BEETHOVEN 200 YEARS AGO TODAY: Monday, February 11, 1822

Beethoven often gets earaches in the winter, and he suffers from a very painful one this evening, as he describes in a letter tomorrow.

Cappi & Diabelli advertises today in the Wiener Zeitung for new dance music from Carneval 1822, arranged for piano. Anton Diabelli himself has written an arrangement of the Freischütz Waltz for both solo and piano four hands, plus a set of 15 ecossaises on themes from Der Freischütz. Freischütz Fever is not going away. Amusement pour le Carneval by Beethoven’s former pupil Carl Czerny is again offered, as is Schubert’s Original Dances for piano, 1st and 2nd book. The latter is probably the same opus 9, D.365, which we have discussed here a number of times.

Beethoven as a young man industriously wrote sets of little dances for this event, but has not done so for nearly two decades at this point.