Trio in B-flat Major for Piano, Clarinet and Cello, Op. 11

Composer: BEETHOVEN, Ludwig van
  • Beethoven wrote this piece in 1797 and it premiered in Vienna in 1798.1
  • Beethoven dedicated this piece to Countess Maria Wilhelmine von Thun.2 This Viennese aristocrat was an influential salon hostess.3
  • The final movement of the trio is a set of variations on “Pria ch’io l’impegno,” (“Before I go to work”)4 from the 1797 opera L’amor marinaro ossia Il corsaro by Joseph Weigl. Weigl was Leopold II’s court composer, the protege and successor of Antonio Salieri.5
    • Weigl was a pallbearer at Beethoven’s funeral, but though the two composers knew each other professionally, they were probably not close friends.6

Sources

  1. Douglas Johnson et al, “Beethoven, Ludwig van,” Grove Music Online (Oxford University Press, 2001), accessed September 23, 2021, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000040026.
  2. Ibid.
  3. Sarah Goldsmith, “The Social Challenge: Northern and Central European Societies on the Eighteenth-Century Aristocratic Grand Tour,” in Beyond the Grand Tour: Northern Metropolises and Early Modern Travel Behaviour, ed. Gerrit Verhoeven, Rosemary Sweet, Sarah Goldsmith (UK: Routledge, 2017), ebook.
  4. Ludwig van Beethoven, Beethovens Werke: Vollständige, kritische durchgesehene, überall berechtige Ausgabe: Serie 11: Trios (Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1864), 271.
  5. Rudolph Angermüller and Teresa Hrdlicka-Reichenberger, “Weigl family,” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed January 13, 2022, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000030027.
  6. Peter Clive, Beethoven and His World: A Biographical Dictionary (UK: Oxford University Press, 2001), 391.

Cut IDs

11233 15499 16894 49503