Classical composers were the rock stars of their time. They had huge followings and made large sums of money. You could often hear the average person on the street humming or whistling the main theme of the latest hit. We sometimes refer to these catchy themes as hooks. I think this is why there are so many hooks in the image.
Daniel Steibelt was a very popular German pianist and composer who thought very highly of himself. I think the large number of weathervanes in the image is also a pun—whether vain. Steibelt was a musician before being impressed into the Prussian army. He later defected and settled in Paris to study music. He became immensely popular after writing the song La Coquette for Marie Antoinette. Storm Rondo contained within his Concerto No. 3 brought him even further fame.
In the spring of 1800, Steibelt decided to spread his glory to Vienna, the home of the young Ludwig van Beethoven. It was common at this time for wealthy patrons to sponsor a musician and pit him against another patron’s musician. These duels typically began with read music and ended with improvisation.
Since Steibelt was the challenger, he played first, a quintet, his opus 28 no. 2. Here’s how an article at ClassicFM.com described Steibelt’s performance: “He walked to the piano, tossing a piece of his own music on the side, and played. Steibelt was renowned for conjuring up a ‘storm’ on the piano, and this he did to great effect, the ‘thunder’ growling in the bass.”
After this dramatic performance, all eyes fell upon Beethoven, “he picked up the piece of music Steibelt had tossed on the side, looked at it, showed it to the audience…and turned it upside down!” He then sat at the piano and played the four notes in the opening bar of Steibelt’s music. “He began to vary them, embellish them…improvise on them. He played on, imitated a Steibelt ‘storm,’ unpicked Steibelt’s playing and put it together again, parodied it and mocked it.” Beethoven improvised for over an hour!
Steibelt stormed out of the room while Beethoven was still playing. Humiliated, Steibelt swore to never return to Vienna as long as Beethoven lived there. He was true to his word. Beethoven’s victory was so complete that he was never asked to duel again. You can see a partially accurate version of this duel in the 2005 TV miniseries Beethoven.
I believe that “Seek the sounds of rumble brush and music hush” refers to this epic duel (brush) between Steibelt (rumble) and Beethoven (music hush). We are then to “seek the sounds of” the duel. My first thought was that this could refer to the four notes on which Beethoven based his improvisations, giving us the number four. But what we’re looking for is a direction. Perhaps we’re looking for something based on the duel rather than something within it. Beethoven’s 3rd Symphony, his “Eroica Symphony” (meaning heroic), was inspired by his improvisations at the duel. Erotica was a groundbreaking work, ushering in the Romantic Age of classical music and considered by some to be the greatest symphony ever written. Originally dedicated to Napoleon Bonaparte, its use of the key of E flat major gave the symphony a dramatic or heroic feel. After Napoleon declared himself Emperor, Beethoven was so furious he literally scratched Napoleon’s name from the cover sheet. I believe this symphony best represents “the sounds of rumble brush and music hush.” Now we need to glean a direction from the Symphony.
In the 1986 movie Jumpin’ Jack Flash, Whoopi Goldberg’s character, Terry Doolittle, was required to break into a password-protected laptop, the owner of which was only known to her as Jumpin’ Jack Flash. The prompt the computer gave was, “Enter the key.” She listened to the song Jumpin’ Jack Flash over and over trying to come up with possible passwords, but every attempt failed. Finally, she figured it out. She needed to enter the key of the song, Jumpin’ Jack Flash, B-flat. I believe “seek the sounds” tells us to do exactly the same, to use the key of the music. Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony is in the key of E flat. I believe this tells us our direction, E for east, east from the post embedded in the fence. This is consistent with where the casque was found, but doesn’t tell us what the ten in “ten by thirteen” means. We’re going to need to learn some music theory in order to figure that out.
Welcome to Level 6.
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