BEETHOVEN 200 YEARS AGO TODAY: Friday, June 3, 1825 (approximately)

Beethoven intends to go into Vienna tomorrow. He makes a note for Karl’s pension sheet and also makes a note regarding Karl’s apartment. [Previously, there was talk of the earnest money being paid, so the rest of his rent may be due now.]

Issue XXX of The Harmonicon, for June 1825, includes at 100 a few items of interest in its Miscellanea column:

“BEETHOVEN is still active; he has just completed two new Quatuors, which are shortly expected to be given to the public.” [These would presumably be op.127 and the as-yet-unfinished op.132.]

And

“MR. FERDINAND RIES is at present engaged in composing an opera, which has been written expressly for him by Mr. George Soane, author of Faustus and other dramatic works.” [Nothing came of this plan. Ries would eventually write three operas, but none with a libretto by Soane.]

This issue of The Harmonicon also reviews at pp.105-106 two works by Beethoven’s pupil Ries, his Second Divertimento for piano, op.117, and his Ninth Fantasie for Piano on favorite themes from Der Freischütz, op.131. The first of these is considered to be “not in an exceedingly original style, but with all the judgment that Mr. Ries usually shows on all points where a practical knowledge of the science ought to be exhibited.”

The review is less tolerant of certain aspects of the Fantasie: “Mr. Ries has chosen the best and the most popular of the airs in Weber’s grand opera for his present purpose, and woven them together with the address of an excellent master, and with a proper feeling for the original composer; — except in one instance, where he has transposed the fine cavatina into A from A flat, the original and characteristic key, an act of barbarism of which we should not have supposed so good a musician, and so sensible a man could be capable. Surely he must, by this time, have learnt the difference between the contemplative sobriety of shade, and the gay brilliancy of sunshine; two things not more opposed than the key in which the author has written this exquisite air, and that into which the present adaptor has transferred it.” But for those who do not already have Freischütz in its many different forms “if any such are to be found, — it will prove a useful purchase.”