BEETHOVEN 200 YEARS AGO TODAY: Monday, November 28, 1825

The Harmonicon magazine for December, 1825 (Nr. XXXVI) contains at 226-229 a review of “A Collection of Motetts” edited by Vincent Novello, organist to the Portuguese Embassy in London, published by Faulkner. The Tenth Book of the series includes at No.2, a quartet by Beethoven, “an airy, graceful composition, but possessing no stamp of this extraordinary man’s originality.” Harmonicon at 229.

On the same page there is a colorful and fairly insulting review of the Brilliant Rondo for the Piano-Forte, on an air from Saverio Mercadante’s 1821 opera Elisa e Claudio, composed by Beethoven’s former pupil Carl Czerny, as his op.88. “M. Charles Czerney [sic] is now a fashionable piano-forte composer in Vienna; for genius is not in vogue at present in the Austrian dominions. Open as we are to conviction, and anxious to praise, we should be most truly thankful for a view of some production by this artist, that would enable us to ascribe to him an original idea. That he is a very brilliant performer, we have no doubt; that he occasionally displays elegance, we admit; but as to the power of creating, we cannot discover a trace of it in his publications. This now under notice shews some good taste, mixed up with much of an opposite kind: it is flowing and graceful where the theme prevails, but laboured yet ineffective when the subject is diversified. At the 7th page is a descending semitonic passage of semiquavers, in thirds, running through no less than three octaves! This is not melody; it is not harmony; but it is detestable, and only to be matched by the howling of wolves. The theme of the Rondo has been borrowed, without any scruple from the well-known Tyrolian, or Bavarian air; for Mercadante is one of the non-inventors of the day, and very much addicted to poaching. M. Czerney has drawn this through twenty and one pages, and though its difficulty will prevent the performer from sleeping, it has no quality that will deter the hearer from nodding.”