BEETHOVEN 200 YEARS AGO TODAY: Tuesday, April 6, 1824

Beethoven continues proofreading parts as preparations for the Akademie are ongoing. The work is slow, but Peter Gläser’s team of copyists appears to work efficiently and produces the needed parts fairly quickly once Beethoven has finished proofreading a particular part.

Ludewig Krause today sends from Berlin 50 ducats to Beethoven in payment of the subscription for the Missa Solemnis by Prince Anton Heinrich Radzwill, governor of the Grand Duchy of Posen. He requests a receipt and asks that the copy of the score be sent with it.

Brandenburg Letter 1806. The original is lost; its existence and contents are known from the followup, Letter 1847, sent on June 28, 1824, by Krause asking where the receipt and score are.

Today in the Imperial Great Redoutensaal, the fourth concert of the season by the Musikverein includes a performance of Beethoven’s Opferlied, on words by Matthisson, op.121b. “Beethoven’s latest tone poem is entirely appropriate to the words: simple, pious, undemanding and extremely comfortable. But that is precisely why it only caused a minor sensation.” Leipzig Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung Nr.21, May 20, 1824 at 343.

Opferlied is here performed by Michael Tilson Thomas conducting the London Symphony, with Lorna Haywood as soloist:

Meanwhile, in Lemberg (today Lviv, Ukraine), the concert in the local Redoutensaal opens with Beethoven’s 7th Symphony in A major. This was the first public performance of the symphony in that city. “It was given with such unusual precision and such combination of all the contributing individuals as one would expect. Such tone poems are very rarely heard in our country, and usually heard only at zealous gatherings of music lovers. Beethoven’s great artistic genius once again spoke particularly loudly the above work of art to our minds. Absolutely simple, cheerful, comfortable and celebratory, it is entirely appropriate for the highest purposes.” Vienna Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung Nr.28, May 5, 1824, at 110.