Dear Armando and Luigi, I read the article with great interest and, among other things, I was struck by the fact that it is stated that the first sketches of Christ on the Mount of Olives date back to the autumn of 1802. Further down, it says that Beethoven himself claimed, however, that it took him 14 days to compose it and thus, at least theoretically, the math doesn't add up. It is my understanding that things actually went this way:
Emanuel Schikaneder, better known for having written the libretto for Mozart's Die Zauberflöte, was the artistic director of Vienna's main and largest theater: the Theater an der Wien - formerly Theater auf der Wieden – where operas were performed for a bourgeois audience that preferred entertaining works in the German language. However, from 1802 onwards, the French operas of Luigi Cherubini and André Grétry, heroic, dramatic, and highly musical, began to make inroads. At the beginning of 1803, Schikaneder proposed to Beethoven to compose a German opera to try to stem this phenomenon. In the contract, he offered Beethoven and his brother Karl the opportunity to reside in a service apartment in the theater on the second floor, in the capacity of composer for the same. Beethoven accepted and, by January 22nd, was already settled there, as we learn from letter 125 to the publisher Breitkopf & Härtel. In addition to the residence, the contract granted him the possibility of holding an academy for his benefit.
The libretto of the opera, naturally, was offered to the composer by Schikaneder himself and it was Vestas Feuer. Did Beethoven look at the libretto or not? Certainly, whatever the case, he set it aside: what actually interested him at that moment was organizing the Academy as soon as possible in order to earn money as quickly as possible, which he was always short of.
In the time leading up to the date of the Academy – April 5th – the correspondence of the Beethoven brothers was focused on Breitkopf & Härtel and, furthermore, there was a tail end regarding the publication of Opus 29 that was definitively clarified.
The program for the Academy was decided very quickly and, obviously, the choice was made for orchestral novelties: "Second Symphony Opus 36" and the "Third Piano Concerto Opus 37," with the addition, however, of the First Symphony Opus 21. It was important, however, to highlight the new role Beethoven had from Schikaneder and therefore, it was necessary to compose something that utilized the theater's choir.
Since 1790 in Bonn, Beethoven had no longer composed vocal music with choirs and solo voices and, therefore, Vienna did not know him at all in this regard. In March, Beethoven chose the theme and it was an Oratorio, which after various revisions became "Christ on the Mount of Olives Opus 85." For the organization, once again and as always, it was the composer's friends who took interest, and Beethoven only decided the ticket price, also because during that very period, his brother Karl fell ill with a serious disease and the composer had to take care of him.
Now, my dear friends, the fact that the sketches date back to the autumn of 1802 puts the whole thing in a bit of a crisis, and since I am writing a Beethovenian biography linked to his works on my blog, I would like to understand exactly how things went instead.
Thank you in advance
