Beethoven's Ninth Symphony

<b>Brings to life the day-to-day details of staging the premiere of one of the most iconic works of Western classical music.</b><br><br>The Ninth Symphony of Ludwig van Beethoven with its final choral movement is one of the iconic works of Western classical music. And yet the story never fully told concerns the months leading to the symphony's world premiere in Vienna on 7 May and repeat performance on 23 May 1824. In his new book Theodore Albrecht brings to life the day-to-day details that it took to stage that premiere. It's a story of negotiating for performance halls and performers' payments of hand-copying legible scores and individual parts for over 120 performers of finding financiers as well as space and time for rehearsals. Importantly it is also a story of the relationship between Beethoven and the musicians who performed this symphonic masterpiece. In fact as the maddening rehearsal schedule towards the symphony's premiere shows it transpires that many passages of the Ninth have been tailored to specific orchestral players.<br><br><br>Many modern-day musicians will recognize familiar situations in rehearsals many scholars and students will relish unprecedented new detail. All this comes to the fore by reconstructing the story drawing on the (almost) deaf composer's Conversation Books which Beethoven had been using since 1818. In the performance story of the Ninth Symphony's premiere Albrecht makes full use of these invaluable documents which are now being translated for the first time into English in a series of 12 volumes published by the Boydell Press.