BEETHOVEN 200 YEARS AGO TODAY: Monday, January 3, 1825

Cappi & Co. advertises the newest works by Beethoven’s former pupil, Carl Czerny, in today’s Wiener Zeitung (Nr.1) at 3-4. First is Czerny’s op.86, Introduction, Variations and Finale for pianoforte, on the popular Bavarian Folksong by Gaspare Spontini. The supporting commentary (probably written by Czerny himself, since such comments are seldom seen on the works of other composers) states: “The music-loving public has always welcomed well-known folk melodies in variations, rondos, etc., arranged for the piano in a brilliant and at the same time rewarding way. The publisher therefore believes that it can recommend the above-mentioned work of this most laudably well-known composer to everyone, as it flatters itself that it fully corresponds to the above conditions.”

Also available from Cappi is Czerny’s op.87, Easy Variations for piano four hands on the Waltz by Count de Gallenberg. “These variations are written in a lighter style and on such a beautiful, ethereal theme that we can highly recommend them.”

The Lithographic Institute also repeats on p.4 of today’s Wiener Zeitung its advertisement of the Musical Gift for the New Year, a collection of 40 new waltzes, with a concluding waltz with coda, for the pianoforte, “composed by various masters.” Beethoven is not mentioned by name, though his Waltz WoO 84 is included in the set along with one by Franz Schubert.

Frequent contributor Birthe Kibsgaard notes that in the Leipzig Zeitung für eine elegante Welt [Newspaper for an Elegant World] of today (Nr.2) at 11, there is a fictitious conversation between two art lovers, comparing Mozart and Beethoven. “Mozart floats, like a migrating swan, in gentle, even calmness through the higher regions of art. Beethoven is more like the eagle, which now touches the earth forcefully in its plummeting flight, but then soars all the more rapidly towards the sun with a mighty beat of its wings. I would almost like to say: Mozart is dominated by harmony; Beethoven dominates harmony.” says one of them.