BEETHOVEN 200 YEARS AGO TODAY: Monday, November 17, 1823

As mentioned yesterday, there are no conversation book entries for today. Nephew Karl is attending classes, and Beethoven appears not to have any visitors. This allows him a rare day of uninterrupted work on the Finale of the Ninth Symphony.

While his progress on the symphony is not precisely datable, we can tell from various outside clues that most likely he is hard at work on the last part of the Scherzo-like ‘alla marcia‘ section of the fourth movement. Beethoven has been referring for the last six weeks or so to his prior works with “Turkish” elements (piccolo, cymbals and triangle), like the Turkish Dance in The Ruins of Athens, which are similar to those in this section of the movement. In about three weeks we know he will be working on the transition into the ‘Seid umschlungen’ slow section that follows. Given the length of time that he has been mulling over and working on this relatively short section, it clearly must have given him significant trouble.

It’s also possible that Beethoven spends part of the day working on the orchestration of the earlier movements, which have by now been sketched out fully in continuity drafts.

Wolfgang Sawallisch here conducts the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in the ‘alla marcia’ section of the Finale: