriptions by Louis NiedermeyerLouis NiedermeyerAbraham Louis Niedermeyer was a composer chiefly of church music but also of a few operas, and a teacher who took over the Ecole Choron, duly renamed École Niedermeyer, a school for the study and practice of church music, where several eminent French musicians studied including Gabriel Fauré and...
, Louis GottschalkLouis GottschalkLouis Gottschalk may refer to:*Louis Moreau Gottschalk , American composer*Louis F. Gottschalk , American composer *Louis A. Gottschalk, American psychiatrist*Louis R. Gottschalk, American historian...
, and Franz LisztFranz LisztFranz Liszt ; ), was a 19th-century Hungarian composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher.Liszt became renowned in Europe during the nineteenth century for his virtuosic skill as a pianist. He was said by his contemporaries to have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age...
.