Beethoven's Last March
You pretty much have to take a moment to appreciate this: 187 years ago this week, the vibration and flash of March snowstorm lightning woke the deaf, ailing 56-year-old Ludwig van Beethoven who'd been confined to his bed in Vienna for months. Startled from coma, the composer opened his eyes, raised his fist to rail against the sky, then collapsed back, dead.
Three days later, on March 29th, 1827, at least 10,000 grief-striken Viennese fans and citizens, and every local musician Beethoven had inspired, encouraged or berated, gathered for a funeral march with "simple" casket from the yard outside the Schwarzspanierhaus church to the more wooded area of Wahring, where a professional actor delivered a formal funeral oration written by playwright Franz Grillparzer who I wish could come back to teach us the fine art of obit and eulogy writing. Here's the whole transcript (you have to plow through an opening graph referring to Germany as the Fatherland), or just savor here the best last bit of testimonial in honor of a pure-hearted, tortured man who gave the world so much.
"No living man enters the halls of immortality. The body must die before the gates are opened. He whom you mourn is now among the greatest men of all time, unassailable forever.
"Return to your homes, then, distressed but composed. And whenever, during your lives, the power of [Beethoven's] works overwhelms you like a coming storm; when your rapture pours out in the midst of a generation yet unborn; then remember this hour and think: we were there when they buried him, and when he died we wept!
Here are two pieces of music that were played at Beethoven's funeral services, one composed by him, one not: Beethoven's Equali for four somber trombones, and Luigi Cherubini's "Requiem in C Minor," which the discerning LvB admired, and you'll love too when you listen to it.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laO7Zi6Zsm8?rel=0&w=420&h=315]