Daily prayer in Christmas 2025-2026: 2, Friday 26 December 2025, Saint Stephen’s Day

Saint Stephen before the Council … a window by CE Kempe (1837-1907) in the south aisle in Lichfield Cathedral in memory of John Toke Godfrey-Faussett (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

On the second day of Christmas my true love sent to me … ‘two turtle doves, and a partridge in a pear tree’.

Christmas is not over; this is the second day of Christmas and today is Saint Stephen’s Day, the feast of Saint Stephen the deacon and first martyr. Before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:

1, today’s Gospel reading;

2, a short reflection;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.

An image of Saint Stephen in Saint Stephen Walbrook, London … on the site of a seventh century Saxon church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Matthew 10: 17-22 (NRSVA):

[Jesus said:] 17 ‘Beware of them, for they will hand you over to councils and flog you in their synagogues; 18 and you will be dragged before governors and kings because of me, as a testimony to them and the Gentiles. 19 When they hand you over, do not worry about how you are to speak or what you are to say; for what you are to say will be given to you at that time; 20 for it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you. 21 Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death; 22 and you will be hated by all because of my name. But the one who endures to the end will be saved.’

On the second day of Christmas my true love sent to me … ‘two turtle doves, and a partridge in a pear tree’ … Christmas decorations at a house in Padbury, Buckinghamshire (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Today’s Reflections:

The Gospel reading in the lectionary for the Eucharist today tells us nothing about the martyrdom of Saint Stephen. Instead, the story of his martyrdom is found in one of today’s other readings (Acts 7: 51-60).

About 55 years ago, when I was training to be a chartered surveyor with Jones Lang Wootton and the College of Estate Management then part of Reading University, a file for an investment or development property in Dublin went missing one day. It was an important portfolio, and ought to have been filed under ‘S’ for ‘Saint Stephen’s Green.’

Eventually, the file was found under the letter ‘G’.

‘I filed it under G for Green,’ the person who did the filing explained.

But for many Dubliners, it is probably not Saint Stephen’s Green, but ‘Stevenses Green,’ as in ‘Dr Steevenses Hospital’ and ‘Stevenses Day.’

I find it hard to call today ‘Boxing Day.’ For me, 26 December is always going to be Saint Stephen’s Day.

Stephen is a family name: my grandfather, father, eldest brother and a nephew were all baptised Stephen – four successive generations with the name Stephen Comerford. But my reasons for insisting on retaining the name of Saint Stephen’s Day is not some quirky genealogical sentimentality or some misplaced filial loyalty.

It is theologically important to remind ourselves on the day after Christmas Day of the important link between the Incarnation and bearing witness to our Resurrection faith.

Saint Stephen’s Day today (26 December), Holy Innocents’ Day two days later (28 December), and the commemoration of Thomas à Beckett on 29 December are reminders that Christmas, far from being surrounded by sanitised images of the crib, angels and wise men, is followed by martyrdom and violence. Close on the joy of Christmas comes the cost of following Christ. A popular expression, derived from the leading 17th century Quaker William Penn, says: ‘No Cross, No Crown.’

Saint Stephen the Deacon is the Protomartyr of Christianity. The Greek word or name Στέφανος (Stephanos) means ‘crown’ or ‘wreath’ and the Acts of the Apostles tell us that Saint Stephen earned his crown at his martyrdom when he was stoned to death around the year 34 or 35 CE by an angry mob encouraged by Saul of Tarsus, the future Apostle Paul.

Stephen was the first of the seven deacons chosen in the Apostolic Church in Jerusalem. While he was on trial, Saint Stephen experienced a theophany: But filled with the Holy Spirit, he gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!’ (Acts 7: 55-56).

The Lion’s Gate in the Old City of Jerusalem is also known as Saint Stephen’s Gate because of the tradition that Saint Stephen was stoned there. In 415 CE, a church was built in Saint Stephen’s honour in Jerusalem to hold his relics. The relics were later moved to Constantinople. Today, those relics are said to be buried under the altar of the Church of San Lorenzo fuori le Mura in Rome.

The ‘Feast of Stephen’ is inextricably linked with Christmas through the English carol Good King Wenceslas, although during my visits to Prague, I have been aware that the Czechs have a far better claim than the English to Good King Wenceslas.

Today is a public holiday in the United Kingdom as Boxing Day. But as Saint Stephen’s Day, today is still a public holiday in Ireland and many other countries, including Australia, Austria, Canada, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, Italy, New Zealand, Poland, Serbia, Slovakia, and parts of France, the Philippines and Spain. In the Orthodox Church, Saint Stephen’s Day is celebrated on 27 December, and is known as the ‘Third Day of the Nativity.’

Saint Stephen Walbrook, a Wren church in the heart of the City of London, has been listed by Sir Nikolaus Pevsner as one of the 10 most important buildings in England.

Saint Stephen’s Church in Mount Street Crescent, Dublin – popularly known as the ‘Pepper Canister Church’ – is one of the last churches built in the classical style in Dublin. Saint Stephen’s, which opened in 1824, was designed by John Bowden and Joseph Welland. The tower and portico were modelled on three elegant monuments in Athens: the Erechtheum on the Acropolis (the portico), the Tower of the Winds (the campanile), and the Monument of Lysicrates (the cupola). But the Victorian apse, which was added in 1852, owes its inspiration to the Oxford Movement.

However, the most impressive church I have visited that is named after the first martyr is the Stephansdom, the Cathedral of Saint Stephen, in Vienna, which dates back to 1147.

I first visited the Stephansdom many years ago, while I was a panellist at a seminar organised by the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna in 2002, and I have returned to visit the cathedral a number of times since then.

A memorial tablet there recalls Mozart’s relationship with the cathedral. This was his parish church when he lived at the ‘Figaro House’, he was married there and two of his children were baptised there. He was named an adjunct music director in the Stephansdom shortly before his death, and his funeral was held in the Chapel of the Cross in the cathedral in 1791.

The Stephansdom has 23 bells, and it is said Beethoven realised the full extent of his deafness when he saw birds flying from the bell tower and realised he could not hear the bells toll.

I have also visited Saint Stephen’s House, the theological college in Oxford popularly known as ‘Staggers,’ which is firmly rooted in the Anglo-Catholic tradition, maintaining high standards of liturgy and intellectual rigour.

Saint Stephen’s House was founded in 1876 by leading Anglo-Catholics members of the Anglo-Catholic Movement, including Edward King, then Regius professor of Pastoral Theology at Oxford and later Bishop of Lincoln.

King was one of the outstandingly holy men of his time. Other founding figures included Henry Scott Holland, one of the leading figures in the development of the Christian social teaching of the time. It was he who suggested the name of the house.

Saint Stephen’s has moved since its foundation, and since 1980 it has been located at Iffley Road in East Oxford in the former monastery of the Cowley Fathers, where it is said Dietrich Bonhoeffer decided to return to Germany where he met with martyrdom.

Bonhoeffer’s martyrdom illustrates how none of this architecture or grandeur, nor the extension to the Christmas holiday provided by this saint’s day, would have any meaning today without the faithful witness of Saint Stephen, the first deacon and first martyr, who links our faith in the Incarnation with our faith in the Resurrection.

A tranquil morning in Saint Stepehen’s Green, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Friday 26 December 2025, Saint Stephen’s Day):

The theme this week (21 to 27 December 2025) in Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Love Brings Life in Tanzania’ (pp 12-13). This theme was introduced on Sunday with a Programme Update by Imran Englefield, Individual Giving Manager, USPG.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Friday 26 December 2025, Saint Stephen’s Day) invites us to pray:

Gracious God, we give thanks for the mothers and babies at Mvumi Hospital who are HIV-free. We celebrate this gift of life and health, and pray that you will continue to be present by your Spirit.

The Collect:

Gracious Father,
who gave the first martyr Stephen
grace to pray for those who took up stones against him:
grant that in all our sufferings for the truth
we may learn to love even our enemies
and to seek forgiveness for those who desire our hurt,
looking up to heaven to him who was crucified for us,
Jesus Christ, our mediator and advocate,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post-Communion Prayer:

Merciful Lord,
we thank you for the signs of your mercy
revealed in birth and death:
save us by the coming of your Son,
and give us joy in honouring Stephen,
first martyr of the new Israel;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s Reflections

Continued Tomorrow

The interior of the Stephansdom or Saint Stephen’s Cathedral, Vienna (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

The composer Clementi returns to Lichfield with an afternoon of music

Patrick Comerford

Muzio Clementi (1752-1832), known as the ‘Father of the Pianoforte,’ is part of the programme of this year’s Lichfield Festival, almost 200 years after he first moved to Lichfield in 1828.

I first became aware of Clementi’s story while I was staying at the Hedgehog Vintage Inn on the northern outskirts of Lichfield, and I later wrote about his Lichfield links for the Lichfield Gazette in March 2014. Clementi lived in Lichfield from 1828 until the end of 1831, and he lived in the house for almost four years while it was known as Lyncroft House.

Clementi was an Italian-born English composer, pianist, music teacher, conductor, music publisher, piano and instrument manufacturer, successful businessman and a founder member of the London Philharmonic Society of London, which later became the Royal Philharmonic Society.

Clementi was a friend of both Mozart and Beethoven, and he was the publisher of Beethoven’s music in England. His pupils were Johan Baptist Cramer, Ignaz Mocheles and the Dublin-born composer John Field.

Celementi came to live in Lichfield from 1828. Lyncroft House was built in 1797, and he rented the house from the Earl of Lichfield’s Estate from Lady Day (25 March) 1828. He officially retired in 1830 but continued to live in Lichfield until late Autumn 1831.

When he died in 1832, Clementi was buried in Westminster Abbey with a public funeral. John Field from Dublin was one of the pallbearers.

There was another Irish connection too: Clementi’s son, John Muzio Clementi, later lived in Ireland, and in 1858 built Iveragh Lodge in Waterville, Co Kerry, recently on the market.

Lyncroft House later became the home of the Revd Henry Gylby Lonsdale (1791-1851) when he was Vicar of Saint Mary’s Church, Lichfield, in the 1830s, and is now the Hedgehog Vintage Inn.

But why did Clement move to Lichfield. And what connections did he have with the city?

The story about his life and accomplishments is being told at the Lichfield Festival this year, during an afternoon event interspersed with a demonstration on an original 1825 Clementi square piano, from the Finchcock’s Piano Museum collection.

‘Clementi in Lichfield’ takes place in Wade Street Church, Lichfield, on Friday 9 July from 2pm to 3 pm, and is sponsored by Janette Horton and the Lichfield Civic Society. The afternoon and ends with a modern arrangement of a Clementi piece on acoustic violin and Clementi Piano.

The programme with live music includes a brief reflection on Muzio Clementi’s long and successful life and some of his many achievements, including his connections with his contemporaries Beethoven and Mozart. Tickets are £14.

Lichfield Festival provides inspiring multi-arts experiences and aims to inspire creativity through performance and participation in the annual summer festival. The diverse events and activities range from dance to drama, classical music to comedy and folk to family workshops.

Further details about this year’s programme, from 8 to 18 July 2021, are available HERE.

The plaque commemorating Muzio Clementi at the Hedgehog Vintage Inn in Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Remembering Beethoven’s 250th birthday and other anniversaries

Ludwig van Beethoven was born 250 years ago … probably on 16 December 1770

Patrick Comerford

This month marks the 250th anniversary of the birth of Ludwig van Beethoven, probably on 16 December 1770. Because of his own ground-breaking works and his influence on others, he is probably the single most important figure in the history of music.

He single-handedly reshaped the musical language of his time and strode the transition from the 18th to the 19th century like a colossus. His shadow hung over much of the following century. ‘You can’t have any idea what it’s like always to hear such a giant marching behind you!’ as Brahms said.

But Beethoven’s influence went much further than music, affecting the wider artistic, cultural, philosophical and even political world. The philosopher Isaiah Berlin described him as ‘the great artistic figure of the 19th century, who impressed himself deeply upon the imagination of Europe.’

Beethoven’s own view of himself as a creative artist was in itself revolutionary, in seeing music and art as having the power to change the world. ‘Music is ... a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.’

Karl Barth, one of the great theologians of the 20th century, wrote in 1956, ‘When the angels praise God in Heaven I am sure they play Bach. However, en famille they play Mozart, and then God the Lord is especially delighted to listen to them.’

‘And what about Beethoven?’ one wit has asked, replying: ‘Beethoven would play his own music for God, and expect God to like it, too.’

Beethoven represents the notion of artistic and personal freedom, telling us to ‘do all the good that one can; love, above all, freedom, and even for a throne, never deny the truth.’

Beethoven (right) and Mozart (left) in the window of Vienna’s best-known music shop, the Musikhaus Doblinger on Dorotheergasse, opposite the Jewish Museum (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

***

Beethoven was born in December 1770 in Bonn, then a sleepy outpost of the former Holy Roman Empire. We do not know the day he was born, but he was baptised on 17 December, and there is a consensus that he was probably born the previous day, 16 December. He later moved to Vienna to pursue his career in music.

Beethoven’s output was prolific, and included what he called the ‘Scottish’ airs, a collection of Irish, Scottish and Welsh folk songs. He was commissioned by a Scottish publisher, George Thompson, to arrange music for a series of folk songs. Thompson also engaged Beethoven’s one-time mentor Joseph Haydn. Although Beethoven never visited Ireland or Britain, he corresponded with Thompson from 1803 until 1820.

A complete recording of Beethoven’s Irish Songs, produced by the DIT Conservatory of Music and Drama, was released in 2014 to mark the 200th anniversary of their first publication. The late Tomás Ó Súilleabháin selected texts, mostly by Thomas Moore and Robert Burns, for the new edition of the Irish Songs.

In his last years, Beethoven lived in pain and went deaf. He died in Vienna on 26 March 1827 at the age of 56.

The National Concert Hall in Dublin and many other venues have organised special concerts and events to mark this anniversary in December 2020.

The main building of the Jewish community in Vienna, housing the Stadttempel or City Synagogue … Beethoven turned down a commission for its opening (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Beethoven and Schubert
at Vienna’s synagogue

The attack early in November on the Stadttempel, the only surviving pre-war synagogue in Vienna, reminded me that the Jewish community in Vienna had asked Beethoven in 1825 to compose a cantata for the dedication of the synagogue.

Beethoven was unable to accept the commission, but he carried out a preliminary study of Musik der alter Juden, perhaps with this in mind. Instead, the cantata was written by Josef Deschler (1742-1852), a choir master at the Stephansdom, Saint Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna, and Franz Schubert wrote his setting of Psalm 92 for the choir of the synagogue.

Schubert thus became the only great composer before the 20th century to compose a setting in Hebrew of Jewish liturgy for the synagogue with his setting in Hebrew of Psalm 92, Tov Lehodot La’Adonai (‘It is good to give thanks to the Lord’).

Schubert was born in 1797 and in his short life of 31 years, he composed hundreds of songs, string quartets, sonatas, and ensemble pieces to be played in small, intimate settings. His career as a composer began when he was 14 with his first surviving vocal work. The intense ‘Hagar’s Lament’ is setting for the story in the Book of Genesis about the Hagar who bears a son Ishmael for Abraham, and is sent into exile in the wilderness.

Schubert was commissioned along with other contemporary composers by Salomon Sulzer, the hazan or cantor who was in charge of singing at Vienna’s main synagogue, the Stadttempel on Seitenstettengasse, for 45 years from 1826.

Sultzer had the reputation of having the finest baritone voice of his time and was an influential composer too. His still-familiar settings include Ein Kamocha, Yehalelu Es Shem, and Shema Yisroel. He also edited liturgical music and cared deeply about settings in the Hebrew language.

***

The Hebrew inscription from Psalm 100 at the entrance to the Stadttempel … Vienna’s main synagogue (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Sultzer was a frequent guest at Schubert’s musical evenings and commissioned Schubert’s setting of Psalm 92. This work for a four-part choir and solo baritone highlighted Sulzer’s skills. Sulzer sang Schubert’s arrangement at the consecration of the synagogue on 9 April 1826.

This setting was praised by Franz Liszt who heard it at a service at Sulzer’s synagogue before Schubert died in Vienna on 19 November 1828. The German Catholic composer Joseph Mainzer later wrote that no Viennese church of the time ever offered singing ‘as noble and lofty as that synagogue.’

The synagogue was designed in the Biedermeier style by Kornhäusel, the architect who built elegant palaces and theatres in Vienna. When it was built, it was fitted into a block of houses and hidden from plain view of the street.

The Nazis destroyed all 93 other synagogues and Jewish prayer-houses in Vienna. But because of its unusual architectural design and its location, this synagogue survived destruction 82 years ago, on Kristallnacht, 9-10 November 1938. The Stadttempel is the only synagogue in the Austrian capital to have survived World War II, and today it is the main synagogue in Vienna.

The Stadttempel or City Synagogue was attacked in November … it is the only synagogue in Vienna to survive World War II (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

From Kilmallock to
arresting the last Fuhrer

He is known for his bloodstock achievements as a breeder, trainer, huntsman and for organising the first international three-day event at Punchestown. But, as the commemorations of the 75th anniversary of World War II come to an end, he is worth recalling as the man who said he arrested Hitler’s successor and the last Fuhrer of the Third Reich.

Bill Harrington was born in 1922 and raised in Derbyshire. His mother Margaret grew up at Mount Coote Stud in Kilmallock, where he much of his childhood. He was seven when he succeeded as the 11th earl, and 17 when World War II began. He soon joined the King’s Royal Hussars, with Lord Rathdonnell from Lisnavagh, Co Carlow, as his major.

***

The grave in Kilmallock of the Earl of Harrington … he claimed to have arrested Hitler’s designated successor (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

In the small churchyard behind the Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul in Kilmallock, Co Limerick, I recently came across the grave of William Henry Leicester Stanhope (1922-2009), 11th Earl of Harrington.

By mid-May 1945, Allied forces had surrounded Flensburg, where the surviving German high command, including Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz, was based. Before Hitler died by suicide on 30 April, he had appointed Doenitz as President and Supreme Commander. A Nazi ideologue and anti-semite, he spoke constantly of what he referred to as the ‘spreading poison of Jewry.’

As Soviet troops swept across east Germany and into Berlin, Doenitz believed his crumbling regime offered a palatable option for the Allies. Instead, the allies advanced on the morning of 23 May.

As Hitler’s successor waited, the door was pushed open, and a lieutenant in the uniform of the 15/19 Hussars confronted him. Doenitz noted the man’s rank with dismay. ‘I will not answer to a Lieutenant’, he said haughtily. ‘I wish to see your Commanding Officer.’

Harrington levelled his revolver at the admiral’s chest and in colourful language told him: ‘You come with me, you bugger’.

Doenitz was escorted to the Patria, anchored in Flensburg Harbour, and was put on trial with other Nazi war criminals in Nuremberg. He spent over 11 years in prison. He was released in 1956, moved to a village near Hamburg, and died unrepentant 40 years ago, on Christmas Eve 1980.

After the war, Harrington moved to Ireland. In 1946, he divorced his first wife and in 1947 married Ann Theodora Chute, only daughter of Major Richard Arenbourg Blennerhassett Chute of Dooneen, near Patrickswell, Co Limerick.

From 1955 to 1999, he was based at Greenmount Stud, Patrickswell, the site of the present-day Limerick racecourse. There, he ran a flourishing commercial stud and point-to-point races, and kept 50 hunters for himself and his family. He also helped form the Clonshire Equestrian and Polo Centre and the Irish Olympic Horse Society.

Meanwhile, in 1964 he married his third wife, Silla Cubitt, a first cousin of Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall. They later moved to Ballingarry, Co Limerick, where he died on Easter Day 2009 at the age of 86. Over 1,000 people attended his funeral in Adare.

The Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul in Kilmallock, Co Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

This feature was first published in the December 2020 edition of the ‘Church Review’ (Dublin and Glendalough)

Tales of the Viennese Jews: 14, Beethoven at 250 and his Jewish connections in Vienna

Mozart and Beethoven in the window of Vienna’s best-known music shop, the Musikhaus Doblinger on Dorotheergasse, opposite the Jewish Museum (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Patrick Comerford

The Tales from the Vienna Woods is a waltz by the composer Johann Strauss II (1825-1899), written just over a century and a half ago, in 1868. Although Strauss was baptised in the Roman Catholic Church, he was born into a prominent Jewish family. Because the Nazis had a particular penchant for Strauss’s music, they tried to conceal and even deny the Jewish identity of the Strauss family.

However, the stories of Vienna’s Jews cannot be hidden, and many of those stories from Vienna are told in the exhibits in the Jewish Museum in its two locations, at the Palais Eskeles on Dorotheergasse and in the Misrachi-Haus in Judenplatz.

Rather than describe both museums in detail in one or two blog postings, I decided after my visit to Vienna in November to post occasional blog postings that re-tell some of these stories, celebrating a culture and a community whose stories should never be forgotten.

When Kurt Waldheim was President of Austria, there was a cruel joke among journalists that the definition of an Austrian politician was someone who tried to convince you that Hitler was German and that Mozart and Beethoven were Austrian.

Sometime, someday this year marks the 250th birthday of Ludwig van Beethoven. Although we cannot be sure when he was born, when we know he was born in Bonn in 1770, perhaps on 15 or 16, or even 17 December, because he was baptised on 17 December 1770.

But whenever he was born, we are going to be celebrating Beethoven at 250 throughout this year.

There is no doubt that Beethoven was one of the greatest – if not the greatest – classical composers of all time. He was born into a family of musicians: his grandfather sang bass and was a kapellmeister (music director), and his father sang tenor and taught keyboard and violin.

Mozart followed in the footsteps of his father and grandfather at an early age, and at the age of 21 he moved to Vienna and spent much of his life in the then cultural capital of Europe.

During his life, his output included nine symphonies, 32 piano concertos, five piano concertos, 16 string quartets, about a dozen pieces of ‘occasional’ music, seven concerti for one or more soloists and orchestra, 10 violin sonatas, five cello sonatas, two Masses, a sonata for French horn, and just one opera (Fidelio).

He died in Vienna on 26 March 1827 at the age of 56. After a requiem mass at the Church of the Holy Trinity (Dreifaltigkeitskirche), he was buried in the Währing cemetery, north-west of Vienna, on 29 March 2019. His funeral was attended by 20,000 people. His body was moved to Vienna’s Zentralfriedhof in 1888.

But did Beethoven have any Jewish connections or background that we know of?

One composition is said to be based on a Jewish melody, another on the work of a Jewish poet, and one of Beethoven’s works led to the creation of what is regarded as one of the most universal Yiddish poems of all time.

Beethoven’s An die ferne Geliebte (‘To the distant beloved’), Op 98, written in April 1816, was the first significant example of a song cycle by a major classical composer, and the only one he ever attempted.

Alois Isidor Jeitteles (1794-1858), who wrote the texts for the songs, was a member of a prominent Bohemian Jewish family in Prague, where his ancestors included the city’s chief Jewish physician and rabbinical scholars. He was born in Brünn, now Brno, the second city in the Czech Republic. He studied philosophy in Prague and Brünn, medicine in Vienna, and qualified as a medical doctor. But he was drawn to the literary arts, and worked as a translator, playwright and poet. With his cousin Ignaz Jeitteles, he edited the Jewish weekly Siona. Jeitteles’s lyrics to the song cycle were pastoral love poems.

Beethoven’s String Quartet No 14 in C Sharp Minor, Op 131, is the last of a trio of string quartets, and was Beethoven’s favourite of the late quartets. He is quoted as telling a friend he would find ‘a new manner of part-writing and, thank God, less lack of imagination than before.’ When he heard a performance of this quartet, Schubert remarked, ‘After this, what is left for us to write?’

It is said the adagio in the sixth movement of Beethoven’s most overtly Jewish piece of music strongly recalls the melody of Kol Nidre, from the Yom Kippur liturgy.

The musicologist Cecil Bloom, writing in the Jewish Quarterly [28 May 2013], explained that at the time Beethoven was ‘interested in the music of Handel’s oratorio Saul, which led him onto a study of ancient Hebrew music.’

Although Beethoven’s letters betray early prejudices against Jews, he had many Jewish friends and supporters.

In 1801, he dedicated his Piano Sonata No 15 in D minor, Op 28, to the Jewish-born Count Joseph von Sonnenfels (1732-1817), a jurist, writer and social reformer; he was the son of Perlin Lipmann (1705-1768), Chief Rabbi of Brandenburg, who converted to Catholicism with his children some time ca 1735-1741.

Towards the end of his career, Beethoven chose a Jewish publisher, the Schlesinger family, to publish his final compositions.

The Jewish community in Vienna asked Beethoven in 1825 to compose a cantata for the dedication of the Stadttempel, the great new synagogue that opened in April 1826. He was unable to accept the commission, although he did apparently carry out some preliminary study of Musik der alter Juden, perhaps with this in mind.

Instead, the cantata was written by Josef Deschler (1742-1852), a kappelmeister at the Stephansdom, Saint Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna, and Franz Schubert wrote Tov Lehodot (prayer) for the choir of the synagogue.

After his death in 1827, Beethoven loomed large in the Yiddish imagination. From Yiddish translations of Ode to Joy by poets such as Isaac Leib Peretz (1852-1915) and Morthke Rivesman (1868-1924), to short stories written for children about Beethoven, to biographies, novellas, and poems about Beethoven, to centennial celebrations reflecting on Beethoven's legacies in the Yiddish press, there are ample testaments to Yiddish-speaking Jewry’s love for Beethoven.

The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, in partnership with Carnegie Hall’s Beethoven Celebration, is hosting an evening celebrating ‘Beethoven in the Yiddish Imagination’ in New York later this year [20 April 2020].

The programme includes a performance of Ode to Joy in Yiddish translation, a bilingual dramatic reading of a Yiddish retelling of an apocryphal story of the origins of the Moonlight Sonata by actors Allen Lewis Rickman and Yelena Shmulenson, and a performances of those two Beethoven works with Jewish connections: his song cycle An die ferne Geliebte written to texts by the Austrian-Czech Jewish poet Alois Isidor Jeitteles, and his String Quartet Op 131 with its melodic motif reminiscent of the traditional Kol Nidre recitation.

The musical performances will include baritone Mario Diaz-Moresco, the pianist Spencer Myer, and the Ulysses Quartet.

The Hebrew inscription from Psalm 100 at the entrance to the Stadttempel on Seitenstettengasse, Vienna’s main synagogue … Beethoven declined an invitation to compose a cantata for the opening in 1826 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Other postings in this series:

1, the chief rabbi and a French artist’s ‘pogrom’

2, a ‘positively rabbinic’ portrait of an Anglican dean

3, portraits of two imperial court financiers

4, portrait of Sigmund Freud, founder of psychoanalysis

5, Lily Renée, from Holocaust Survivor to Escape Artist

6, Sir Moses Montefiore and a decorative Torah Mantle

7, Theodor Herzl and the cycle of contradictions

8, Simon Wiesenthal and the café in Mauthausen

9, Leonard Cohen and ‘The Spice-Box of Earth’

10, Ludwig Wittgenstein and his Jewish grandparents

11, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and his Jewish librettist

12, Salomon Mayer von Rothschild and the railways in Vienna

13, Gustav Mahler and the ‘thrice homeless’ Jew

14, Beethoven at 250 and his Jewish connections in Vienna

15, Martin Buber and the idea of the ‘I-Thou’ relationship

16, Three Holocaust survivors who lived in Northern Ireland.

17, Schubert’s setting of Psalm 92 for the synagogue.

18, Bert Linder and his campaign against the Swiss banks.

19, Adele Bloch-Bauer and Gustav Klimt’s ‘Lady in Gold’.

20, Max Perutz, Nobel laureate and ‘the godfather of molecular biology’.