BEETHOVEN 200 YEARS AGO TODAY: Friday, September 30, 1825 (approximately)

The October, 1825 issue of The Harmonicon (vol.XXXIV) features a biography of Luigi Cherubini, who was one of Beethoven’s favorite living composers. The overview contains a mention of Beethoven at 168: “We may remark, that when a musical education has been perfect, when the fundamental principles of the art have been thoroughly imbibed, the powers of the man of genius acquire strength with age; as in the instances of Handel, Haydn, Gluck, Beethoven, and Cherubini. On the contrary, when precocious composers, who have neglected early to draw from the profound sources of counterpoint, arrive at maturity, they feel the need of making good the deficiencies of their early education: but it is too late; the happy moment is past; science is now a fetter to them, and they fall oppressed beneath its galling load.”

At 186, there is a review of the recently published Sacred Melodies from Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, adapted to the best English Poets, and appropriated to the use of the British Church, by William Gardiner, Vol.3, published by Clementi & Co. The anonymous reviewer is rather disappointed in this volume: “Upon taking up the pen for the purpose of giving some account of the present publication, we found ourselves stopped in limine [on the threshold], arrested in our progress by the very title-page, which ascribes the contents of the volume to the three great German musicians, and to the best poets of our own country; though it comprises but one movement by Haydn, and two pages by Mozart, and exhibits not a note by Beethoven, or a verse by any English bard, from Geoffrey Chaucer to Thomas Moore: — while the names of the actual composers of the music, and of the authors of the words, are, with the above exceptions, altogether suppressed.” [We discussed Gardiner in our update for September 13, 1825, for those who are interested in this gentleman. It should be noted that the first volume of this series did indeed contain several works by Beethoven, adapted into hymns, including the Gellert Lied op.48/4.]

The reviewer also mentions the disdain of music lovers for composers who depart from their tastes: “The admirers of Purcell and of his school, at first viewed Handel’s compositions with jealousy and dislike….At the same period the major part of the nobility, and the fashionable world generally, despised both Purcell and Handel, and patronised composers of the most contemptible kind, whose very names are now unknown except to the musical antiquarian. The Handelians of the present day reluctantly hear Haydn and Mozart: to Beethoven they will not listen.”

The report of music from Vienna in this month’s Harmonicon at 191-192 contains a mention of Grillparzer’s König Ottokar’s Glück und Ende, “which if not entitled to our praise and worthy of imitation, proved at least, a treat in the absence of the music of the great lyric theatre. The piece itself possesses but little merit, and relies for its interest on the selection of instrumental masterpieces interwoven with the subject. The brilliant overture was arranged by Hummel from the most celebrated of Haydn’s national melodies. The transition to the second act is formed of Beethoven’s charming andante from the symphony in [D] major. The third opens with a hunting piece, taken from Mehul’s spirited overture to Ariodent; the fourth from Mozart’s highly tragical quick movement in his sonata in e minor, with an additional accompaniment by Seyfried; lastly, the characteristic entr’acte from Cherubini’s Medea. We cannot but acknowledge that the effect of this magnificent pasticcio was highly imposing, whatever severer critics may say of the taste by which it was conceived.”

“But if the theaters here have been inactive, the concert-rooms have been more than usually alive; we have had no less than twenty concerts, of one kind or another. The two most remarkable were that of Professor Schuppenzih, [sic] at which, among other interesting pieces was given a new double quatuor by Sphor, [sic] which was pronounced by all the amateurs to be a masterpiece [on January 23, 1825], and created a very great sensation; the other was a Concert Spirituel, opening with Beethoven’s grand spirited symphony in A major, which was performed with admirable taste and expression.”