Brings to life the day-to-day details of staging the premiere of one of the most iconic works of Western classical music.
The Ninth Symphony of Ludwig van Beethoven with its final choral movement is one of the iconic works of Western classical music. And yet, the story never fully told concerns the months leading to the symphony’s world premiere in Vienna on 7 May and repeat performance on 23 May 1824. In his new book, Theodore Albrecht brings to life the day-to-day details that it took to stage that premiere. It’s a story of negotiating for performance halls and performers’ payments, of hand-copying legible scores and individual parts for over 120 performers, of finding financiers, as well as space and time for rehearsals. Importantly, it is also a story of the relationship between Beethoven and the musicians who performed this symphonic masterpiece. In fact, as the maddening rehearsal schedule towards the symphony’s premiere shows, it transpires that many passages of the Ninth have been tailored to specific orchestral players.
Many modern-day musicians will recognize familiar situations in rehearsals, many scholars and students will relish unprecedented new detail. All this comes to the fore by reconstructing the story drawing on the (almost) deaf composer’s Conversation Books which Beethoven had been using since 1818. In the performance story of the Ninth Symphony’s premiere, Albrecht makes full use of these invaluable documents, which are now being translated for the first time into English in a series of 12 volumes published by the Boydell Press.
Inhoudsopgave
Preface
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1: Composition of the Ninth Symphony
Chapter 2: Petition, Preparations, Copying
Chapter 3: Finding a Location
Chapter 4: Final Preparations / First Rehearsals
Chapter 5: Rehearsals and Confusion
Chapter 6: Premiere and Celebratory Dinner
Chapter 7: One More Time
Chapter 8: Second Premiere and Financial Reality
Appendix A: Anton Schindler’s Acquaintance with Beethoven
(March, 1814 – May, 1824)
Appendix B: The
Ludlamshöhle Petition, late February, 1824
Appendix C: Vienna’s Principal Theaters and Halls in Beethoven’s Time
Appendix D: Orchestral Personnel, Kärntnertor Theater, 1822/1824
Appendix E: Choral Personnel, Kärntnertor Theater, 1822/1824
Appendix F: Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde’s Volunteer Sign-Up Sheet, 1824
Appendix G: Schindler’s Account of Beethoven’s Post-
Akademie
Dinner in the Prater
Bibliography
Index of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony
Index of Beethoven’s Other Compositions
General Index
Over de auteur
THEODORE ALBRECHT, Professor Emeritus of Music at Kent State University, Ohio, is an award-winning Beethoven scholar. He has authored many important articles on the composer and is the editor of Letters to Beethoven and Other Correspondence (1996) as well as translator and editor of Beethoven’s Conversation Books (Boydell Press).
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