The Life of Ludwig van Beethoven, Volume IThayer, Alexander Wheelock
History
The Life of Ludwig van Beethoven, Volume I
Thayer, Alexander Wheelock
Beethoven, Ludwig van, 1770-1827
IV. However convincing the preceding propositions may seem to the
ordinary reader, the critical student of musical history justly demands
something more. It is not enough for him to know that Op. 19 was
composed before the publication of Op. 1; that Op. 2 is in part made
up from the Pianoforte Quartets of 1785; that the Quintet Op. 4 is an
arrangement of the “Parthia” in E-flat for wind-instruments afterwards
published as Op. 103, and is now proved to belong to the Bonn period,
and that a whole movement of the funeral cantata found its way into
“Fidelio”--the argument is to him like an arch without its keystone
until one or more of the important works be named specifically as Bonn
compositions and proved to be such.[62]
FOOTNOTES:
[49] The discoveries made after Thayer completed and printed his first
volume in German (1866), largely inspired by his labors, have made
a thorough revision of this chapter imperative. In all that follows
the editor has accepted the statement of facts made by Dr. Deiters in
his revised version of the first volume published in 1901, but, in
pursuance of his plan as set forth in the introduction, has omitted
that which seemed to him more or less inconsequential, as well as that
which belongs in the field of analysis and criticism.
[50] There have been a few performances of this cantata in Austria
and Germany since its publication. It was given at a concert of
the Beethoven Association in New York on March 16, 1920, under the
direction of Mr. Sam Franko, with an English paraphrase of the text
by the Editor of this biography, designed to rid it of its local
application and some of its bombast and make its sentiment applicable
to any heroic emancipator.
[51] See Vol. II, p. 210, of the first German edition of this work.
Ries says, on page 124 of the “Notizen,” apropos of the posthumous
manuscripts: “All such trifles and things which he never meant to
publish, as not considering them worthy of his name, were secretly
brought into the world by his brothers. Such were the songs published
when he had attained the highest degree of fame, composed years before
at Bonn, previous to his departure for Vienna; and in like manner other
trifles, written for albums, etc., were secretly taken from him and
published.”
[52] The subject of the German Song was used by Beethoven later in a
sonata.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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