The Ruins of Athens (Die Ruinen von Athen), Op. 113, is a set of incidental music pieces written in 1811 by Ludwig van Beethoven. The music was written to accompany the play of the same name by August von Kotzebue, for the dedication of the new Deutsches Theater Pest in Pest, Hungary.[1]
Perhaps the best-known music from The Ruins of Athens is the Turkish March. Beethoven had used this material before in his Six Variations on an Original Theme, Op. 76 (1809).
In 1822 the play was revived for the reopening of Vienna's Theater in der Josefstadt with a revised libretto by Carl Meisl, for which Beethoven wrote a new overture, now known as The Consecration of the House, Op. 124, and added a chorus "Wo sich die Pulse" (WoO 98).
The music for The Ruins of Athens was reworked in 1924 by Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Another revival with a revision of the text by Johannes Urzidil was conducted by Alexander von Zemlinsky at Prague's Neues Deutsches Theater in 1926.