BEETHOVEN 200 YEARS AGO TODAY: Tuesday, December 1, 1825

Czar Alexander I of Russia, to whom Beethoven considered dedicating the Ninth Symphony, developed a fever (now thought to be typhus) while in Crimea a few weeks ago. His doctors applied leeches behind his ears and on the back of his neck persistently, until he dies today in his summer residence in the remote city of Taganrog on the Sea of Azov. Alexander is succeeded by his younger brother, Nicholas I, though neither Nicholas nor the third brother, Constantine, wanted the position.

Czar Alexander was only 47 at the time of his death, and many of his subjects refused to believe he had died. The legend arose that he had gone to be a religious hermit under the name Feodor Kuzmich in Siberia. The theory is not entirely outlandish, since Alexander had been suffering from paranoid delusions in the year before his death and told people he wanted to escape his position. There is no record of Kuzmich’s existence before Alexander’s death. Alexander’s tomb has supposedly been opened four times, and each time it was reported to be empty. Alexander’s and Kuzmich’s handwriting were said to be identical. Leo Tolstoy wrote an unfinished short story, Posthumous Notes of the Hermit Feodor Kuzmich, about the legend, suggesting that even members of the royal family believed Kuzmich to be Czar Alexander I. Kuzmich, whoever he was, was sainted by the Russian Orthodox Church in 1984.

Czar Nicholas I had none of Alexander’s interest in spiritual and intellectual matters, and probably would not have appreciated or rewarded a dedication of a major work by Beethoven. Beethoven will need to find a new dedicatee. The autocratic Czar Nicholas will be immediately confronted by the Decembrist revolt later this month.