Beethoven by John Clubbe

Author:John Clubbe
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2019-04-29T00:00:00+00:00

The Akademie of December 22, 1808

In mid-1808 Beethoven, to resuscitate his uncertain finances, began to plan an Akademie, or benefit concert for himself, to be given that December. This Akademie surely ranks as one of the pivotal moments in his career. What scholars have neglected—in fact barely touched upon—is the role Napoleon played in shaping this concert and the repercussions it had for Beethoven. Most studies investigating Beethoven’s response to Napoleon stop with his withdrawal of the dedication to the Eroica in 1804 or soon after. Scholars have often probed Beethoven’s response to the French leader during the years previous to 1804, but for them Beethoven’s emphatic rejection of him in May of that year marks the end of his interest, at least until his death in 1821. But Napoleon’s impact on Beethoven does not cease. In fact in 1804 it had hardly begun. Beethoven’s deeply felt rivalry with Napoleon was virtually a lifelong experience. The figure of Napoleon goads Beethoven to compose music as great in its very different way as the French emperor’s achievements in the military and political realm.

Between October 1806 and October 1810 this rivalry on Beethoven’s part may well have been at its most intense. During these years Napoleon was Europe’s dominant figure. Those in power elsewhere hated or feared him, but others still viewed him as the main hope for social and political change in a Europe ruled arbitrarily by kings. Whatever opinion people held of him or his accomplishments, friend and foe regarded Napoleon as the most brilliant man of the age. Beethoven believed himself, in the realm of music, to be Napoleon’s equal. The Akademie of December 22, 1808, plays a key role in his ongoing competition with Napoleon. A turning point in his life, the Akademie and its extraordinary if contentious aftermath show Beethoven at his irascible, magnificent best, Napoleon’s greatest opponent—and admirer.

In terms of works first performed, this Akademie may be the most significant concert of classical music ever given in Vienna—or for that matter anywhere else. The audience that December day heard seven works, three of which—the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies and the Fourth Piano Concerto—are among Beethoven’s acknowledged masterpieces; another, the Choral Fantasy, may well also merit that designation; and a fifth, the Mass in C, long overshadowed by the later Mass in D, is in its own right a splendid achievement. The other two pieces on the program were the concert aria Ah, perfido! and what became the Piano Fantasy, Op. 77. Beethoven composed these works in the middle of what many have referred to as the “heroic” period that began in the early 1800s, when the composer said he now intended to embark on a “new path.”

The German word Akademie means a place of study, or a gathering of scholars, as it does in English, but in German it has, as noted earlier, an older sense as well. An Akademie was a concert sponsored by and paid for by an individual, in this case Beethoven, who

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