Musical Statues

All seems calm in this 1845 painting of the Beethoven monument in Bonn. A few onlookers, a random dog, a little girl, ladies with parasols …

But the scenes at its unveiling in August of that year could not have been more different.  Huge crowds, limited accommodation, royalty – including a young Queen Victoria and Prince Albert – and a plethora of composers: Spohr, Meyerbeer, Berlioz, and Liszt, whose energy and drive enabled the project to reach a successful conclusion, 75 years after the year of Beethoven’s birth.

The project to erect a statue of Beethoven in his birthplace stalled in 1839 due to lack of funds, and the Beethoven commitee in Bonn announced that it had failed to raise enough money  despite an international appeal. An outraged Liszt wrote to the committee offering to make up the funds needed himself, and he started ‘crowd-funding’ nineteenth-century style, donating not only private funds but giving benefit concerts in aid of the venture, and leaving his partner Marie d’Agoult in Italy in order to return to Vienna to start the process. (That didn’t go down well.) 

A notable fund-raiser was the concert in April 1841 at the Paris Conservatoire where Liszt collaborated as pianist in a performance of Beethoven’s violin sonata known as the ‘Kreutzer’. Liszt also performed as soloist in Beethoven’s ‘Emperor’ concerto with an orchestra conducted by Berlioz; Berlioz conducted  Beethoven’s 9th Symphony. Who was the critic who wrote up the concert in the Dresden news? Richard Wagner, who himself wrote a book about Beethoven published in 1870, the year of Beethoven’s centenary.

The three-day 1845 Festival which accompanied the unveiling of the monument was a vast enterprise including fireworks, banquets, a ball and concerts, for which a temporary hall big enough to seat everyone had to be built in record time – the Beethovenhalle, pictured below in the Illustrated London News of that year. In Le journal des Débats, Berlioz wrote up the event. 

Liszt conducted Beethoven’s fifth symphony, and again performed as soloist in the ‘Emperor’ concerto as well as composing and conducting a cantata for the occasion – 

 As Liszt was the guest of honour, he was invited to make a speech at the final banquet. An uproar broke out when he mistakenly omitted to mention the French in his introductory acknowledgements. It was the last night of the festival; the champagne had flowed; national pride was aroused. In spite of a committee member mounting the table vainly trying to restore order, followed by the dancer Lola Montez (below) doing likewise, both were howled down and the evening ended in disarray, accompanied by a huge thunderstorm after three days of sweltering heat and a variety of concerts, some of which were very long … but the objective was achieved. Beethoven was honored, and the statue remains as a memorial to him – and, indeed, to the man who made it happen – Liszt.

On a personal note, today marks the tenth anniversary of my blog.  The first post, written on 24/10/2010, was Any Excuse to Play Liszt – and yes, I still find Any Excuse to Play Liszt, and to write about him, too. Many thanks to all who have read and – I hope – enjoyed my Notes From a Pianist.