Vienna… 22/12/1808

The Music

The Words

Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of the ‘Classical For Everyone’ Podcast… five hundred years of incredible music. My name is Peter Cudlipp and… If you enjoy any music at all then I’m convinced you can enjoy classical music. All you need are ears. No expertise is necessary. If you’ve ever been curious about classical music… or explored it for a while once upon a time… or just quietly wondered what all the fuss was about… then this is the podcast is for you.

So there has been something of a core group of encouraging friends and colleagues who have had a hand in the creation and growth of the Classical For Everyone podcast. I’ve mentioned a few of them in various past shows but there has been one friend for whom I’ve been kind of waiting for the right episode. So this one is for Mr Andrew Maiden whose support and enthusiasm have seriously been invaluable. I have a lot to thank him for. So thank you Andrew.

Alright, So I am being a little deliberately opaque with the title of this episode. There is a certain logic to letting people know what they are going to get. But not today. Because I am hoping that for a good selection of listeners out there the date of 22^nd December 1808 is pretty much meaningless. And that what follows will be a bit of a surprise. Putting the name of the city ‘Vienna’ in the title is a bit of a hint that there will be some music of that era involved. Which I guess is to be expected. So, not much of a hint actually.

Ok. What happened in Vienna on 22^nd December 1808? Well I guess a lot happened but for our purposes there was a concert. A 38 year old composer, with the help of some aristocratic patrons had booked a big theatre to showcase some of the new music he had been working on. This was I think the third time he had done this over the last decade.

And he was, the composer, a performer, the conductor and the promoter. And it’s important to say that whilst the earlier concerts had been successes this one was not. It can be seen as somewhere between a disappointing night out and an unparalleled disaster… depending on which sources you follow.

What went wrong that particular night? I guess three things stand out in the reporting.  One, it was pretty cold. There was a completing concert down the road and the regular audience sort of split. So not quite the mass of people in the theatre needed to warm the big space. Two, it was maybe a little long. It started at 6.30pm… and finished at 10.30pm. Four hours. A long night out. And finally, and I really think this was the main reason… the music was all brand new. No one had heard any of it before. Four hours of entirely new music in a big cold half empty theatre.

So, by now you might be wondering why am I featuring an event which, in a city filled with glittering musical events at that time… even as the Napoleonic Wars raged on, which was essentially a failure? The answer is coming. In a moment I’m going to play you the opening section of the first piece that was played at the concert. On the programme it had the innocuous title of 'A Recollection of Country Life’. It’s quite pretty music.  I think there’s a good chance you’re going to like it. Oh…  I should tell you who that 38 year old composer was… His name was Ludwig van Beethoven.

A

That was the opening section of Ludwig van Beethoven’s 6^th Symphony, today known by the subtitle ‘The Pastoral Symphony’ as Beethoven, for him unusually, added descriptions to each of part of the work and that section was given the title of ‘Awakening of cheerful feelings on arrival in the countryside’. The orchestra in that performance was Anima Eterna Bruges and they were conducted by Jos van Immerseel.

Now that group is quite a small orchestra compared to what we think of as a contemporary symphony orchestra and in size, and to an extent, performance technique, they approximate the orchestra at the 1808 Vienna Beethoven concert. A critical difference though is that they may have played the music before and almost certainly had more than one rehearsal before the recording. Beethoven’s musicians on the other hand were a hastily pulled together group of freelancers just booked for that concert who might… and I stress ‘might’ have played each piece through once at a rehearsal before the concert.

And that was probably another contributing factor to the underwhelming response of the audience. Unfamiliar music… played badly.

Now talking about the musicians… to showcase his new music, Beethoven did not just need an orchestra. He also needed a choir. And solo singers. The one thing he didn’t need was a pianist. In the pieces that had a piano part, he played the piano. Which would have actually thrilled the crowd because even in 1808 his reputation was probably more as a virtuoso performer than as a composer. The role we think of today as critical, the conductor, is one that I have not mentioned...because that was Beethoven’s job as well. In a while when you hear some of the pieces with piano performed that night… you’ll get the idea that he was probably a little busy to be a particularly effective conductor.

Alright,  up after Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony was a concert aria I’m not going to play you but it will be in the Spotify playlist of complete works I’ll link to from the episode page on the Classical For Everyone website… and that was followed by an excerpt from his new Mass in C. Now this was slightly odd because there was a ban on performing religious music in theatres at this time of the year. It had to be performed in churches. So in the program Beethoven called it… “Hymn with Latin text, composed in the Church style with chorus and solos". Here is the Gloria…. It is performed by… the soloists Charlotte Margiono and Catherine Robbin, the Orchestre Révolutionnaire Et Romantique, and the Monteverdi Choir all conducted by John Eliot Gardiner

B

That was the Gloria from Beethoven’s Mass In C.  It was performed by  the soloists Charlotte Margiono and Catherine Robbin, the Orchestre Révolutionnaire Et Romantique, and the Monteverdi Choir all conducted by John Eliot Gardiner. So what was the next thing that Beethoven had been working away at and decided the concertgoers of Vienna needed to hear on that December night? Maybe something a little forgettable… but maybe with a well-known tune. Well no… How about his Fourth Concerto for Piano and Orchestra?

There’s a generalisation that Beethoven’s music is about struggle, about striving, about grasping toward spiritual and human truths. And a lot of the music can kind of support that interpretation… but this concerto has a gentle beauty and warmth, especially the first section which I am going to play for you.  It still has the tension in the conversation between the solo part and the orchestra but the musical drama is more contained than in some of his other concertos. And I think this performance by pianist Alfred Brendel, conductor Simon Rattle and, rather appropriately, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra capture this section’s delicacy and elegance beautifully.

C

That was pianist Alfred Brendel, conductor Simon Rattle and the Vienna Symphony Orchestra with the opening of Beethoven’s 4^th Piano Concerto.
I want to tell you a little about the actual theatre where this 1808 concert took place.

The ‘Theater an der Wien’ or ‘Theatre on the Wein” opened its doors in 1801 as one of Vienna's most ambitious theatrical ventures, built by Emanuel Schikaneder ( Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's collaborator on the opera The Magic Flute) on the banks of the Wien River in the city's suburbs. Hence the name. Described as "the most lavishly equipped and one of the largest theatres of its age" the theatre quickly established itself as a premier venue for both opera and concert performances. However, Schikaneder's increasingly lavish and expensive productions proved financially ruinous, and by 1804, he had to sell the theatre. And by the time of Beethoven’s concert it was owned a group of well-connected noblemen. Whilst the river Wein has been paved over the theatre has been extensively rebuilt, the ‘Theater an der Wein’ is still in use today.

So alright. So far those attending this Thursday night concert in Vienna have heard Beethoven’s 6^thSymphony… the Pastoral; sections of the Mass in C, a concert aria and his Fourth Piano Concerto. With the piano part played by Beethoven. The first performances of each work. That is just the first half of the concert. After interval and, though based on no evidence at all I am going to assume that some of the audience would have gone home, those who returned were treated to another entire symphony. Another premiere.

The symphony in question is now perhaps the most famous symphony ever written… and therefore arguably the most famous piece of music ever written. There is one rival and I’ll talk about that in a few minutes. But for now imagine you have settled back into your seats, maybe warmed with a little alcohol in the break, and once the musicians are ready and the audience has settled… this is what you hear.

D

That was the opening section of Ludwig van Beethoven’s 5^th Symphony. That performance was again the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and the conductor this time was Carlos Kleiber. The recording was released in 1975. And of the several hundred recordings still available that one remains one of the handful that people who obsess about these things consider amongst the very best. And I don’t think they’re wrong. I hope you enjoyed it.

So I mentioned that there is one other piece of music that rivals Beethoven’s 5^th Symphony for ‘most famous symphony ever written’. And that is Beethoven’s 9^th symphony. It was NOT performed at that December 1808 concert… It would be premiered six years later… but the final piece of the concert was its precursor… sort of Beethoven’s practice run… an amazing piece in its own right but nowadays primarily regarded as Beethoven’s first steps toward what would be the 9^th Symphony where he added soloists and a choir to the final section for a setting of Friedrich Schiller’s poem ‘Ode To Joy’.

In the advertisement for the concert Beethoven placed in the newspaper ‘The Vienna Daily’ he described the work that concluded the concert as "Fantasy for piano which ends with the gradual entrance of the entire orchestra and the introduction of choruses as a finale"

The text for what came to be known as the ‘Choral Fantasy’ was written by Christoph Kuffner, a Viennese poet, civil servant, and translator. Apparently Beethoven commissioned the poet to write the words shortly before the performance to fit the already written parts. The poem which begins with the words “Graceful, charming and sweet is the sound", is an uplifting text filled with positive emotions and references to the power of music.

Now whilst the idea of putting orchestras and choruses together was not entirely without precedent it is fair to say that starting a work just with solo piano, then slowly adding more and more instruments until a full orchestra is playing… and THEN adding a chorus and soloists really was excitingly new.  

That said, it’s still worth remembering that the concert went pretty badly and there’s an anecdote that has been passed down… that sounds somewhat convincing… that half-way through the piece there was a section where Beethoven had told the orchestra during the rehearsal NOT to play a repeat noted in the score… but half the orchestra did play the repeat and half didn’t. Beethoven, who, remember, was playing the piano part… and conducting… stopped the performance… shouting at the musicians… ‘Badly played. Wrong. Again.’ After which the performance resumed.

Here it is performed, uninterrupted this time,  by the pianist Evgeny Kissin, the solo singers Cheryl Studer, Kristina Clemenz, Camille Capasso, John Aler, Hiroshi Oshima and Friedrich Molsberger, and the RIAS Chamber Choir, the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and the conductor Claudio Abbado. It is about 18  minutes long. Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy.

E

That was Beethoven’s  Choral Fantasy. The final piece performed at that concert on the evening of Thursday 22nd December 1808.

I want to leave you with a thought that occurred to me as I was preparing this episode. I am as guilty as anyone, perhaps more so, at having sat in concert halls or been listening to the radio when a ‘new’ piece of music has come along… and assuming that I am probably not going to enjoy what I am about to hear. So, would I have been one of the restless, disgruntled crowd in Vienna wishing I was listening to a nice old symphony from Mozart instead of this ‘new’ music from Herr Beethoven? Sad to say I probably would have been. But maybe most of us would. What am I trying to say? Everything we listen to was once ‘new’ unheard music… being put out into the world by courageous, or driven, or wildly optimistic, or happily deluded people… composers, performers, promoters, commissioners and patrons.

Maybe we should be a little more welcoming to new music. Maybe we can pay better attention to the strange, difficult or challenging art happening around us right now. Because you just never know where the next work that will be loved in the future is going to come from… and when it is going to come along. As it did on that cold December night in Vienna at a not very successful concert more than two hundred years ago.

My name is Peter Cudlipp and you have been listening to the ‘Classical for Everyone’ Podcast. There’s one more bit of music coming up but first some information and some credits. If you would like to listen to past episodes, of which there are close to forty, or get details of the music I’ve played please head to the website classicalforeveryone.net. That address again is classicalforeveryone.net

And on the individual episode pages of the website there are links to Spotify playlists with the full versions of most of the music played in each of the episodes. I hope you have enjoyed this Beethoven focused episode of ‘Classical For Everyone’. If you want to make sure you don’t miss the shows as they are released then please Subscribe or Follow wherever you get your podcasts. And if you want to get in touch then you can email… info@classicalforeveryone.net. Thanks for your time and I look forward to playing you some more incredible music on the next ‘Classical For Everyone’.

This podcast is made with Audacity Software for editing, Wikipedia for Research, Claude for Artificial Intelligence and Apple, Sennheiser, Sony, Rode and Logitech for hardware… The music played is licensed through AMCOS / APRA. Classical For Everyone is a production of Mending Wall Studios and began life on Radio 2BBB in Bellingen NSW, Australia thanks to the late, great Mr Jeffrey Sanders. The producers do not receive any gifts or support of any kind from any organisation or individual mentioned in the show. But, never say never.

And I couldn’t have an episode with Beethoven’s 4^th piano concerto without playing you the incredible slow second section. Here it is. Alfred Brendel, Simon Rattle and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. Thanks again for listening.