BEETHOVEN 200 YEARS AGO TODAY: Wednesday, May 12, 1824

Ferdinand Piringer, who is filling in as unpaid assistant while Anton Schindler is persona non grata, does not appear to come today as he had said he would yesterday, but he does visit Beethoven tomorrow morning. Piringer spends much of the day arranging the newspaper articles about the second Akademie.

Nephew Karl’s mother Johanna has written to Uncle Ludwig [the letter is not known to survive] and thrown the household into turmoil. Karl hasn’t seen the letter, so he doesn’t know what she wrote, but he says whatever it is, it’s a “pack of lies.” She apparently is doing something through the Giannatasio del Rio family, friends of Beethoven who once had Karl as a student.

Karl notes that the chicken needs to lie for 2 days before it will be tender. He thinks that a kitchen maid at their place is better than a cook someplace else. A housekeeper applicant is there; she was sent by the laundry woman. She wants to know what needs cooking: vegetables, roast meat, soup, pickled tongue? She is a single woman, born in Augsburg. She has been working for Court Councillor Breitenstein, of the Imperial Treasury. She has a letter of reference, but left it at home. She has been in Vienna for 1 year, 8 months. She cannot, however, read or write. She lives above a tobacco shop in the Schönlaterngasse. [The illiteracy probably eliminates her from consideration since Beethoven usually was insistent that the help be able to read and write, for obvious reasons.]

Conversation Book 67, 17r-18v.

Beethoven dictates a letter to soprano Henriette Sontag for Karl to write today. “My beautiful precious Sontag! It was always my intention to come visit you to thank you for your wonderful participation in my Akademie. I hope to see you again in the coming days, and perhaps have lunch with you and Unger in the Prater or the Augarten at midday. Now is the best time to do it. According to my plans, the Akademie is to be repeated in the future, and I hope that you will once again support me, for which I will remain eternally grateful. Farewell until I have the pleasure of seeing you.”

Brandenburg Letter 1832; Anderson Letter 1289. The original was in a private collection in Munich at the time that Sieghard Brandenburg assembled his edition of Beethoven’s letters.

The Vienna Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung Nr.30 of May 12, 1824 at 120 includes a review of Beethoven’s Akademie concert from last week under the title, “Beethoven’s Newest Compositions,” by editor Friedrich August Kanne. Our thanks once again to our friend Birthe Kibsgaard for her assistance in the translation.

“The performance finally took place on May 7th in the theater next to the Kärntnertor, with an extraordinarily large audience. Beethoven’s genius, originality and youthful strength appeared to us again in its truest form in these magnificent, gigantic compositions. His rich imagination walks with sublime freedom in the realm of its familiar sounds and soars on its wings bringing the listeners into a new and astonishing world. The great realm of instrumental music, in which the famous master of so many beautiful creations has preferred to move all his life, still has many treasures to be expected from him, because his sublime imagination, beyond time and taste, proves itself to be an inexhaustible source of beauty with every new work.”

“One might wish that the three pieces heard on this occasion, including a new grand Mass, would have been performed in a different locale, because the different entrances also means a great difference in the education level of the listeners there. Neither the choir nor the singing voices were quite as prepared as such heavy and deeply interwoven music requires, but Beethoven wrote the works with clarity and style. The effect that such a strong cast would have had to produce was also affected by the spaces between the wings, in which the sound died away and dispersed, so weakened that we could hardly perceive half of its noticeable effects in the moving mass of sound.”

“The Overture and the grand symphony with a great choir in the finale, were performed with a pronounced effect. We therefore sincerely hope that the efforts of a second performance will be better prepared in all individual parts, held in a large venue more favorable to music, and that by meeting the demands and precision of the art in the accompaniment of the orchestra may be crowned with happy success.”

“The fact that the world around the great composer cannot possibly be indifferent should be taken to heart. The efforts of creating such great works should at least be repaid to his advantage, even though it cannot compare to what he offers the world. It is nevertheless of importance to the artist’s bulwark.”

“The second performance will be met with enthusiastic applause, with which the great Master, who took part at the helm of the entire thing and whose honor was increased to the highest degree of joy, will find the reward of his efforts again. The excellent Kapellmeister Umlauf, who oversaw this performance, has the grateful recognition of every friend of Art in the highest degree because of his zeal and acquired skill.”

Today Beethoven’s 7th Symphony in A major is performed in Berlin under the baton of general music director Gaspare Spontini, at a concert for the benefit of the opera house. This was the first performance of the symphony in Berlin, and featured an orchestra of nearly 200 members. The concert concluded with Alexander’s Feast by Handel. Leipzig Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung Nr.26, June 24, 1824 at 421.

The Berliner Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung (Nr.19) for today contains at pages 168-170 a review of the recently-published Piano Quartet in C minor op.1 by fourteen-year-old Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, issued by the Adolph Schlesinger firm in Berlin (which also published quite a few of Beethoven’s works). While encouraging of the boy’s skills, the reviewer (probably editor Adolph Marx) regrets the lack of originality. While Mozart was clearly the boy’s model, he does not depart from Mozart enough, and the work lacks Mozart’s invigorating freshness. The first movement in particular does not make a deep impression, and the Adagio in A was rather boring. The Scherzo in C minor is better and more in line with this newer genre of musical pieces. The finale is indisputably the most successful of the four movements. “From what has been said, it is clear that this quartet deserves to be called the work of a very talented young man, and that it has some pretty things, but it lacks originality. This is not unexpected from a young man of that age.”