It might not seem that Beethoven was composing many substantial works during 1803, but he was spending much of his time that year working on a new symphony. He initially planned to dedicate it to the First Consul of France, and then decided to give it the name of “Bonaparte.”
Perhaps about the same time that Beethoven was working on the funeral march in his Third Symphony, he composed the Three Marches for Piano Four Hands, published as Opus 45. This work is not nearly as interesting as the funeral march (except for piano duos, of course).
#Beethoven250 Day 174
3 Marches for Piano Four-Hands (Opus 45), 1803
The piano duo of Adrienne Soós and Ivo Haag performing in Basel. Check out the people on the staircase with the overhead keyboard view!
In his book on Beethoven’s symphonies, Lewis Lockwood writes (p. 44):
For Beethoven, the march, especially the military march, was prominent all through his first twenty years in Vienna, a period of almost perpetual war and invasion, as Austria found itself in conflict first with the post-Revolutionary French regime and then with Napoleon. Vienna housed important military garrisons, while its poorer citizens suffered for years under the burdens of war, inflation, economic deprivation, and social unrest.
The march as a genre fit well with Beethoven’s unflagging interest in composing varied types of independent pieces for public occasions, and he cultivated it at all levels—from popular examples to march-like movements of the highest seriousness—and often at the same time.