Spohr's poignant account also relates how Beethoven, unable to hear the orchestra during rehearsals, would get many measures ahead of them, recovering his place only when he could visually see them beginning a forte passage. Sometimes, to increase the forte, he would shout aloud to the orchestra, without being aware of it.
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Then at a crescendo, he would gradually raise himself until, at the forte, he sprang to his full height. At a piano, he would crouch down, bending lower as the music became softer. Whenever there was a sforzando, he tore his arms, which he had previously crossed on his breast, violently asunder. Beethoven had the habit of conveying expression to his orchestra by all sorts of peculiar motions of the body. Spohr gives the following account of his conducting:Īlthough I had heard much about his conducting, it still greatly surprised me. (Meyerbeer was always behind the beat, according to Beethoven.) The composer himself, though already quite deaf, conducted the entire program. Those who did not play orchestral instruments, such as Salieri, Hummel, Moscheles and Meyerbeer, assisted with bass drums, cymbals and cannon for the Battle Symphony. The well-known violinist and composer Louis Spohr played in the violin section, and the virtuoso Dragonetti played double bass. The orchestra on that occasion was noteworthy, Maelzel having persuaded many of the leading musicians of the day to participate. 7 was also enthusiastically received, and its second movement so impressed his audience that it had to be played twice.
The latter, which Beethoven is said to have called "a stupid thing," with its battery of percussion and battle noises, was the spectacular success of the evening but his Symphony No.
There followed marches by Dussek and Pleyel, and the program concluded with the featured work, a bombastic new "Battle Symphony" by Beethoven, which he called Wellington's Victory. The program opened with the premiere of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony, which had been completed the previous year. At the end of the year 1813, Johann Nepomuk Maelzel, Beethoven's friend and the inventor of the metronome, organized a concert for the benefit of Austrian and Bavarian soldiers wounded in a battle against Napoleon.
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