Beethoven unveiled

Synopsis

On today's date in 1845, the sleepy little German town of Bonn played host to some 5000 visitors. These ranged from curious natives and opportunistic pickpockets to famous composers, performers, and music lovers from many countries, including their royal highnesses, the British monarch Queen Victoria and her royal consort, Prince Albert.

The occasion was the gala unveiling of a bronze stature of the great German composer, Ludwig van Beethoven, who had been born in Bonn 75 years earlier. A Beethoven Festival was in progress, and before the unveiling of the Beethoven statue, the German composer Ludwig Spohr had conducted a performance of Beethoven’s “Missa solemnis” at the Bonn Cathedral.

For almost a decade, the Hungarian composer and pianist Franz Liszt had been tireless in fundraising for this event and almost single-handedly saw to it that it even occurred at all. Liszt was the largest contributor the Beethoven statue fund, and for years had been performing benefit recitals to enlist others in supporting the project.

On August 12th the big day had finally arrived. Alas, the Festival planning committee was totally unprepared for the huge crowd that descended on Bonn, and woefully incompetent in managing just about every aspect of the Festival.

How incompetent? Well, consider this: as their majesties Queen Victoria and King Wilhelm the IV of Prussia looked on, with great fanfare the shroud fell from Beethoven’s statue—only to reveal the statue’s BACK facing the vast assembled crowd…

Oops.

Music Played in Today's Program

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 - 1827) Congratulations Minuet Berlin Philharmonic; Herbert von Karajan, cond. DG 453 713

On This Day

Births

• 1644 - Bohemian composer Heinrich Ignaz Franz Von Biber, in Wartenburg (now Straz pod Ralskem) near Reichenberg (now Liberec);

Deaths

• 1612 - Italian composer Giovanni Gabrieli, age c. 55 (his exact birthdate is uncertain), in Venice;

• 1928 - Czech composer Leos Janácek, age 74, in Ostrava;

• 1992 - American composer John Cage, age 79, in New York;

Premieres

• 1845 - Verdi: opera "Alzira," in Naples at the Teatro San Carlo;

• 1964 - David Del Tredici: "I Hear an Army" for soprano and string quartet (based on a poem by James Joyce) at Tangelwood Festival in Massachusetts;

• 1964 - Panufnik: "Sinfonia Sacra," in Monaco, as the prize-winning work in an international competition sponsored by Prince Rainer III

• 1984 - Berio: opera "Un Re in ascolto" (A King Listening), at the Salzburg Festival, conducted by Lorin Maazel

• 2001 - Esa-Pekka Salonen: "Foreign Bodies," at the Schlewswig-Holstein Festival in Germany, with the Finnish Radio Symphony conducted by Esa-Pekka Saraste;

Others

• 1845 - A statute of Beethoven is unveiled in Bonn, Germany, the composer's birthplace; Ludwig Spohr conducts a performance of Beethoven's "Missa Solemnis" at the Bonn cathedral; Liszt had been instrumental in raising funds for the statue, and was present, as was Hector Berlioz, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert of Great Britain, and the King and Queen of Prussia;

• 1877 - Frequently listed (and almost certainly incorrect) date on which the American inventor Thomas Alva Edison recorded his own voice reciting, “Mary had a little lamb” on a tin-foil cylinder phonograph of his own design; Edison filed the patent for his new invention on December 24, and it was granted on February 19, 1878; In London in April of 1888, Edison’s phonograph would record excerpts from a live Crystal Palace performance of Handel’s oratorio, “Israel in Egypt”; On December 2, 1889, Theo Wangemann, a representative of Thomas Edison recorded Johannes Brahms playing the piano in Vienna. The latest research suggests the voice introducing this famous recording is probably that of Wangemann, not Brahms himself, as was earlier thought;

• 1922 - First live broadcast concert of the New York Philharmonic over New York radio station WJZ; The concert was broadcast from Lewisohn Stadium during the orchestra's summer series, and included music by Dvorák, Saint-Saens, Mendelssohn, Rimksy-Korsakov, Brahms, and Gluck. The conductor was Willem van Hoogstraten, the orchestra's regular summer-event director; On October 5, 1930, the New York Philharmonic began its regular weekly series of Sunday afternoon national broadcasts over the Columbia radio network