London concerts and the spread of Beethoven

I found a posted article titled “Philharmonic Society” published on April 4th, 1843 in The Times. This article caught my attention because of how it described the night’s events. The article gives a program of the concert, and then goes into discussing the various pieces listed in a fanciful passing manner, until they bring up Beethoven. At first, the article seems to say that Beethoven is not interesting enough for the audience: “After Beethoven’s great work Symphonia Eroica, many of the company began to retire” (Philharmonic, The Times). However in the very next sentence the idea is proved to be the opposite when the article says, “The feeling seemed to be that after that stupendous production all else might fall flat” (Philharmonic, The Times). I found this interesting that the audience was so impressed by a work of music that the general consensus was to head home because everything else would not impress them after that! It is interesting to see that even though it had been over a decade, audiences in London were still getting used to the changes in music that Beethoven had brought. Beethoven had a huge change on the way symphonies were viewed as, “Beethoven’s symphonies… had created a sense of the multiple movements as a single work that possessed a psychological sequence through the several segments” (Kelly, First Nights p113). To this end, the author thought to bring up at the end of the article that Beethoven’s 9th was to be programmed soon (philharmonic, The Times). I believe that the author knew what was waiting for the patrons of these concerts, but I am not sure if the audience members themselves knew what to expect.

I do not know how long things took to travel from country to country. Now transmission of music is almost instant. If you have an internet connection, you can listen to something. However back then, music had to be distributed to musicians and orchestras, rehearsals had to be planned and run, and the fastest transport available was horse and buggy or early steam trains. How much of Beethoven’s music had English audience’s heard at the time this was written? How could someone accurately portray the excitement and change of what was to come in written word without sounding like a lunatic?