They warned Beethoven: Never on a Friday night
Why BeethovenFrom today’s Sunday Times cover story:
A few days before the premiere of Beethoven’s ninth symphony, dog walkers in Vienna realized nothing was ever going to be the same again. As their pooches sniffed a concert placard, the owners learned about a ‘grand’ new symphony with ‘solo and chorus voices entering in the finale’, a massive breach with tradition which defined the symphony for orchestra alone. The announcement that ‘Herr Ludwig van Beethoven will himself participate in the direction’ was hardly reassuring, given the composer’s well-known deafness. The orchestra and chorus were to be supersized ‘as a favour’ by music societies. The symphony would be long, the longest ever heard.
But the most shocking detail was the date. The concert was that same week, May 7, 1824.
A Friday? people cried. No-one will come.
Read on here.
Happy paywall to y’all.
Yes — the UK broadsheets, except the Guardian, are notoriously stingy. Even the New York Times allows a few free articles per month. The Times, the Telegraph, nada.
‘Happy paywall to y’ all.’ A comment so concise as to verge upon the perfunctory. If it pleases Herr Forkenspoon to have posted the comment, if it gives pleasure to some of his readers – very mild and very brief pleasure in most cases, I would think – then the sum total of happiness in the world has increased, but not significantly. To call Herr Forkenspoon’s comment insignificant wouldn’t be too harsh, I think.
I’m certain that a case can be made, needs to be made, for paywalls, paying for online materials, paying for print publications – books, newspapers, magazines – paying for concerts, paying to support orchestras, opera companies, classical musicians. If someone has a strong interest in some form of culture then a person should be willing to support it financially. Similarly for a very wide range of other interests, good causes and the rest.
If a person genuinely has no spare income, then obviously this isn’t possible. If people have adequate money, plenty of money or too much money and are completely dependent upon material obtainable free of charge, on the internet and in other forms, then they should consider a drastic change: the free material supplementing the paid-for material, not replacing it.
Football is an interest of mine, in particular the fortunes of Sheffield Wednesday football club, but not a very strong interest. I live not far from the Sheffield Wednesday football ground, just outside the Hillsborough area. The supporters of this and other football clubs could teach cultural free-loaders a thing or two. An adult ticket to a Sheffield Wednesday home game costs not far short of £50. It adds up to a lot of money over a season. A sizeable number of supporters travel to away games as well. These people really are showing commitment. A football supporter who never pays out money to support the team is no supporter at all.
People in my advanced age group are more likely to have heard of the musician and critic Hans Keller than much younger people. He combined an interest in football with an interest in the string quartet and other musical forms. He was associated for a time with the Lindsay String Quartet, which made an enormous contribution to the musical life of Sheffield. I think Hans Keller’s reputation as a writer on music was an inflated one, but that’s another matter. There’s not a vast amount that musically minded people can do to support live music in Sheffield. What I can do, what I have done, is to buy CD’s of string quartets and other works – and to buy them new, not second hand, so that the musicians get some recompense, if not nearly enough.
If people have not only made the arduous, sustained effort needed to master a musical instrument or train their voice but have had to face the harsh realities of auditions, many auditions, have had the difficulties of establishing themselves, and once established, facing the harsh realities of criticism, potentially reputation-reducing or career-ending criticism – and repeatedly – then they thoroughly deserve to be adequately rewarded. So do the conductors, who face similar, enormous difficulties. So do the critics, if they write well, as so many of them do. Very accomplished music criticism can be written as a hobby, as a labour of love, but it’s important that paid music criticism flourishes as well.
So too for other forms of writing, including journalism.
I strongly believe in the importance of supporting good journalism, local as well as national, by paying for it, but the support obviously has to be very selective support.
In my own case, I’ve never had a high income. My first job was as an unskilled builder’s labourer and for most years of my working life, I worked part time. There are difficult decisions to be made when deciding what to support financially, dilemmas to be faced. Herr Forkenspoon is a free agent, of course, but perhaps he could even consider posting another comment, a longer one, explaining what his own practice is – if he doesn’t consider these matters too sensitive to be brought into the public domain.
It is very unlikely that dog walkers had any thought whatsoever on seeing the posters. They were meant for music lovers and musicological research has shown that they almost never had dogs, and if so, expensive spaniels. Also it appears there were only two posters, at the Graben and at the corner of Kärntnerstrasse and Annagasse, the last one being blown away by the wind after 3 hours and 36 minutes, in western direction. In the conversation books one can read an angry exchange with Karl Holz who had had busied himself with the printing, and who got the spelling of B’s name wrong so it read Heetboven. It was a performance ridden with unexpected organisational complications.
On Fridays Clementi had dinner with his mother.