The Beethoven concert of 22 December 1808 was a benefit concert held for Ludwig van Beethoven at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna that featured the public premieres of Beethoven's Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, the Fourth Piano Concerto and the Choral Fantasy. The performers were a pickup orchestra, a chorus, vocal soloists, and Beethoven as conductor and piano soloist. The concert was held in a very cold hall, lasted too long (about four hours), and showed poor standards of performance, thus providing a very shaky launch for works that eventually came to be recognized as masterpieces. Beethoven biographer Barry Cooper calls the concert's content the "most remarkable" of Beethoven's career.
Conditions for the performance of symphonic music in the Vienna of 1808 were hardly optimal, as Robert Kahn explains:
In Vienna, the theaters were either under government sponsorship (the Burgtheater and the Kärntnertortheater, both in central Vienna) or were private enterprises located in the outer districts of the city. Beethoven's chosen venue, the Theater an der Wien, was in the latter category. It was a very substantial building, described as "the most lavishly equipped and one of the largest theatres of its age." It had opened to rave reviews in 1801; for instance, the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung called it the "most comfortable and satisfactory in the whole of Germany" (which meant at the time, "all German-speaking lands"). Beethoven had already premiered several of his most important works to date in this theater; for a listing see Theater an der Wien; and he had even lived in the theater building (which included some apartments) while working on his never-finished opera (1803) Vestas Feuer.
During 1807 and 1808, Beethoven had provided his works and services to a series of charity concerts at the Theater an der Wien. The Theater's director, Joseph Hartl, ultimately permitted Beethoven to use the venue for the 22 December 1808 concert, which was for Beethoven's private benefit. Beethoven had lobbied for a private benefit concert for many monthsâÂÂin return for his participation in the charity concertsâÂÂand expressed frustration at what he perceived to be Hartl's procrastination on the matter.
The Wiener Zeitung carried an advertisement for the concert on 17 December 1808, labelling it a "musical Akademie"; this was the common German term for a concert in Beethoven's time.
The concert commenced at 6:30 p.m. and lasted for approximately four hours, with an interval (intermission) separating two parts:
Of the non-premiered works, "Ah! perfido" had been composed in 1796. The C major Mass had been premiered the previous year in Eisenstadt under the auspices of Prince Esterházy. According to Sutton, the improvised piano fantasia is the work that was later written out and published as the , Beethoven's Op. 77 (1809).
The Choral Fantasy was the last of the works to be composed; it was barely finished in time for the concert, leaving insufficient opportunity for rehearsal. It was the concert's concluding work, bringing together pianist, choir and orchestra.
The two movements from the Mass in C were not advertised in the programme as such, due to restrictions on performing church music in theatres.
The program would strike most concertgoers today as being extraordinarily long. Yet in Beethoven's time, this was perhaps not so. Lowe writes:
Thus it is possible that the difficulty of the concert for listeners may have arisen from the need to take in a whole series of complex and original works (see critical reactions below), as well as the cold.
Forced to squeeze in his benefit concert at a very busy time, Beethoven was handicapped in summoning adequate musical forces. In principle, he had access to the professional orchestra of the Theater an der Wien, but many of its members had a conflicting engagement: the Tonkünstler-Societät, a benevolent society for the widows and orphans of musicians, was putting on one of its four annual oratorio performances at the Burgtheater. The Society generally required its members to participate in its benefit concerts or pay a fine. Indeed, Beethoven's concert provoked the ire of Antonio Salieri, his former teacher, who was in charge of the Tonkünstler-Societät and thus responsible for ensuring attendance. Salieri threatened to ban any musicians of the Society who had played in Beethoven's concert instead of his own. (Following the concerts the relationship between the two composers improved.)
The scheduling conflict with the Tonkünstler-Societät reduced the number of skilled professionals available to Beethoven, and amateurs were employed to fill the gaps. In the end, the ad hoc orchestra Beethoven was able to summon was a moderately sized ensemble that is likely to have had in the order of six to eight first violins for the evening. Amateur and semi-professional concerts of the period saw larger orchestras.
Beethoven was the pianist for the concerto, the improvised fantasia and the Choral Fantasy. Never again would Beethoven appear as a soloist in a piano concerto: his declining hearing would render it impossible. Contemporary accounts describe Beethoven as the conductor of the orchestra; however, it is possible that because of frustrations arising at a November 15 concert, Beethoven only had limited direction over the orchestra, and the orchestra had refused to rehearse under his baton.
By all accounts, the execution of the music was inferior. One review targeted the orchestra, saying that it "could be considered lacking in all respects". Initially, Beethoven had chosen the outstanding soprano Anna Milder to sing the âÂÂAh! perfidoâ scene and aria, but she dropped the role after a quarrel between Beethoven and her fiance Peter Hauptmann. The soloist chosen instead was the teenage Josephine Killitschgy, the sister-in-law of Ignaz Schuppanzigh, who was so taken by stage fright that she butchered the solo.
An aggravating factor for the audience was the extremely cold weather.
The lowest point in the performance occurred during the Choral Fantasy, which had been insufficiently rehearsed; adherence to the score fell apart at one point, leading Beethoven to stop and restart the piece. Ignaz von Seyfried later wrote:
This part of Seyfried's account emphasizes the humor of the situation, but there were also some negative consequences for Beethoven. Seyfried goes on:
In this troubled venture Beethoven did enjoy the advantage that many in the audience were enthusiasts for his music and eager to attend. One such was the composer Johann Friedrich Reichardt, who was visiting Vienna. He later wrote (in his Personal Letters Written on a Trip to Vienna, 1810):
Prince von Lobkowitz was a patron and supporter of Beethoven. Reichardt goes on to say:
Reichardt's opinion echoed that of the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung:
The works on the program have been esteemed to different degrees by posterity. The 5th and 6th Symphonies managed to overcome their unfortunate premiere and eventually emerged as key works of the symphonic repertoire; and the G major piano concerto likewise came to be among the most beloved works of its genre. The Choral Fantasy is often performed, less so the soprano aria and the Mass in C, and still less so the improvised piano fantasy, assuming that is indeed the work published later as Opus 77.
Beethoven's biographer Thayer writes that "the pecuniary results of this concert to Beethoven are not known" but that a record indicates that Prince Esterházy ordered "the sum of 100 gulden to be paid to Beethoven in support of this 'musical Akademie.' "
The audacity and weight of Beethoven's concert program has inspired various modern orchestras to replicate it. The following list is ordered chronologically.