Ritterballett partially written by a Count
The music for the "Ritterballett" (Knight's Ballet) WoO 1 was composed for a masked ball in the spring of 1791. Here you can see a copy of each of the thirteen parts. They were probably used for the first performance in the Redoutensaal in Bonn on 6 March 1791. The ball was initiated by Count Ferdinand von Waldstein. On the Sunday in the Carnival season he invited the Bonn nobility to the "characteristic ballet in old German costume". He had "taken into account the main desires of our ancestors - war, hunting, love and carousing" as stated in a contemporary theatre yearbook. Beethoven was not mentioned anywhere as being the composer of the music. So Waldstein was not only hailed as the organizer and choreographer of the ballet but also as the composer. Beethoven's childhood friends Franz Wegeler and Ferdinand Ries corrected this error in 1838 in their Biographischen Notizen über Ludwig van Beethoven. The reason why he did not have his name mentioned is unknown. Count Waldstein was one of his patrons and supporters at the electoral court, and so maybe the composition was made as a favour to the Count. Equally unknown is whether the themes for the individual movements were actually written in part by the music-loving Count. (J.R.)
