Perhaps you've heard, but a crew of researchers is, as we speak, unearthing a time capsule potentially buried by Samuel Adams and Paul Revere in the cornerstone of the Massachusetts State House during what's believed to have been 1795. The contents? Some coins, old newspaper clippings and an engraved silver plate...similar to what you buried in the back yard when you were a kid. Recorded music was far from understood at that time but we're curious what kind of music and news from the art world the Adams/Revere combo would have passed along to us had they been aware. With that we give you a collection of noteworthy musical happenings from 1795:
Beethoven Publishes His First Piece of Music!
But not really. Although perhaps the world's greatest composer did publish Piano Trios, Op. 1 during 1795, this opus wasn't his first piece of published music despite the "Op. 1" labeling (his Dressler Variations came years earlier). Still, Revere and Adams would have been perhaps the hippest tastemakers in American history if they had sniffed out an Austrian import before he wrote those 9.5-ish symphonies. Even cooler than your uncle who saw R.E.M. at a bar in Athens in like 1980.
Haydn Performs "The Drumroll"
Joseph Haydn, an Austrian performer and eventual mentor to Beethoven, found much of his fan base abroad. Two of his most successful periods were during extended trips to London, where he wrote 12 symphonies. One of the most popular pieces in his oeuvre was the 11th, Symphony No. 103 in E-flat major, also know as "The Drumroll" due to its emphasis on the timpani that opens the piece. London residents were blown away by the composition as recorded by The Morning Chronicle: "Another new Overture, by the fertile and enchanting Haydn, was performed; which, as usual, had continual strokes of genius, both in air and harmony. The Introduction excited deepest attention, the Allegro charmed, the Andante was encored."
Heinrich Marschner, Father of Goth Music, Is Born
It would be 28 years before Heinrich Marschner would put on his best-known opera, and surely he could not have foreseen how influential it would be. Western society's obsession with vampires has long been attributed to the publication of Bram Stoker's Dracula in 1893. The publication of Marschner's opera Der Vampyr set the precedent for the music world however, showcasing bloodsuckers way before Bauhaus and Peter Murphy could hang from the ceiling. Der Vampyr just got a reboot was in—surprise!—Boston during 2014.
Carl Michael Bellman Dies
Carl Michael Bellman is renowned as one of the foremost figures in Scandinavian songwriting, which is to say that he wrote about getting drunk, going bankrupt and being lascivious. Two of his collections—Fredman's Songs and Fredman's Epistles—feature a total of 150 or so poems set to music, detailing the alcoholic travails of one Jean Fredman, a Stockholm watchmaker notorious for his hard-drinking habits and otherwise bad luck. King Gustav III referred to him as the Shakespeare of Sweden...essentially for beating Fredman's reputation to death.
Johann Christoph Bach Also Dies
No, this isn't the Bach. This is one of his many classically-trained sons, the ninth, rumored to be just as talented as his father on the keyboard, if perhaps less exciting as a composer (which is not saying much...Johann Sebastian was kind of a big deal). Unfortunately a large chunk of his music catalogue died nearly 150 years after he did, when The State Institute for Music Research in Berlin was destroyed during World War II.
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