BEETHOVEN 200 YEARS AGO TODAY: Tuesday, September 13, 1825 (approximately)

Beethoven makes a list of errands to run on his next trip into Vienna:

• Fire-ignition machine.
• Soap + [the bed quilt is crossed out]
• Karl: take his linen handkerchiefs along.
• Knife sheath at Rospini’s. [Karl Joseph Rospini was an optician and Court turner. Beethoven bought several pairs of eyeglasses from Rospini.]
• Wine at Mariabrunn. [Beethoven has mentioned wine from this small village several times now. He must have liked it.]
• Receipt at Kinsky’s. [Beethoven is entitled to 600 florins on his stipend from Prince Kinsky’s estate for the six-month period of April 1 to September 30, 1825. He mentioned in yesterday’s entry that he would need official stamped paper for this receipt.]

Sir George Smart, visiting Vienna, mentions that today “Le Baron and La Baronin d’Eskeles, friends of Beethoven, sent me a printed invitation to dinner at the village of Hietzing, to which I wrote an excuse in consequence of a previous engagement to Madame Schulz and Beethoven.” Smart will meet with Beethoven in Baden on Saturday, September 16. Although Joseph Böhm had promised to call this morning to tell him the time for hearing quartets at his house this evening, but he does not show up. Smart also calls on Carl Czerny, who was out.

In the evening, Smart attends Böhm’s private quartet concert, in the company of Karl Holz and Friedrich August Kanne (formerly the editor of the Vienna Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung), having been invited by J.B. Maggi, an Italian silk merchant. Smart writes in his diary for today, “I arrived about seven in the evening. About eleven persons were present. They played Beethoven’s first new MS. quartette [op.127], bought at Mayence. It is about forty minutes long, with slight stops between. Having only heard this once, I cannot decide which is the best [as opposed to op.132, which he also heard on Sunday September 11], perhaps this—it is most difficult and also very much exalted. It was played by the same four who played at Schlesinger’s. [Böhm would have replaced Schuppanzigh as first violin.] He came late to this party.”

Cox and Cox, Leaves from the Journals of Sir George Smart at p.117-119.

The Second Yorkshire Musical Festival, for the benefit of the York County Hospital and the general infirmaries of Leeds, Sheffield and Hull in Great Britain opens today in the newly completed Festival Concert Rooms in the city of York, which holds 1600 persons. The hall was demolished in 1974 and the location is now a car park. The first concert, of religious music, is given during the day today in the York Minster and is in three acts, the first two of which are dominated by Handel. The third act closes with some selections by Beethoven. The first of these is the chorus, Glory to God, with English lyrics as adapted from Beethoven’s original for the oratorio Judah by William Gardiner. [This chorus is an English-language version of the Gloria of the Mass in C, op.86.] The final selections in this first concert are the March and Chorus, “Behold him!”; the Recitative, “Over sin and death;” and the Hallelujah Chorus; all from Beethoven’s oratorio Christ on the Mount of Olives, op.85.

William Gardiner (1769-1853) is an interesting and influential character. He was a stocking manufacturer by trade and amateur musician, but spent most of his time performing and composing music, including numerous hymns. He had arranged the first performance of Beethoven’s music in England in the year 1794, when the composer was hardly known outside Germany and Austria. According to his memoir Music and Friends (1838), Gardiner first became acquainted with Beethoven’s music when he found the String Trio in E-flat op.3 in the violin case of Abbé Dobeler, the chaplain of Elector Max Franz of Bonn, fleeing the French revolutionary army. Gardiner played viola in the first English performance of this work in October or November of 1794 in a lodging-house in Leicester. Gardiner then began acquiring as much music by Beethoven as he could, and relentlessly advocating for it, both in England and America. He made numerous unauthorized arrangements of Beethoven compositions, including one of the third movement of the first piano sonata for voice, violin and piano. He even wrote Beethoven a letter offering to commission an overture in D minor for the oratorio Judah mentioned above, a pastiche Gardiner had assembled from various works by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, and published by Clementi in 1821, but Beethoven is not known to have responded to him, even though he was offered the substantial sum of 100 guineas. Despite its sketchy origins, Judah remained in print for over 20 years.

The Harmonicon for October, 1825 (Vol.XXXIV) reports at 177, “Beethoven’s chorus [Glory to God] was admirably performed; it is, in the opinion of a good critic, the finest thing he ever wrote….The selection from the Mount of Olives, by which this day’s performance concluded, was well performed, though the rehearsal threatened a failure.”

A second grand concert held today is of secular works, held in two parts in the new concert rooms, and opens with Beethoven’s Grand Symphony in D, op.36 [the Second Symphony.] According to the Harmonicon at 177, “The opening of the new concert-room excited great interest, and induced the attendance of a large number of persons, who filled every part except the gallery. The effect of the spectacle was beautiful; and exclamations of approval and delight were heard from all sides.”

“The orchestra, however, in the opinion of all the musical men with whom we have conversed, is badly contrived. The basses, in particular, are cut off from all communication with, or sight of, the leader; and it appears essentially necessary that it should undergo some alteration. The concert which ought to have commenced at eight o’clock was delayed, from a considerable degree of confusion created by there being no arrangements whatever made for the stations of the performers, and by other preparatory operations.”

“Beethoven’s grand symphony had not justice done to it, from the circumstances to which we have already adverted. A small portion of the violins and basses were called into action; a necessary consequence of the confusion which reigned around.” In a footnote, the editor adds, “We learn that much of this confusion arose from the want of experience in the porters, who did not convey the instruments from the Minster in time for the evening performance.” The final piece, the overture to Olimpia by Spontini, did not commence until after midnight, by which time there were few left in the audience.