The Life of Ludwig van Beethoven, Volume IIThayer, Alexander Wheelock
History
The Life of Ludwig van Beethoven, Volume II
Thayer, Alexander Wheelock
Beethoven, Ludwig van, 1770-1827
The symphony is dedicated to Count Oppersdorff, a Silesian nobleman.
The castle of the Counts Oppersdorff lies near the town of Ober-Glogau,
which in early times was under their rule. Count Franz von Oppersdorff,
who died in Berlin in 1818, was a zealous lover of music who maintained
in his castle an orchestra which he strove to keep complete in point
of numbers by requiring all the officials in his employ to be able to
play upon an orchestral instrument. Partly through bonds of blood and
marriage, partly through those of friendship, the family of Oppersdorff
was related to many of the noble families of Austria--Lobkowitz,
Lichnowsky, etc. The castle of Lichnowsky at Grätz, near Troppau,
was scarcely a day’s journey from Ober-Glogau. Thus it happened that
Prince Lichnowsky, in company with Beethoven, paid a visit to Count
Oppersdorff at his castle, on which occasion the orchestra played the
Second Symphony. This, as the evidence indicates, was in the fall of
1806.
[48] Dr. Riemann, who introduced this letter in the body of the text
of this biography, preceded it with the following observations on the
significance of the transaction between Beethoven and Clementi: “This
business plays an extraordinarily important rôle in the next three
years of Beethoven’s life (until the spring of 1810). The publication
of its details has made portions of the account in the first edition
of this work wholly untenable, since those portions were based on
the assumption that the conclusion of the contract with Clementi had
been followed also by the prompt payment of the honorarium (in 1807),
whereas, as a matter of fact, the payment was delayed for three years,
as has been plainly shown by the correspondence between Clementi and
Collard. Clementi, it would seem, spent the eight years following 1802,
when he went to St. Petersburg with Field, till 1810, entirely on the
Continent (in St. Petersburg, Berlin, Leipsic, Rome) and sojourned
several times in Vienna. We know from Ries’s account that he did not
come into contact with Beethoven during his extended stay in 1804, but
we also know that as early as the fall of 1804, he tried to secure the
right of publishing Beethoven’s works in England.”
[49] This is given from Jahn’s copy, to which is appended the following
note: “Titles of the 6 works with changed dedications: 3 quartets,
the name Rasoumowsky changed in Beethoven’s handwriting to ~à son
Altesse le Prince Charles de Lichnowsky~. The name of Frau von Breuning
stricken out of the dedication of the arrangement of the Concerto.
The Pianoforte Concerto originally dedicated with a German title to
Archduke Rudolph, then with a French title ~à son ami Gleichenstein~.”
None of these changes was made; the “six works” came out with the
dedications originally intended.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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