Uploaded June 2020 | Updated September 2026, 4 hours ago
In the first of our series of Descriptive music pieces typical of the Regency period, we present The Battle of Prague, by F. Kotzwara.
Here Ros plays the full work on her 1812 Broadwood Square Piano, a historically appropriate instrument - she is playing from an original print of the sheet music prepared especially for Professors, since it is marked with the fingering (at that time the Thumb was represented by an "X" and so ran X, 1, 2, 3, 4 rather than the modern 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
It was written as a solo piano piece, and became very popular as a practice and demonstration piece. The words appearing in the video are in fact incorporated in the original music notation, as was often done in descriptive pieces. "Go to Bed Tom" was a bugle call to the troops to stop carousing and retire for the night - it was deliberately simple to be recognisable even through a drunken stupor.
Our thanks to our good friend Rod Glanfield for providing photos of the scale model troops set in diorama
In the first of our series of Descriptive music pieces typical of the Regency period, we present The Battle of Prague, by F. Kotzwara.
Here Ros plays the full work on her 1812 Broadwood Square Piano, a historically appropriate instrument - she is playing from an original print of the sheet music prepared especially for Professors, since it is marked with the fingering (at that time the Thumb was represented by an "X" and so ran X, 1, 2, 3, 4 rather than the modern 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
It was written as a solo piano piece, and became very popular as a practice and demonstration piece. The words appearing in the video are in fact incorporated in the original music notation, as was often done in descriptive pieces. "Go to Bed Tom" was a bugle call to the troops to stop carousing and retire for the night - it was deliberately simple to be recognisable even through a drunken stupor.
Our thanks to our good friend Rod Glanfield for providing photos of the scale model troops set in diorama
