Composers Datebook

On this date in 1813, Beethoven's Seventh Symphony was played for the first time in Vienna. The occasion was a benefit concert in honor of the Austrian and Bavarian soldiers who had died fighting Napoleon, with the concert's proceeds donated to their widows and orphans. At its first rehearsal, some of the musicians found the part writing of the new work intimidating. A friend of Beethoven's who sat in on rehearsals later recalled: "the violin players refused to play a passage and rebuked [Beethoven] for writing difficulties that were incapable of performance. But Beethoven begged the gentlemen to take the parts home with them. If they were to practice it at home it would surely go. The next day the passage went excellently, and the gentlemen themselves seemed to rejoice that they had given Beethoven such pleasure." The slow movement of Beethoven's Symphony so pleased the Viennese audience at its premiere that it had to be encored. On today's date in 1980, a private tragedy also prompted music. On December 8th that year, ex-Beatle John Lennon was shot and killed outside his apartment in New York City. American composer Aaron Jay Kernis was then a student at the Manhattan School of Music, living not far from where Lennon was slain. The death moved Kernis to reshape elements of Lennon's song "Imagine" into an altogether new work for cello and piano titled "Meditation (in memory of John Lennon)."