WoO 125 La Tiranna: Ah grief to Think! Lied for voice and piano
Andante
WoO 125 – La Tiranna: Ah grief to Think! – c. 1798, published in London, Broderip and Wilkinson, 1800. Hess 135 – KH. (WoO)125.
The knowledge of this small composition, the original manuscript of which is lost, is due to the music amateur William Wennington, who, being in Vienna in 1798, had the chance to hear it sung—probably at the Lichnowsky house—and brought back to London a manuscript copy, having it printed there with the English text that has been preserved to this day, even in Hess’s recent publication, though we do not know if it corresponds to the original. The music is smooth and pleasant, without any expressive intention. The text:
Ah grief To think! ah Woe to name,
The doom that fate has destin’d mine
Forbid to fan my wayward flame,
And, slave to silence, hopeless pine!
( William Wennington)
[By Biamonti Giovanni – Catalogo cronologico e tematico delle opere di Beethoven comprese quelle inedite e gli abbozzi non utilizzati, Torino, ILTE 1968]
Official title: WoO 125 LaTiranna Canzonetta (Es-dur) nach einem Text von William Wennington für Singstimme und Klavier Widmung: Barbara von Tschoffen NGAXII/1 Nr. 19 AGA-SBGV/7 (Hess 135)
Creation and publication: The song was composed in late 1798 in Vienna. The original edition was published by Broderip & Wilkinson in London in December 1799. The sketches, dated late 1798, must have preceded the completion of the Canzonetta. For Alan Tyson, “December 1798 is decisive for the composition of the Canzonetta.” Beethoven may have been driven to compose the song by his direct acquaintance with William Wennington, who was probably in Vienna in 1798. It remains unclear whether an original Viennese edition existed, as suggested by the imprint of the English edition, since no copies have been found outside England nor any newspaper advertisements. The London edition is thus very likely the earliest English-print of a Beethoven composition.
Text: the title hints at an original Italian version of the poem; however, no poem attributable to the text has yet been discovered. As seen in the surviving sketches, Beethoven used Wennington’s English poem “Drache” for his music. If Beethoven still wrote the words phonetically in the early drafts, they are correctly inscribed in the final sketch. Wennington’s poem is known only through Beethoven’s setting.
Dedication: (Maria Carolina) Barbara (Claudia) von Tschoffen, née Puthon, born 1772 in Vienna and died there in 1847, pianist, pupil of Leopold Kozeluch. According to family tradition, she is said to have been a pupil of Beethoven, though there is no further evidence of this. Her parents, Johann Baptist and Katharina von Puthon, ran a highly regarded salon in Vienna. Blaxland supposes Wennington and Beethoven first met at the palace of Prince Karl von Lichnowsky. Based on the dedication, Walther Brauneis supposes Beethoven met Wennington in the Puthon-Tschoffen salon. Beethoven lived very close to the Puthons at that time. The dedication of the original English edition is to Wennington. Premiere unknown.
The sketches are treated in an article specially prepared for the Beethovenian Musical Research Centre: www.lvbeethoven.org: https://www.lvbeethoven.it/biamonti192/
