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On 22 December 1808, a benefit concert was held for Ludwig van Beethoven at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna. The concert, held in a very cold hall and approximately four hours long, featured the public premieres of Beethoven's Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, the Fourth Piano Concerto and the Choral Fantasy. The performers consisted of an orchestra, chorus, vocal soloists, and the composer as piano soloist. Beethoven biographer Barry Cooper refers to the concert, in terms of its content, as the "most remarkable" of Beethoven's career". ==Background== Conditions for the performance of symphonic music in the Vienna of 1808 were hardly optimal, as Kahn explains: Even a grand public concert could draw only from the aristocracy and the city's small middle class, (at ) no more than 2.5 percent of Vienna's 200,000 to 250,000 residents. The standard price for a concert ticket was two gulden ... which was more than a week's salary for a laborer. Musicians could not give academies in the summer, when the nobility fled the dust and heat of Vienna to their country estates, and during the fall and winter the theaters were given over to rehearsals and performances of operas, the high status form of musical production. The only time available for academies was during Advent and Lent, when operas were forbidden. During these six weeks, competition for halls was fierce, and theater managers could and did refuse nights to Beethoven in favor of mediocrities.〔Kahn, Robert S. (2010) ''Beethoven and the Grosse Fuge: Music, Meaning, and Beethoven's Most Difficult Work''. Rowman and Littlefield, p. 48〕 In Vienna, the theaters were either under government sponsorship (the Burgtheater and the Kärntnertortheater, both in central Vienna) or were private enterprises located in the outer districts of the city. Beethoven's chosen venue, the Theater an der Wien, was in the latter category. It was a very substantial building, described as "the most lavishly equipped and one of the largest theatres of its age."〔Peter Branscombe and David J. Buch, ("Emanuel Schikaneder" ) in ''Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians'' 〕 It had opened to rave reviews in 1801; for instance, the ''Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung'' called it the "most comfortable and satisfactory in the whole of Germany" (which meant at the time, "all German-speaking lands").〔Honolka 1990, p. 187〕 Beethoven had already premiered several of his most important works to date in this theater; for a listing see Theater an der Wien. During 1807 and 1808, Beethoven had provided his works and services to a series of charity concerts at the Theater an der Wien. The Theater's director, Joseph Hartl, ultimately permitted Beethoven to use the venue for the 22 December 1808 concert, which was for Beethoven's private benefit. Beethoven had lobbied for a private benefit concert for many months—in return for his participation in the charity concerts—and expressed frustration at what he perceived to be Hartl's procrastination on the matter. The ''Wiener Zeitung'' carried an advertisement for the concert on 17 December 1808, labelling it a "musical ''Akademie''"; this was the common term for a concert in Beethoven's time. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Beethoven concert of 22 December 1808」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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