BEETHOVEN 200 YEARS AGO TODAY: Wednesday, July 5, 1826

Today’s Berliner allgemeine musikalische Zeitung (Nr.27) at 220 includes a request directed to Beethoven: “May it please the Master Beethoven to write cadenzas for his piano concertos.”

“One of the reasons why Beethoven’s concertos are so rarely performed by piano virtuosos is certainly that it is not everyone’s ability to create a cadenza that is compatible with Beethoven’s muse. Moreover, this is what the writer always seemed to think when he heard Beethoven’s concertos performed with ipse fecit cadenzas (or in private, Herr Editor!) played them himself, as if he were wearing a velvet party dress with calico patches.” The writer under the pseudonym C.K. has not been identified.

Beethoven had in fact written numerous cadenzas for his concertos, probably for his pupil Archduke Rudolph in about 1809, in whose library they were found. These cadenzas are catalogued today as Biamonti 506-509 and Hess 81-85. They were not, however, published or widely circulated until well after Beethoven’s death.

Today’s Wiener Zeitung, Nr.151 at 640, contains an advertisement from Tendler & Manstein’s book shop for Abbé Stadler’s Defense of the Authenticity of the Mozartian Requiem, dedicated to all admirers of Mozart. “Just as the authenticity of the universally admired Requiem, disputed in the musical magazine Cäcilia, was unwelcome to the admirers of Mozart, so too will the thorough defense of it announced above be welcome to them all the more so, since at the same time further information about Mozart himself and his last work is provided.” Beethoven’s circle has discussed this pamphlet (which sells for 20 kreutzers C.M.) over the last few months.