BEETHOVEN 200 YEARS AGO TODAY: Monday, December 26, 1825

There are no conversation book entries until tomorrow, so Beethoven probably spends today working on the finishing touches of the final autograph of the quartet op.130, including the present finale, the Grosse Fuge.

In St. Petersburg this morning, young composer and civil servant Mikhail Glinka (1804-1857) comes to the Senate Square in the city to see the new czar, Nicholas I. A group of officers there had assembled about 3,000 soldiers who refuse to swear allegiance to Nicholas. His elder brother Alexander I had died far from the capital on December 1 under somewhat mysterious circumstances. The rebels proclaim their allegiance to the Russian constitution and a third and more liberal brother, Constantine, rather than to Nicholas. Although they hope for the St. Petersburg garrison to join them, the rebels are disappointed. Czar Nicholas gathers a military force and has them fire indiscriminately on the rebels with artillery, ending the revolt almost instantly as not only soldiers but numerous bystanders are killed. Glinka saw the faces of people he knew being fired upon, including a teacher Wilhelm Küchelbecker and his boarding friends. Glinka will later be interrogated on suspicion of having assisted Küchelbecker but he clears himself and leaves St. Petersburg. The incident of the unsuccessful and bloody Decembrist revolt Glinka witnesses today alters his music irrevocably, changing it from its classical models (including Beethoven) to emphasis on melancholy and anxiety.

The January issue of The Harmonicon Magazine (Nr.XXXVI) includes at page 8 an essay on the state of music in Vienna in 1825. The first paragraph is devoted to Rossini, who is still be far the most popular composer in the city, along with the other Italians, such as Pacini, Mercadante, Caraff, etc. “On our German lyric stage, the selection of performances has been of a more varied and valuable kind, forming a striking contrast to the light and flimsy productions of the masters we last mentioned. Besides those works of the immortal Mozart, which are constantly before the public, his Serail has been revived, and performed with great spirit and correctness. And the dramatic compositions of that glory of our age, Beethoven, have not been neglected. Add to these, the masterly and original productions of the modern rival of the great musical worthies of German, M. von Weber.”

At page 14 of the new issue of The Harmonicon, there is a review of The Boston Handel-and-Haydn Society’s Collection of Church Music, being a selection of the most approved Psalm and Hymn-Tunes, from the Works of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, &c., published 1825 by Richardson & Lord in Boston. The publication, 350 pages in length, is acknowledged for demonstrating the advancement of Americans in music; other than The Harmonicon itself, no publisher in Great Britain could produce such a volume. Although the review makes no specific reference to Beethoven tunes being used, “the harmonies are faultless, and that the devotional character of both music and words has been attended to most strictly.”

At page 16 of this issue of The Harmonicon, there is a brief review of the Third Polonaise for four hand piano by Beethoven’s former pupil Ferdinand Ries, his op.138. In comparing it to a polonaise for four hands by Ignaz Moscheles reviewed earlier, the reviewer states, “Mr. Ries has not been more considerate than Mr. Moscheles of those to whom his polonaise may fall, for his subject is quite as difficult to manage, and lies as little under the hand. It abounds in passages of half-notes, so repugnant to the scientific principles of music and to good taste, and is altogether a laboured composition, shewing no invention, and scarcely holding out a single attraction. A peculiar dryness in style runs through it, and it certainly will not be viewed as one of the happy efforts of this clever musician. The introduction, however, must be excepted from censure; it is masterly and effective.”