BEETHOVEN 200 YEARS AGO TODAY: Sunday, November 21, 1824

Today, Beethoven completes his little Waltz in E-flat, WoO 84. He had been asked to contribute to Carl Friedrich Müller’s Musikalisches Angebinde zum neuen Jahre [Musical Gift for the New Year], a collection of forty waltzes by forty different composers. Müller was a disabled Viennese actor who published several of these Musical Gifts, and was allowed to keep the profits for his support and medical treatments.

Today’s date is on the manuscript, which can be found at the Bonn Beethovenhaus, H.C. Bodmer Collection HCB Mh 24. The Beethovenhaus copy is missing the Trio for the waltz, which Müller later will have bound together with two other Beethoven works written for the 1825 edition of his Musical Gift. The autograph can be seen here:

https://www.beethoven.de/en/media/view/4621902815428608/scan

There is also a copy (not in Beethoven’s hand) of the Trio at the Berlin Staatsbibliothek, Mus. ms. autogr. Beethoven 57.

Martino Tirimo here plays Beethoven’s Waltz in E-flat, WoO 84:

The Vienna Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung (Nr. 97) of December 4, 1824, at 387 includes an account of hornist Emanuel Levy’s musical Akademie benefit concert, held today. The program opened with the Overture from Fidelio by Beethoven, “which every member of the court opera orchestra acquitted with much fire.” The Wiener Zeitschrift called the Overture “beautiful” and “very well performed by the orchestra.” The Wiener Theater-Zeitung agreed, “This classical piece was performed with much fire and energy.” Also on the program is Henriette Sontag, who had sung the soprano part of Beethoven’s own May 1824 Akademie concerts. Sontag performs an aria by Giovanni Pacini (1796-1867) with obbligato violin played by composer Joseph Mayseder. “Both complete in grace and expression, the loud applause was a tribute paid by every unbiased person with a happy heart to the lovely singer and the violinist, whose playing is becoming more and more elegant and graceful.” The Wiener Zeitschrift reviewer said that, “The singer received repeated, thunderous applause.” The concert giver, Herr Lewy, also received much applause performing a Concertino by Carl Maria von Weber, op.45, and the finale, a quartet for horns by Dionysius Weber, director of the Royal Conservatory in Prague. Wiener Zeitschrift (Nr.144) of November 30, 1824, at 1239-1240; Wiener Theater-Zeitung (Nr.142) of November 25, 1824 at 567.