BEETHOVEN 200 YEARS AGO TODAY: Tuesday, September 21, 1824

Several new works from Beethoven’s former pupil, Carl Czerny, are advertised by Anton Diabelli & Co. in today’s Wiener Zeitung (Nr.217) at 910. These are his Piano Sonata Nr. 4, op.65, and Variations on God Save the King, op.77. Beethoven had written his own set of seven variations on God Save the King, WoO 78, over twenty years earlier, while Czerny was studying with him.

Czerny’s piano sonata nr.4 is here played by Martin Jones:

https://youtu.be/fEWXn50KXQY?si=w2SpGqOeww7c72St

Today’s Aufmerksame supplement to the Grazer Zeitung weekly newspaper published in Graz (Nr.114) at 4 contains a poem in honor of Beethoven, by Dr. Heinrich Hüttenbrenner. Crudely and nonmetrically translated, it reads as follows:

Not a soft sound, the whisper of love
Let the quivering strings trembling
Draw from the roses cheerful songs!
Flight of the storm! Flight of the storm!

The thunder roars, the waves of the sea
Rise up roaring, shake in anger
The bonds of rhythm, but they obey
The mighty call of the ruler.

He approaches, the lightning flashes brighter,
Competes with the flight of his thoughts.
Like a storm does the clouds, Beethoven drives
The tumult of sound before him.

Over the mountains, over the seas
The king steers it to the stars.
The echo from the sun’s rubies
Resounds back deep into the heart.

The listener’s innermost sense trembles,
The dreams overhear the sound of the spheres,
And lure the soul. Slumber you guardians,
Upwards towards home