BEETHOVEN 200 YEARS AGO TODAY: Thursday, January 15, 1824

In Berlin today, a concert is held at the Wadzeck Institute, for the benefit of the 400 neglected and delinquent children being educated there. On the program are the Overture to Cherubini’s Medea, an unspecified symphony by Beethoven, and the Concertstück in F minor, op.79, for piano and orchestra by Carl Maria von Weber, performed by fourteen-year-old Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy at the keyboard. Leipzig Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung Nr. 7 (Feb.12, 1824) at 107.

Today’s Wiener Zeitschrift at 60 includes a note from the editorial team: “We find ourselves compelled to remark that the poem, set to music by Herr Ludwig van Beethoven for this magazine, ‘So oder so by Carl Lappe’ [WoO 148] has already been published in No.14 of the 1817 volume of this magazine.” The song in Beethoven’s setting had appeared in the February 15, 1817 edition of the Wiener Zeitschrift at p.111f. This likely is a reference to Sauer & Leidesdorf’s unauthorized publication last year of that song as part of Four German Poems set to music by Beethoven, with the spurious opus number 113.

Beethoven’s So oder so, WoO 148 is here performed by Peter Schreier, with Walter Olbertz at piano: