In 1815, Beethoven acquired a new music publisher, Sigmund Anton Steiner, who also owned a music store that Beethoven enjoyed visiting. In his letters, Beethoven whimsically addresses Steiner as Lieutenant General, and signs himself General-in-Chief. Together they seem to be commanding an army to bring Beethoven’s music to the public. One of Steiner’s copyists and proof-readers was Anton Diabelli, referred to by Beethoven as the Provost Marshall, and often Diabolus.
In real military news of 1815, after only nine months exiled on the island of Elba, Napoleon escaped on 26 February 1815. In two days he was again in France, heading towards Paris and accumulating popular support and additional soldiers along the way. The recently restored king, Louis XVIII, fled to Belgium. By mid-March 1815, the allied forces of Austria, Prussia, Russia, and Great Britain (still meeting at the Congress of Vienna) coordinated their armies in hopes of defeating the newly arisen Napoleon once again.
Beethoven’s Namensfeier (Name Day) Overture wasn’t originally supposed to be a political composition. Some sketches from 1809 refer to an “Overture for any occasion, or for concert use.” Beethoven picked it up again in 1811 but without finishing it.
In 1812, Beethoven worked more on his Overture, this time attempting to incorporate verses from Friedrich Schiller’s 1785 poem “An die Freude” (“Ode to Joy”), a poem that Beethoven had long admired and long desired to work into a musical composition.
During the Congress of Vienna, Beethoven repurposed his Overture (but retained the musical “joy”) as a work to celebrate the name day of Emperor Francis, 4 October 1814. But the Overture wasn’t completed until the next spring and not performed until December 1815.
#Beethoven250 Day 282
Namensfeier Overture in C Major (Opus 115), 1814–15
The Chamber Orchestra of Bad Nauheim, Germany, is conducted by its founder, Karin Hendel, in a recent performance.
The title page of the Name Day Overture doesn’t say that the work was “composed” by Beethoven, but rather than it was “poeticized” (gedichtet) by him — not all that surprising from someone who liked referring to himself as a Tondichter (“sound poet”).
Donald Francis Tovey was one of the few enthusiasts of the Name Day Overture. Writing in Essays in Musical Analysis, he says that the work conveys
the impulse of a crowd of loyal subjects to greet their sovereign in his progress through the streets of his capital.… The crowd interested him more [than name days]; and after the maestoso introduction has worked its pair of themes (a phrase in loud rhythmic chords and a broad cantabile tune) into a spacious exordium, the rest of the overture suggests an excited and joyful rumor, beginning in whispers and adding information gathered from many different quarters, until the glad news is confirmed and the populace rush together from all sides.
Curiously, Tovey’s description sounds more like the reaction of the French crowds to Napoleon’s march towards Paris rather than the Viennese celebrating their Emperor.