Erste Beethoven Album – Ten Brilliant Piano Pieces for the Beethoven Monument
Album Beethoven – Dix Morceaux brillants pour le Piano
composés par Messieurs Chopin, Czerny, Döhler, Henselt, Kalkbrenner, Liszt, Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Moscheles, Taubert et Thalberg, et publiés par l’Editeur P. Mechetti pour contribuer aux Frais du Monument de Louis van Beethoven à Bonn. Vienne, Mechetti (PN 3593-3608) [Febr. 1842]
The texts and documents on this page are by Luigi Bellofatto.
The musical examples on this page are by Graziano Denini.
The Beethoven Album appeared in an edition of 500 copies, the proceeds of which—1,304 thalers and 15 kreuzers—were used to finance the erection of the Beethoven Monument in Bonn, inaugurated in 1845. Today, only a handful of copies are known to survive in Europe, including one in Germany (naturally at the Beethoven‑Haus in Bonn), and a single copy in the United States (at the Beethoven Center).
The importance of this undertaking is evident from the large number of foreign publishers listed on the title pages, who were involved in the distribution of the edition: R. Cocks & Co., Cramer, Addison & Beale, and J. J. Ewer & Co. in London; the publisher Lucca in Milan; Simon Richauld, Maurice Schlesinger, and E. Troupenas in Paris; and finally À l’Odéon and Dépôt de Musique in St. Petersburg.
Distribution was restricted to Germany so as not to infringe copyright laws in other countries. The frontispiece of the presentation volume contains a fine engraving of the planned monument by J. N. Geiger, along with drawings of Beethoven’s birthplace, the Schwarzspanierhaus—where he died in Vienna in 1827—and his grave.
This remarkable book was advertised for the first time on 19 January 1842 in the Wiener Zeitung. And here is the full title of the anthology:
ALBUM‑BEETHOVEN. / TEN / Brilliant Pieces / for the / PIANO / composed by Messrs. / Chopin, Czerny, Döhler, Henselt, Kalkbrenner, / Liszt, Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Moscheles, / Taubert and Thalberg, / and published by / THE PUBLISHER P. MECHETTI / to contribute to the expenses of the Monument / to / Ludwig van Beethoven / in / Bonn.
The Album Beethoven thus came into being between 1841 and 1842. According to Rudolf Elvers, Felix Mendelssohn received his personal copy accompanied by an undated letter—probably written between 29 and 30 December 1841.
The frontispiece of the volume is adorned with a characteristically Biedermeier illustration: a pen‑and‑ink drawing by J. N. Geiger idealizing, in a classically inspired posture, a statue of Beethoven enthroned upon a pedestal, in the guise of an Orpheus holding a lyre.
At the foot of the monument, the scattered sheets of music recall Beethoven’s great works: the Eroica and Pastoral Symphonies (and, curiously, not the Ninth Symphony, which would instead appear some fifty years later in Gustav Klimt’s Beethovenfries), the Pathétique Sonata, the Septet, Prometheus, Egmont, Fidelio, and Coriolan. Other generic headings without specific titles allude to concertos, sacred music, and chamber works.
A comparable project—the album dedicated to Mozart in 1842 (created to support the erection of the Mozart Monument)—also included compositions for voice and piano (Lieder). This was the Mozart‑Album (zum Besten des Mozart‑Denkmals), published by August Pott (Brunswick: J. P. Spehr, [1842]). The anthology had been conceived as early as 1839 and is divided into three sections: original Lieder, Lieder written specifically for the occasion with piano accompaniment, and piano pieces.
Felix Mendelssohn was represented in this anthology as well, though not with an original composition; instead, he appeared through Carl Czerny’s piano arrangement of Mendelssohn’s Lied The Garland, on a text by Thomas Moore: Der Blumenkranz. Lied ohne Worte / comp. von Mendelssohn‑Bartholdy / bearb. für Klavier von C. Czerny (pp. 124–125).
A complete copy of this extremely rare Mozart Album is preserved in the Music Department of the Staatsbibliothek Preußischer Kulturbesitz in Berlin.
Mechetti’s anthology, however, is devoted entirely to Beethoven’s principal instrument: the piano. It opens with what might aptly be described as a tombeau de Beethoven—a piano transcription by Franz Liszt of the “Marche funèbre” from the Eroica Symphony.
This opening piece is followed by contributions from the other composers, arranged in alphabetical order: the Prélude in C‑sharp minor, Op. 45, by Frédéric Chopin; the Nocturne in E‑flat major, Op. 647, by Carl Czerny; Deux Impromptus Fugitives, No. 1 in G major and No. 2 (a Tarantella) in G minor, Op. 39, by Theodor Döhler; the Wiegenlied in G‑flat major, Op. 13 No. 1, by Adolf Henselt; L’Echo! Scherzo brillant in C minor by Frédéric Kalkbrenner; the 17 Variations sérieuses in D minor, Op. 54, by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy; Deux Études, No. 1 in F major and No. 2 in D minor, Op. 105, by Ignaz Moscheles; and the Fantasie in B‑flat major, Op. 54, by Wilhelm Taubert.
The volume concludes with the Romance sans paroles in G minor, Op. 41 No. 1, by the virtuoso Sigismond Thalberg, which Mechetti also published separately together with a four‑hand version of the same piece.
As one reviewer observed, “Thalberg’s Romance produces a great effect, but it is not exactly a masterpiece of invention.” Felix Mendelssohn—himself the author of many Romances sans paroles (and who here ceded the field to Liszt’s pianistic rival)—might well have agreed with this assessment.
What is striking, however, is that Mendelssohn chose precisely this occasion to engage with the genre of the variation, already widely cultivated at the time. The publication of the Variations sérieuses constitutes a genuine homage to Beethoven. Mendelssohn completed the work on 4 June 1841 and sent it to the Viennese publisher Pietro Mechetti on 16 August of the same year, so that it might be included in the Album Beethoven.
The tribute to Beethoven is not limited to the charitable purpose of the publication; it is woven into the very structure of the composition. In crafting this remarkable series of seventeen variations on an Andante sostenuto theme—solemnly conceived in the spirit of a chorale with austere four‑part writing—Mendelssohn took as his model Beethoven’s Thirty‑Two Variations in C minor. The “seriousness” invoked by the title also points unmistakably to the Bachian model, especially the Chaconne for solo violin, which since the nineteenth century had inspired a flourishing tradition of piano transcriptions.
Finally, the alphabetical ordering of the Album Beethoven recalls the anthology published by Anton Diabelli in Vienna some twenty years earlier. As is well known, Beethoven contributed to that collection his celebrated Thirty‑Three Variations, Op. 120. Already upon its publication, the preface justified the alphabetical arrangement as “an alphabetical index of all those names [of the time] already renowned or promising for the future.”
Two separate volumes were issued: one containing Beethoven’s own variations, and another comprising the fifty variations by other composers. The project was described as “formed of variants for the pianoforte on a given theme, composed by the most distinguished musicians of Vienna and of the Imperial and Royal Austrian States.” (These two volumes will be discussed in a dedicated article.)
The malleability of Diabelli’s waltz theme allowed the various composers to give free rein to their imagination, and it highlights the techniques of thematic variation characteristic of this particular period in the history of music. Among the contributors to our Album Beethoven who also appear in the Diabelli collection are Czerny, Kalkbrenner, Liszt, and Moscheles. Beethoven’s fertile “act of presumption” in this context is well known; what remains striking today—as it was in 1824—is that Beethoven’s name was placed alongside those of composers then unknown or, at best, promising talents.
In this light, it is not at all accidental that Mendelssohn chose to contribute to the Album Beethoven in a genre that Adolf Bernhard Marx rightly regarded as “one of the sources of Beethoven’s historical legacy.”
