Chapter XVIII
The Year 1818—A Broadwood Pianoforte—Commission for an Oratorio—Conception of the Mass in D—The Nephew; A Mother’s Struggle for Her Son—The Pianoforte Sonata in B-flat, Op. 106.
Delight in the Broadwood Pianoforte
An entry in an old “Porter’s Book” of John Broadwood and Sons, manufacturers of pianofortes in London, offers an agreeable starting-point for the story of Beethoven’s life in 1818. In this book the porter of the firm signs his name, Millet, to the record that on December 27, 1817, he took from the warehouse “A 6 octave Grand Pianoforte, No. 7,632, tin and deal case, Thomas Broadwood, Esq., marked V. B. care of F. E. J. Bareaux and Co., Trieste (a present to Mr. van Beethoven, Viene), deliv’d to Mr. Farlowes to be shipped.” Some time previously Mr. Thomas Broadwood, the then head of the house, with a Mr. Goding (probably the rich brewer), visited the principal cities of the continent and doubtless became acquainted with Beethoven and offered to present to him one of the firm’s pianofortes. On January 3, 1818, Mr. Broadwood seems to have informed Beethoven that the instrument had been shipped, and exactly one month later Beethoven sent the following acknowledgment to the generous donor:
Mon tres cher Ami Broadwood!
Jamais je n’eprouvais pas un grand Plaisir de ce que me causa votre Annonce de cette Piano, avec qui vous m’honorés de m’en faire présent; je regarderai comme un Autel, ou je deposerai les plus belles offrandes de mon esprit au divine Apollon. Aussitôt comme je recevrai votre Excellent Instrument, je vous enverrai d’en abord les Fruits de l’Inspiration des premiers moments, que j’y passerai, vous servir d’un souvenir de moi à vous mon très cher B., et je ne souhaits ce que, qu’ils soient dignes de votre Instrument.
Mon cher Monsieur et Ami recevès ma plus grande Consideration de votre Ami et très humble serviteur
Louis van Beethoven.
Vienne le 3me du mois Fevrier, 1818.
This letter was sent to Broadwood by Joseph Anton Bridi of the firm of Bridi, Parisi and Co., in Vienna, who had evidently been commissioned to look after the delivery of the instrument to Beethoven after its arrival in Trieste. At least Bridi, in transmitting the letter to Broadwood under cover and date February 5, informs the latter that he had taken the proper steps to have the pianoforte sent to Vienna by Bareaux (or Barraux) and Co., and asks for instructions how to carry out what he understands to be the donor’s desire that the instrument be delivered to Beethoven without his being put to any expense whatever, not even for the import duty. The latter charge must have been in the mind of Beethoven when he wrote a letter, without date, to Count Lichnowsky enclosing a document bearing on the case expressing the hope that he be permitted to receive the instrument and proposing to apply by word of mouth to Count Stadion, the Austrian Minister of Finance. Madame Streicher was also appealed to in the matter, Beethoven begging her in a letter to ask her “Cousin from Cracow” to get from the chief customs official in Vienna an order for the forwarding of the pianoforte, which could be sent to the custom house in Trieste. But neither Broadwood nor Beethoven was called on to pay the duty, the Austrian Exchequer remitting the charge. After some delay the pianoforte was delivered at Streicher’s wareroom and later sent to Beethoven at Mödling. While it was still in his possession, Streicher asked Potter to try it, saying that Moscheles and others could do nothing with it—the tone was beautiful but the action too heavy. Potter, who was familiar with the English instruments, found no difficulty in disclosing its admirable qualities. He told Beethoven, however, that it was out of tune, whereupon the latter replied in effect: “That’s what they all say; they would like to tune it and spoil it, but they shall not touch it.” Beethoven’s delight in the pianoforte must have been great. Bridi reports to Broadwood that the composer already rejoiced in it in anticipation and expressed a desire to dedicate the first piece of music composed after its reception to the donor, “convinced that it would inspire something good.” His jealousy of it seems to have been so great that he would not permit anybody to tune it except Stumpff, of London, who came with a letter of introduction from Broadwood.185
The case of the instrument, simple, plain but tasteful in design, is of mahogany and the structure generally of a solidity and strength paired with grace which caused no little surprise at the time. The compass is six octaves from C, five leger-lines below the bass staff. Above the keys is the inscription: Hoc Instrumentum est Thomœ Broadwood (Londini) donum, propter Ingenium illustrissimi Beethoven. On the board, back of the keys, is the name “Beethoven,” inlaid in ebony, and below this the makers’ mark: “John Broadwood and Sons, Makers of Instruments to His Majesty and the Princesses. Great Pulteney Street. Golden Square. London.” To the right of the keyboard are the autograph names Frid. Kalkbrenner, Ferd. Ries, C. G. Ferrari, J. L. Cramer and C. Knyvett. The presence of these names gave rise to a theory which was widely spread, and is not yet wholly dissipated, that their owners had joined Mr. Broadwood in making the gift; it has also been stated that the gift came from the Philharmonic Society. This latter statement is disproved by the fact that the records of the Society contain no mention of such a transaction; as for the names of the virtuosi, they were no doubt scratched upon the instrument as a compliment to Beethoven and an evidence that they had played upon it. Beethoven kept the instrument as long as he lived. At the sale of his effects it was bought by Spina, the music publisher, for 181 florins; Spina gave it to Liszt, in whose house at Weimar it was up to his death. In 1887, Princess Marie Hohenlohe, daughter of Liszt’s friend, the Princess Sayn-Wittgenstein, presented it to the National Museum in Buda-Pesth.
The time had come for Beethoven to take his nephew from the home and institute of the Giannatasios. On January 6 he wrote to inform the director that Karl would leave his “admirable institute” at the expiration of the month and that Giannatasio might rest assured of his and the lad’s life-long gratitude: “I have observed in Karl that he already feels grateful, and this is a proof that though he is frivolous he is not malicious, and least of all is he bad at heart. I have hopes of all manner of good from him, all the more because he has been under your excellent care for nearly two years.” Karl left the institute on January 24, and on June 15 Fanny Giannatasio wrote in her diary: “We hear nothing from Beethoven,” who was then in Mödling.
Beethoven’s Unfitness as Guardian
Ill-advised and full of evil consequences as was Beethoven’s step in taking personal charge of his nephew, it was yet creditable to his heart and bears strong witness to his high sense of duty. His purpose was pure and lofty, and his action prompted by both love and an ideal sense of moral obligation. It was a woeful mistake, however; Beethoven sadly misjudged his fitness to fill the delicate and difficult rôle of guardian and parent. In all his life he had never had occasion to give a thought to the duties which such an office involved. In the conduct of his own affairs he had always permitted himself to be swayed by momentary impulses, emotions and sometimes violent passions, and he could not suddenly develop the habits of calm reflection, unimpassioned judgment and consistent behavior essential to the training of a careless and wayward boy. In his treatment of him he flew from one extreme to the other—from almost cruel severity to almost limitless indulgence, and, for this reason, failed to inspire either respect for his authority or deep affection for his person, to develop the lad’s self-control or a desire for virtuous living. Very questionable, too, if not utterly unpardonable, were the measures which Beethoven took to separate the boy from his mother in spite of the dying wishes of his father. We have seen his protestations at times of his unwillingness to give her pain. When he was cruel in his own confession it was because he imagined himself constrained to be so by a high obligation of duty. There can be no doubt that the woman whom Beethoven called “The Queen of Night” was wicked and vicious, and that his detestation of her was as well founded as his wish to save his nephew from evil communications and influences. But there were times when he seemed willing to give filial instincts their due. “Karl did wrong,” he writes to Madame Streicher from Mödling in June 1818, “but—mother—mother—even a bad one remains a mother. To this extent he is to be excused, especially by me, who know his intriguing, passionate mother too well.” Why did he not follow this thought to its ultimate conclusion? Why did he permit, if indeed, he did not encourage, the lad to speak disrespectfully of his mother? A memorandum in the Tagebuch after February 20th reads: “Karl’s mother has not seen him since August 10”—a period of more than six months. How often she was allowed to see him during the following months is not of record; we only know from Beethoven himself, in his letters to Madame Streicher, that the mother’s instinct—if, because she was a bad woman, the word “love” be not allowed—drove her to employ the only means by which she could know the condition of her son during the summer in Mödling—i. e., bribing or feeing the servants. That at least is Beethoven’s accusation, and exceedingly wroth he was.186
The London Visit Postponed
After taking Karl from Giannatasio’s institute to his own home Beethoven engaged a tutor to prepare him for matriculation at the gymnasium. This tutor, whose name has not been learned, was a professor at the Vienna University and had evidently agreed not only to look after all of the lad’s intellectual needs but also to have an eye on some of the domestic affairs and to that end to become a member of the Beethoven household. On this point, Beethoven enjoined secrecy upon Madame Streicher. How long the service of his “steward,” as he playfully called him to Madame Streicher, continued is not known, nor how satisfactory it was. He does not become a subject of Beethoven’s correspondence beyond a single reference to the fact that once he staid out all night. Beethoven’s London trip had been abandoned without notice or explanation to the Philharmonic Society, apparently; but Ries must have written to him, renewing the offer previously accepted, for on March 25, Beethoven writes to his old pupil as follows:
In spite of my desire, it was impossible for me to come to London this Winter; I beg of you to say to the Philharmonic Society that my poor state of health hindered me, but I hope that I may be entirely well this Spring and then take advantage of the renewed offers of the Society towards the end of the year and fulfil all its conditions. Please ask Neate in my name not to make use, at least not in public, of the many compositions of mine which he has until my arrival in person; no matter what the condition of his affairs may be I have cause of complaint against him.
Botter [Cipriani Potter] visited me several times, he seems to be a good man and has talent for composition—I hope and wish that your prosperity may grow daily; unfortunately I cannot say that of myself. My unlucky connection with the Archduke has brought me to the verge of beggary. I cannot endure the sight of want—I must give; you can imagine how present conditions increase my sufferings. I beg of you soon to write to me again. If it is at all possible I shall get away from here sooner in order to escape total ruin and will then arrive in London in the Winter at the latest.
I know that you will stand by an unfortunate friend; had it only been in my power, and had I not been fettered by circumstances here I would surely have done much more for you. Fare you very well, give my greetings to Neate, Smart, Cramer—although I hear that he is a counter-subject to you and me, yet I already know something of the art of treating such and we shall produce an agreeable harmony in London.
Ries’s reverence for royalty, apparently, led him to omit Beethoven’s unkind allusion to his august patron and pupil, Archduke Rudolph; Schindler, writing much later, prints it and admits, very properly, as we know from other instances of the same kind, that Beethoven sometimes used his friends as whipping-boys and that his words and deeds were not always consistent with each other. Beethoven removed to Mödling on May 19, taking with him his nephew and the two servants whose treachery aroused the storm of passion which he loosed in the long letter to Madame Streicher, written in June. He found lodgings in the so-called Hafner House in the Hauptstrasse, now ornamented by a memorial tablet. He began taking the baths two days after his arrival and the desire and capacity for work soon returning, he took up energetically the Pianoforte Sonata in B-flat. Karl was placed in a class of boys taught by the village priest, named Fröhlich, who dismissed him a month later for reasons which became a matter of judicial record before the end of the year.187 In a document filed as an appendix to Madame van Beethoven’s application for guardianship over her son, Fröhlich sets forth that Beethoven had encouraged his nephew to revile his mother, applauding him when he applied vile epithets to her either in writing or by shrieking them into his ear, “thus violating the fourth divine commandment”; that the boy had confessed to him that while he knew that he was doing wrong he yet defamed his mother to curry favor with his uncle and dared not tell him the truth because he would only believe lies. “This he once told his mother and would have said more had he not feared being found out and maltreated by his uncle.” Once, too, Beethoven came to him (the priest) and in a tone of malicious joy told him that his nephew had that day called his mother a “Ravenmother” (Rabenmutter—meaning a wicked and unnatural mother). Karl’s training being thus contrary to all moral principles, he having also displayed indifference to religious instruction, been guilty of unruly conduct in church and in the streets, so that many of the inhabitants of the village had come to him with complaints, and, therefore, admonitions to the boy and appeals to the uncle having borne no fruit, he had been constrained for the sake of his twelve other pupils, who had said “they did not want to study with the unruly Karl van Beethoven,” to dismiss him.
An Oratorio for the Friends of Music
These unfortunate first-fruits of Beethoven’s error in undertaking personal and sole care of his nephew will call for more attention before the history of the year 1818 is closed, and may be dismissed for the present for more cheerful topics. Towards the end of the year 1815, the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde had instituted inquiries through Zmeskall touching Beethoven’s willingness to compose a work of magnitude for the Society. Beethoven signified his assent to the project and in turn asked Zmeskall whether or not the Society would allow him 400 ducats as an honorarium. There the matter seems to have rested until May, 1818, on the 17th of which month Vincenz Hauschka, a violoncello player and member of the governing committee of the Society, was authorized by his associates to offer Beethoven from 200 to 300 “pieces of gold” for the music to a “heroic oratorio” to be the exclusive property of the Society for one year after the date of its first performance. Hauschka wrote to Beethoven at Mödling and received a droll letter in reply. It bears no date. In it Beethoven addresses his friend as “Chief Member of the Society of Enemies of Music [the play on the words Freunde and Feinde is impossible in English], in the Austrian Empire” and “Grand Cross of the Order of the Violoncello.” He signifies his willingness to accept the commission in the words: “I am agreed” (Ich bin bereit) set to a fugue-theme:
adding that he had no subject on hand except a sacred one, while the Society had expressed a desire for a heroic work. This was satisfactory to him, but he suggested that as the choir was a large one something sacred be “mixed in”:
Mr. v. Bernard would suit him as poet, but the Society, since it claimed to be friendly to music, ought to pay him. He said nothing of his own compensation, but concluded with:
I wish you open bowels and the handsomest of close-stools. As for me, I am wandering about here amongst mountains, clefts and valleys, with a piece of music-paper smearing down many a thing for the sake of bread and money—for to such a pitch have I brought it in this all powerful land of the Phæacians that to gain a little time for a work of magnitude I must always first smear a great deal for money so that I may hold out for a large work. For the rest, my health is much better and if haste is necessary I can still serve you well.
Conception of the Mass in D
Schindler also places this letter in 1818, and is doubtless correct in so doing, for its tone and contents show that it was not designed as an official communication to the Society, whose minutes show that such a communication was not received until June 15, 1819. In the interim, no doubt, some negotiations were in progress between Beethoven and Hauschka, for the former had refrained from mentioning the matter of remuneration. Some understanding on this point must have been reached, however, for, if Pohl is correct, Beethoven was paid an advance sum of 400 florins on August 18, 1819. Nothing came of the matter, as we shall see later. In this year, however, there came to Beethoven an incitation of a different nature and one productive of lasting and magnificent results. About the middle of 1818, as Schindler relates, it became known as a settled fact that Archduke Rudolph had been appointed Archbishop of Olmütz. March 20th, 1820, was fixed as the day of his installation. Without bidding, invitation or summons of any kind Beethoven “resolved to compose a mass for the solemnity, thus turning again after the lapse of many years to that branch of his art, toward which, after the symphonic—as he himself often said—he felt himself most drawn. This resolution shows that his outburst against the Archduke188 was merely a passing cloud, even if we did not know that the master never missed an opportunity to disclose his affection for his august pupil. I saw the score begun late in the Autumn of 1818, after the gigantic Sonata in B-flat major, Op. 106, had just been finished.” Though there is no reason for questioning the rest of Schindler’s statement, the concluding observation is probably incorrect. It may be accepted, inasmuch as the Credo of the mass was already far advanced in 1819, that the Kyrie, at least, perhaps the Gloria, as well, was begun in 1818. The two great works which now filled the mind of Beethoven, which he wrote, indeed, with his heart’s blood, were not only dedicated to the Archduke, but were designed for him from the beginning—facts which may be cited as proof that despite his petulant outbursts against his pupil and patron he was after all sincerely devoted to him in his innermost soul.
The same summer saw the beginning of the most widely distributed portrait of Beethoven. At the instance of his uncle, Baron von Skrbensky, a young painter named August von Klöber (born at Breslau in 1793), who was continuing his artistic studies in Vienna, undertook to paint a portrait of the composer. His own account of his acquaintance with Beethoven and the incidents connected with the painting of the portrait (or rather with the original sketch) were published in the “Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung,” of 1864 (p. 324). From it we learn that the artist was introduced to Beethoven by a letter written by Dont.189 He visited Beethoven at Mödling, after receiving permission to make a drawing of him and found him giving a lesson to his nephew on the Broadwood pianoforte. This fact fixes the date of the picture. Though the artist found it impossible to make himself understood unless he wrote his words or spoke them into an ear-trumpet, Beethoven corrected the errors in the lad’s playing, compelled him to repeat passages apparently without difficulty. He grew uneasy after Klöber had worked about three-quarters of an hour and the latter, heeding the advice given by Dont, suspended his work and asked permission to come again on the morrow, since he was living in Mödling. “Then we can meet often,” said Beethoven, “because I do not like to sit long. You must take a good look at Mödling, for it is very beautiful here, and, as an artist, you must be a lover of nature.” Klöber met him often in his promenades and saw him suspend his work at intervals, stand as if listening and make notes on music paper which he carried about with him. When Beethoven saw the picture he was pleased with the treatment of the hair; the artists had hitherto always made him look too well groomed. Klöber’s description of the composer as he saw him was this:
Beethoven’s residence in Mödling was extremely simple as, indeed, was his whole nature; his garments consisted of a light-blue frockcoat with yellow buttons, white waistcoat and necktie, as was the fashion at the time, but everything negligée. His complexion was healthy, the skin somewhat pockmarked, his hair was of the color of slightly bluish steel as it was already turning from black to gray. His eyes were bluish-gray and very animated—when his hair was tossed by the wind there was something Ossianic-demoniac about him. In friendly converse, however, his expression became good-natured and gentle, particularly when the conversation pleased him. Every mood of his soul found powerful expression instantly in his features.
Klöber’s original painting has disappeared. It was a full-length portrait with a bit of Mödling landscape as a background. The nephew Karl was included, reposing under a tree. The composer was depicted with note-book and pencil. The head only was reproduced in a lithograph in Klöber’s atelier, and has been widely copied.
A Mother’s Struggle for Her Child
We now reach an incident in the story of Beethoven’s life concerning which much has been written from the biased and frequently erroneous, because uninformed or ill-informed, point of view adopted by Schindler and which it becomes a duty to rectify not only so that the picture of Beethoven as he was may be kept true, but that the better motives and impulses which prompted the woman whom he so cordially and no doubt justly detested be placed in their proper light also. There is nothing in the narrative which brings reproach upon Beethoven so far as his high sense of duty and disinterested affection for his nephew is concerned—an affection which was as little weakened by the self-sacrifice which it entailed as it was balked by the conduct of his ward and the frequently unwarranted means employed by his mother to acquire possession of the lad and the right to superintend his physical, mental and moral training; but the rights of a woman and the honor which a world has always accorded to the strongest, noblest, divinest instinct of woman—maternal love—were also at stake. The mother of Karl, though she had been convicted and punished for adultery at an earlier period, and though she might not have proved a safe mentor for her son, was yet a mother, his mother. That fact Beethoven was willing, in the long letter to Madame Streicher in which he set forth the wicked acts of his servants, to recognize as palliating the conduct of the boy; but he could not bring himself to recognize that it might also palliate if it did not justify the steps which his harshness compelled a mother to take to gratify the need implanted in her by nature. Johanna van Beethoven is at least entitled to the same hearing at the bar of posterity that she received in the tribunals of her day, and it is the duty of Beethoven’s biographer to strip the story of the quarrel between her and her brother-in-law of the romantic excrescences which many writers have fastened upon it. In this narrative the truth will be told, perhaps for the first time, as it is disclosed by the documents, the evidence and the judicial decrees in the case. To set forth these documents in full in the body of the text would call for the sacrifice of much space and sadly interrupt the story; what is essential in them will be given literally, or in outline, whenever it becomes necessary.190
After his dismissal from the class of the parish priest at Mödling, Karl van Beethoven was placed in the hands of a private tutor to be prepared for admission to one of the public schools of Vienna—no doubt that known as the Academic Gymnasium. To enter this school the boy had to pass an examination, and for this purpose Beethoven brought him to Vienna about the middle of August. Madame van Beethoven was now determined to wrest from her brother-in-law the authority, which was his as sole guardian, to keep the boy in his care and to direct his training. She took to her aid Jacob Hotschevar, a Hofconcipist (clerk or scrivener in the government service), and petitioned the Landrecht of Lower Austria to take from Beethoven the authority to direct the future training of his ward. The Landrecht was a tribunal with jurisdiction in litigations and other matters affecting the nobility. Acting on the assumption that the Dutch “van,” like the German “von,” was a badge of noble birth, it had listened to Beethoven’s plea and appointed him sole guardian of his nephew, removing the widow from the joint guardianship directed in the will of the boy’s father on the score of her immorality, as we already know. The proceedings were begun in September and were dismissed, as the records show, on the 18th of that month. Three days later, that is, on September 21, she applied to the court again, this time for permission to place her son in the Royal Imperial Convict, where he would have board, lodging and instruction. She and Beethoven as “co-guardian” were commanded to appear in court on September 23, and the latter was directed to bring the report of the lad’s examination with him. There was a postponement of the hearing till September 30, and on October 3d the widow’s application was rejected. Thus far victory had gone to Beethoven.
The postponement of the hearing was had in great likelihood to enable Beethoven to change his residence from Mödling to the city. At any rate, Karl is a public school scholar on November 6th, as Fanny Giannatasio records in her diary on that day together with the fact that her father had met Beethoven, who had shortly before returned from the country. That the boy was in the third grammar class and remained there during the months of November and December, receiving also instruction in pianoforte playing, French and drawing from a private teacher, is known from the court proceedings which were held later. The lad made good progress in his studies, all seemed well and something of the old cordial relations seemed again to be established between Beethoven and the Giannatasios. They provided him with a housekeeper and on one day in November he spent three hours with the family. Fanny writes:
One cannot be in his company without being impressed with his admirable character, his deep sense of what is good and noble. If Karl would but recompense him for the many sacrifices which he makes for his sake! My hopes are intermingled with anxious doubts. He will probably make a journey to London this Spring. It might be advantageous to him financially in many ways.
The Lad Runs Away from His Uncle
Before long Beethoven is at the Giannatasio house again and becomes interested in the singing of the sisters, singing with them, which produced a comical effect, as he seldom was in tune, but helping them to give the correct expression to the music. Fanny now deplores that their childish timidity had so long deprived them of such a pleasure, which would now perhaps be of short duration, since he had received a second invitation to England. This entry bears date November 20. Within a fortnight the diary chronicles the severest trial that the boy had yet caused his uncle: he ran away from home and sought a haven with his mother. The sympathetic young woman wrote later:
“One day B. came in great excitement and sought counsel and help from my father, saying that Karl had run away! I recall that on this occasion amid our expressions of sympathy he cried out tearfully: ‘He is ashamed of me!’” The incident is recorded in her diary under date of December 5; it occurred, apparently two days before. The diarist’s entry is as follows:
Never in my life shall I forget the moment when he came and told us that Karl was gone, had run away to his mother, and showed us his letter as an evidence of his vileness. To see this man suffering so, to see him weeping—it was touching! Father took up the matter with great zeal, and with all my sorrow I feel a pleasurable sensation in the consciousness that now we are much to Beethoven, yes, at this moment his only refuge. Now he surely perceives his error if he has wronged us in his opinions. Ah! he can never appreciate how highly we esteem him, how much I should be capable of doing for his happiness!... The naughty child is again with him with the help of the police—the Ravenmother! Oh! how dreadful it is that this man is compelled to suffer so on account of such outcasts. He must go away from here, or she; that will be the outcome. For the present B. will give him into our care; it will be an act of great kindness on my father’s part if he receives him, as he will have to look upon him as one under arrest.... It did me good when he went away to note that his thoughts were more diverted. He told me that he had been so wrought up by the matter that it took him some time to gather his thoughts. During the night his heart had beat audibly. Alas! and there remains nothing for me to say except that all that we can do is so little! I would give half my life for the man! He always thinks of himself last. He lamented that he did not know what would become of his housekeeping when Karl was gone.
We learn the probable reason for the lad’s truancy from Beethoven’s statement at the examination in court on December 11th. Two letters written by his housekeeper to Fanny Giannatasio, and one written by the latter, had fallen into Beethoven’s hands and from them he had learned of certain delinquencies with which he then confronted his nephew. But let us call Beethoven himself to the witness stand; his recital will give more vitality to the history than any statement of a historian writing nearly a century later. We quote from the minutes of the Landrecht:
Ludwig van Beethoven examined:
How did his nephew leave him?
He did not know exactly; his nephew had made himself culpable; he had charged him with it and the same day in the evening he had received a note of farewell. He could not tell the cause of his departure; his mother may have asked him to come to her the day before, but it might have been fear of punishment.
What had his nephew done?
He had a housekeeper who had been recommended to him by Giannatasio; two of her letters to Miss Giannatasio and one of the latter’s had fallen into his hands; in them it was stated that his nephew had called the servants abusive names, had withheld money and spent it on sweetmeats.
In whose care was his nephew?
He had provided him with a Corepetitor for pianoforte playing, French and drawing who came to the house; these studies occupied all the leisure time of his nephew so completely that he needed no care; moreover, he could not trust any of his servants with the oversight of his nephew, as they had been bribed by the boy’s mother; he had placed him in the hands of a priest for the development of his musical talent, but the mother had got into an agreement with him also. He would place his ward in the Convict, but the oversight was not strict enough there among so many pupils.
Did he have any testimonials touching his nephew’s studies?
He had appended them to his last examination.
Had his nephew not spoken disrespectfully of his mother in his presence?
No; besides, he had admonished him to speak nothing but the truth; he had asked his nephew if he was fond of his mother and he answered in the negative.
How did he get the boy back?
With the help of the police. He had gone to the mother in the forenoon to demand him of her, but she would promise nothing except that she would deliver him back in the evening; he had feared that she intended to take him to Linz, where his brother lived, or to Hungary; for that reason he had gone to the police; as soon as he got him back he placed him in the care of Giannatasio.
What were his objections to having his nephew sent to the Convict?
It was not advisable at present because, as the professor had said, there were too many pupils there and the supervision over a boy like his ward was not adequate.
What means did he purpose to employ in the education of his ward?
His ward’s greatest talent was in study and to this he would be held. His means of subsistence were the half of his mother’s pension and the interest on 2,000 florins. Heretofore the difference between this sum and the cost had been paid by him and he was willing to assume it in the future if the matter could but once be put in order. As it was not practicable to place his nephew in the Convict now, he knew only of two courses open to him: to keep a steward for him who should always be with him, or to send him for the winter to Giannatasio. After half a year he would send him to the Mölker Convict, which he had heard highly commended, or if he were but of noble birth, give him to the Theresianum.
Were he and his brother of the nobility and did he have documents to prove it?
“Van” was a Dutch predicate which was not exclusively applied to the nobility; he had neither a diploma nor any other proof of his nobility.
The Mother’s Apprehensions
In listening to these words from Beethoven on the witness stand we have stretched the thread of our story; for this testimony was given in court on December 11th, and the second attempt of the widowed mother to get control of her son had been foiled by the decision on October 3rd. It was therefore a new case which the court had under consideration when Beethoven made the above utterances. This third application on the part of the mother was filed on December 7, and grew out of the runaway prank of Karl and her fear of what might be its consequences. In her petition she set forth the fact that her son had left the home of his uncle and guardian without her knowledge, that he had been taken back by the police, and that “as, to judge by his actions, Ludwig van Beethoven was willing to send her son away from Vienna, perhaps into foreign lands,” she asked that he be restrained from doing so, and she renewed her request that she be permitted to send her son to the Royal Imperial Convict for keep and education.
Hotschevar supported this petition in a document like a modern law brief, explaining his interest in the matter on the grounds that his wife was a stepsister of Madame van Beethoven’s deceased mother, that the law permitted such an act in all cases where human rights were concerned and that he, having had experience for several years as instructor in the houses of the aristocracy, could not be blamed if he put the knowledge of pedagogics and psychology thus acquired at the service of a lad to whom he bore a family relationship and brought to the attention of the supreme guardian matters which it (the Landrecht) could not possibly know concerning its wards unless proceedings were brought before it. He admitted that Madame van Beethoven had years before been guilty of a moral delinquency for which she had been punished, but asserted her right to a standing in court; he then contended: (1) that the mother had illegally been denied all influence over her son partly with, partly without the knowledge of the court, and (2) that her son could not remain under the sole influence of his uncle and guardian without danger of suffering physical and moral ruin. In support of these contentions he recited that the brothers van Beethoven were eccentric men, so often at odds with each other that they might better be called enemies than friends, Karl van Beethoven being pleasantly disposed toward his brother only when he was in need of money from him, and that the suspicion lay near that the boy had been an object of traffic between them, inasmuch as an agreement touching the payment of 1,500 florins had been made only on condition that Ludwig van Beethoven surrender a document which appointed him guardian. Karl van Beethoven, moreover, knowing the animosity which his brother felt towards his wife, had in a codicil to his will expressly said that he did not want Ludwig van Beethoven to be sole guardian of his son but joint guardian with the mother, and had, for the sake of the boy, admonished more compliancy on the part of the mother and more moderation on that of the brother. Although the Court had deprived the mother of the guardianship over her son, it had granted permission to her to visit him; but this privilege had been withheld from her. The statement of the village priest Fröhlich (which has already been given in these pages) was appended to the widow’s application as evidence of the physical and moral degeneration of the boy, and for himself Hotschevar says that he had observed after the boy had run away from his uncle that his hands and feet were frostbitten, that he had no seasonable clothing and that his linen and baths had been neglected. The priest’s statement was also appealed to to show that the boy had been led into unfilial conduct, indifference toward religion, hypocrisy, untruthfulness and even theft against his guardian—in short, was in danger of becoming a menace to society. He willingly granted Beethoven’s readiness and desire to care for his ward, but maintained that his hatred of the mother, his passionate disposition inflamed by the talebearing of others (once naming Giannatasio), made it difficult for him to employ the proper means. Conceding Beethoven’s magnanimity, he yet urged that in view of the danger in which the lad was, he ought to forgo the guardianship or associate with himself either the mother or some other capable person, it appearing from the facts in the case that he was “physically and morally unfit” for the post.
Madame van Beethoven’s deposition, apparently filed as appendix to Hotschevar’s brief (like that of Fröhlich), alleges that a letter of Giannatasio’s dated March 8, 1816, showed that she had to forgo her desire to visit her son or satisfy it once a month and then “like a thief.” After Beethoven took the boy, and especially after his removal to Mödling, she was not permitted to see him at all. She had been assured that her son would be admitted to the Convict, but his testimonials had been withheld from her and so she had been unable to file them with her application for a scholarship. His expenses were 750 florins per year for board, lodging, clothes, books, medicines, etc., to pay which 2,000 florins had been deposited in Court and yielded 100 florins interest per annum. She had pledged herself to give one-half of her pension of 333 florins, 20, that is 116 florins, 40 kreutzers towards his education. This amounted to 380 florins W. W., including the interest on the deposit; and she would gladly pay the difference between this sum and 750 florins until she should get the promised scholarship for her son. On December 11, the widow appealed to the court that in case the guardian of her son should make application touching plans for his future training it be not granted without giving her a hearing. This was the day when Beethoven, who had brought Joseph Carl Bernard with him, no doubt to protect him in his deafness, gave the testimony already set forth. The nephew had been examined before him:
The Testimony of Mother and Son
Carl van Bethoven [sic] age 12 years, student in the 3rd Latin class, was examined:
Had he received good testimonials?
“Eminent” in Latin, “1st class” in other studies.
Why had he left his uncle?
Because his mother had told him she would send him to a public school and he did not think he would make progress under private instruction.
How did his uncle treat him?
Well.
Where had he been of late?
He had been in hiding at his mother’s.
Where would he rather live—at his mother’s or his uncle’s?
He would like to live at his uncle’s if he but had a companion, as his uncle was hard of hearing and he could not talk with him.
Had he been prompted by his mother to leave his uncle?
No.
When did he leave him?
Eight days ago.
How could he say that he could not succeed under private instruction when he had made such good progress?
This had been the case since he had studied in public; before that he had received 2nd class in mathematics and had not made it up.
Had his mother commanded him to return to his uncle?
She had wanted to take him back to him herself, but he had resisted because he feared maltreatment.
Had his uncle maltreated him?
He had punished him, but only when he deserved it; he had been maltreated only once, and that after his return, when his uncle threatened to throttle him.
How long had he been with his mother?
Two days.
Who had given him instruction in religion?
The same teacher who taught him other subjects, formerly the priest at Mödling, who was not kindly disposed towards him because he did not behave himself in the street and babbled (or talked) in school.
Had he indulged in disrespectful remarks about his mother?
Yes; and in the presence of his uncle, whom he thought he would please in that way and who had agreed with him.
Was he often alone?
When his uncle was not at home he was left wholly alone.
Had his uncle admonished him to pray?
Yes; he prayed with him every morning and evening.
Johanna van Beethoven examined:
How did her son come to her from the house of his guardian?
He had come to her in the evening for fear of punishment and because he did not like to live with his uncle.
Had she advised him to return to his uncle?
Yes; but her son did not want to do so because he feared maltreatment.
It looked as if she had concealed her son?
She had written to her brother-in-law that she would send her son back to him, but she had not seen him for a long time and was therefore glad to have him with her for awhile, and for this reason she had not sent him back at once.
Had she been forbidden to see her son?
Her wish to do so had been frustrated by telling her of different places where she might see him, but when she went to the places he was not there.
Had her son been taken from her by the police?
She had herself taken him to the police at 4 o’clock.
How did she learn of the plan to send her son out of the country?
Giannatasio had disclosed the project to the police.
Did she consider that her son had been well treated at his uncle’s?
She thought it unsuitable for the reasons given in her former application. She wished to say in particular that v. Beethoven had only one servant and that one could not rely on servants; he was deaf and could not converse with his ward; there was nobody to look after the wants of her son satisfactorily; his cleanliness was neglected and supervision of his clothing and washing; persons who had brought him clean linen had been turned back by his guardian.
What prospects had she for caring for her son?
She had previously had the assurance of Count von Dietrichstein that her son would be accepted at the Convict; she had not been to him since because her application [to the Court] had been rejected.
In whose presence had her son spoken disrespectfully of her?
She had not herself heard him do so, nor could she mention the names of persons who had heard him.
From what source would she meet the deficiency in her income which would have to be applied to the support of her son?
She had no fortune herself but the Hofconcipist Hotschevar would defray the expenses.
Was her husband of noble birth?
So the brothers had said; the documentary proof of nobility was said to be in the possession of the oldest brother, the composer. At the legal hearing on the death of her husband, proofs of nobility had been demanded; she herself had no document bearing on the subject.
Beethoven not of Noble Birth
The testimony of the widow, like that of her son, was taken before Beethoven had been examined and the answer to the final question, no doubt, raised a doubt in the mind of the court touching its jurisdiction; hence the question concerning his birth put to Beethoven. His answer that “van” was a Dutch predicate not confined to the nobility and that he had no proof of noble birth, is all that the minutes of the court show bearing on this question. It led to the Landrecht’s sending the proceedings to the Vienna Magistracy on December 18; this action cut Beethoven to the quick, but the record as here produced also gives a blow, perhaps a fatal one, to one of the pretty romances to which a statement of Schindler’s gave currency. The world knows the story: Doubt having arisen in the mind of the court touching Beethoven’s nobility, he was called upon to produce documentary proof. “At the appointed time he appeared before the tribunal in person and exclaimed: ‘My nobility is here and here,’ pointing to his head and his heart.” But the court would not accept the proof. It is a pity to lose the story, but it must be relegated to the limbo of fiction unless it shall appear that Beethoven made the remark and the clerk refused to record it; and who shall now prove this? Schindler’s insinuation that the reference of the case to the Magistracy had been planned as a move by the widow’s advocate to get the case into a more pliant tribunal is made questionable by the circumstances that it was she who insisted upon the noble birth of the Beethovens and Beethoven who gave the claim a quietus by his straightforward and incontestable answer. It remains a mystery, if she spoke the truth when she said that proof of nobility had been demanded at the probate of the will of her husband, how the case ever got into the Landrecht. As a matter of fact, it deserves to be mentioned, however, that, as later events showed, the lower court espoused the cause of Madame van Beethoven with something like the zeal of an advocate.
Schindler’s comments on the effect of the reference of the case to the Civic Magistrates demand a moment’s attention. Schindler says:
The transfer of the case to the Magistracy was felt as an overwhelming blow by Beethoven. It would be difficult to maintain that Beethoven attached importance to appearing in the public eye as of noble birth, his origin as well as family conditions being well known—especially the latter by reason of the humble social position of his brothers. But it is certain that he laid great weight upon having his lawsuit adjudicated by the exceptional upper court, partly because as a matter of fact there was in that tribunal a better appreciation of his importance, partly because the lower court had an unfavorable reputation which could not inspire in him a hope for the desired outcome.191 But nevertheless it may be said as sure that neither his genius nor his works of art would have given him the privileged position which he occupied in the circles of the nobility had there not been a presumption that he was an equal. This was variously demonstrated as soon as the occurrence in the aristocratic court became known to the public. Not in the middle classes, but in the upper, the little word “van” had exercised a palpable charm. It is a settled fact that after the incident in the Lower Austrian Landrecht the great city of Vienna became too small for our aggrieved master, and had he not been restrained by his sense of duty which was placed upon him by his brother’s will, the projected journey to England would have been undertaken and his sojourn there perhaps become permanent.
It is also certain that Schindler was not as well informed as he ought to have been in the premises and that his memory often left him in the lurch, as we have frequently seen already and shall see again. Not exact knowledge but an amiable bias in favor of his hero speaks out of his recital. It is scarcely conceivable that Beethoven should have cherished the thought that possibly he was of noble birth or that he seriously encouraged such a belief among his exalted friends.
The nephew’s stay at Giannatasio’s was not of long duration and the signs of an imminent disruption of a beautiful and profitable friendship soon showed themselves, though for the nonce amiable relations between Beethoven and the Giannatasio family were continued. Yet Fanny saw her lovely illusions melting away. It had been agreed that Karl should not associate with the other pupils at the institute. Willing, perhaps desirous at first, that such an arrangement should be made, it seems that Beethoven felt his amour propre hurt by it as soon as the first fit of resentment against the lad gave way before one of his tender moods; now there ensued one of the old fits of moroseness, dissatisfaction and suspicion. He wrote to Giannatasio that Karl’s room should be better heated—that he had never had frostbitten hands and feet when living with him;192 moreover, too much importance was being attached to his act, and the consequences to the delinquent were being carried too far. In her diary under date December 14, Fanny deplores that Beethoven’s moodiness, and weakness for the lad, had taken possession of him again and induced him to believe “the liar” rather than his tried friends; she concludes with the lamentation that it will never be possible to gain Beethoven’s entire confidence; she has grievous forebodings as to the outcome.
Work upon Three Masterpieces
Let the rest of the year’s history be devoted to Beethoven’s creative work. Considering the revival of interest and desire on the part of the composer, the net result, measured by finished products, was not as large as might have been expected. Two explanations for this circumstances may be offered: the first lies in his domestic miseries and the frame of mind in which they kept him for long stretches at a time—that is obvious; the second may be read in his compositions. He was growing more and more prone to reflection, to moody speculation; his mental processes, if not slower than before, were more protracted, and also more profound, and they were occupied with works of tremendous magnitude. The year produced sketches and partial developments of the Sonata in B-flat, the Symphony in D minor and the great Mass in D. The Sonata, so two sketchbooks carefully analyzed by Nottebohm show, was begun in 1817, and occupied much of the composer’s time during the summer of 1818, notes showing that he worked upon it in his walks about Mödling and in the Brühl valley. Notes of an announcement of a sale of carriages and of a house for rent, taken from a Vienna newspaper (probably in some inn), show that his thoughts were on the London visit and another of his frequent changes of residence. In April the Sonata was so far advanced that he could write to Archduke Rudolph that on his name-day (April 17) he had written out the first two movements in a fair copy, but this does not necessarily mean that the pieces had received their definitive shape. Among the sketches for the last movement there is an outline for a pianoforte piece in B-flat which, according to an inscription upon the autograph, was composed on the afternoon of August 14.193 Plainly he was already at work on the finale before the end of 1818, and there is no reason for questioning Schindler’s correctness when he says that the Sonata was finished late in the fall when he took up the “Missa Solemnis.” Czerny played it in Beethoven’s presence in the spring of 1819, and it was in London ready for the engraver in April of that year.
Nottebohm, believing that the letter in which Beethoven informed the Archduke that he had written out the first two movements on his name-day could not refer to April 17, 1818, placed both incident and letter in the year following.194 But, as has been said, it does not at all follow from Beethoven’s remark that the two movements were in a finished state;195 the reference may have gone only to the first elaboration of the sketches. The “latest happening” to the Archduke was, probably, his elevation to the archbishopric of Olmütz, which occurred on June 4, 1819; but this was merely the formal execution of a purpose which had long been known in anticipation. Nottebohm’s contention for the name-day of 1819, is untenable for the reason that on April 17 of that year the Sonata had been so long in London that, as Ries says, it was already engraved when he received a note dated April 16, 1819, giving metronomic indications for all the movements and prefixing the Adagio with its present first measure.196 This note must have been preceded by the one erroneously dated April 30; erroneously, because it promises the metronome marks; and this letter again by a still earlier one, mentioning the Sonata as ready for publication. This letter, which Ries does not even mention, is as follows:197
Dear Ries:
I am just recovering from a severe attack and am going into the country—I wish you would try to dispose of the following 2 works, a grand solo sonata for pianoforte and a pianoforte sonata which I have myself arranged for 2 violins, 2 violas, 1 violoncello, to a publisher in London. It ought to be easy for you to get 50 ducats in gold for the two works, the publisher would only have to announce at what time he intended to publish the two works and I could publish them here at the same time, which would yield me more than if I published them here only. I might also publish a new Trio for pianoforte, violin and violoncello, if you were to find a publisher for it.198 I have never done anything unlawful and you can take up this matter in London without injury to your honor or mine. The publisher on receiving the works is to inform me when he intends to publish them and then they shall appear here. Pardon me if I am giving you trouble; my condition is such that I am obliged to turn everywhere to make a pitiful livelihood—Potter says that Chaphell in Bond Street is one of the best publishers; I leave everything to you only begging you to answer as soon as possible so that the works may not lie idle on my hands. I beg of Neate not to make known the many works of mine which he carried with him until I myself come to London which I hope surely to do next winter—I must unless I wish to become a beggar here. Say all things beautiful to the Phil. Society—I shall soon write you about various things and beg you again to answer soon. As ever your true friend
Beethoven.
Many lovely greetings to your lovely wife.
N. B. If you can get more, all the better. It ought to be possible!!!
Beethoven Defends Some Overtures
The letters printed in the “Notizen” ought to be read in connection with this; we give the first and refer the reader to Ries, or the collections, for the others:
Vienna, 30 April (March). 1819.
My dear Ries:
It is only now that I can answer your last of December 18th. Your sympathy does me good. At present it is impossible for me to come to London owing to a net of circumstances in which I am involved; but God will help me surely to get to London next winter when I shall also bring the new symphonies with me. I am expecting soon to get the text for a new oratorio which I am writing for the Musical Society here and which may serve us also in London. Do everything for me that you can; for I need it. Commissions from the Philharmonic Society would have been very welcome; the reports which Neate sent me about the near failure of the three overtures were vexing to me; each one of them not only pleased here each in its way but those in E-flat and C major made a great impression. The fate of these compositions with the p. S. is incomprehensible to me. You will have before now received the arranged quintet and the sonata. See to it that both works especially the quintet, are engraved at once. More leisure may be taken with the sonata but I should like to have it published inside of two months, or three at the latest. Your earlier letter referred to I did not receive; wherefore I had no hesitation in selling both works here—but that is only for Germany. Moreover it will be three months also before the sonata will appear here; but make haste with the Quintet. So soon as the draft for the money is received here I will send a writing for the publisher as proprietor of these works in England, Scotland, Ireland, France, etc.
You shall receive the tempos for the sonata according to Mälzel’s metronome by the next post. De Smidt, Courier of Prince Esterhazy, has taken the Quintet and Sonata with him. At the next opportunity you will also receive my portrait, since I hear that you really want it.
Farewell, keep me in your affections.
Your friend,
Beethoven.
Say all beautiful things to your beautiful wife for me!!!!!
The Sonata was sold to Artaria in Vienna for 100 ducats. The publisher sent the proofs to Beethoven on July 24, and announced it as “marking a new period in Beethoven’s pianoforte works” in the “Wiener Zeitung” of September 15, 1819. It appeared under the title: “Grosse Sonate für das Hammerklavier Seiner Kais. Königl. Hoheit und Eminenz, dem Durchlauchtigsten Hochwürdigsten Herrn Erzherzog Rudolph von Österreich Cardinal und Erzbischoff von Olmütz, etc., etc., etc., in tiefster Ehrfurcht gewidmet von Ludwig van Beethoven, Op. 106.” Soon after its publication (on October 1st), Beethoven in a jocose letter asked for six copies of the Sonata and six of the Variations on Scottish Songs. Beethoven informed Ries of the publication in a letter printed in the “Notizen” and wanted to send him a copy to aid him in correcting the English edition, which was not ready. The Sonata Op. 106 was, therefore, the chief product of the year 1818. Beethoven told Czerny that it was to be his greatest; and so it is, not only in its dimensions but also in its contents. “The Sonata was composed under distressful circumstances,” said Beethoven in a letter to Ries (April 19, 1819), “for it is hard to write almost for the sake of bread alone, and to this pass I have come.”
Simultaneously with the Sonata, Beethoven was at work on the Ninth Symphony during a large portion of the year, but these labors were suspended when his mind became engrossed with the great Mass which was to be a tribute to his pupil, Archduke Rudolph, about to be invested with eminent ecclesiastical dignities. Not alone the Ninth Symphony, a Tenth also was before his fancy, but with neither of them had Schiller’s “Ode to Joy” been brought into association, though the employment of the human voice in one or the other was already under consideration. Schindler records that he saw a beginning made on the score of the Mass in D “late in the fall of 1818”; how far he had proceeded in the work by the end of the year cannot be determined from the sketches which have been discovered up to the present time. It is safe to assume, however, that the Kyrie was fully sketched and fixed in outline, and, as he worked pretty continuously on the Credo throughout 1819, it seems likely that the Gloria had also been begun in the year immediately preceding. Notes in the Tagebuch and sketchbooks which, to judge by their context, were written during the summer sojourn in Mödling show the trend of Beethoven’s thoughts on religious subjects and may be naturally associated with the Mass. Thus (in the Tagebuch):
In order to write true church music... look through all the monastic church chorals and also the strophes in the most correct translations and perfect prosody in all Christian-Catholic psalms and hymns generally.
Sacrifice again all the pettinesses of social life to your art. O God above all things! For it is an eternal providence which directs omnisciently the good and evil fortunes of human men.
Short is the life of man, and whoso bears
A cruel heart, devising cruel things,
On him men call down evil from the gods
While living, and pursue him, when he dies.
With cruel scoffs. But whoso is of generous heart
And harbors generous aims, his guests proclaim
His praises far and wide to all mankind,
And numberless are they who call him good.
—Homer.
Tranquilly will I submit myself to all vicissitudes and place my sole confidence in Thy unalterable goodness, O God! My soul shall rejoice in Thy immutable servant. Be my rock, my light, forever my trust!
Among the sketches for the Sonata in B-flat are memoranda of vocal pieces which came into his mind during his wanderings in the environs of Mödling. Goethe’s “Haidenröslein,” to which his mind several times turned, occupied him again. His spiritual exaltation finds expression in fragments which he notes as “written while walking in the evening between and on the mountains,” among them this:
Great Works and Potboilers
The remark made in the letter to Hauschka that he was compelled to do a lot of scribbling (or “smearing,” as he expressed it) for the sake of money in order to procure leisure for great works may be explained by the fact that he was engaged upon the arrangement of folksongs for Thomson, which were published in Thomson’s Vol. VI, as well, possibly, as those contained in the subsequent octavo edition of 1822-24. The pianoforte piece in B-flat, published by Schlesinger in Berlin under the title “Dernière pensée musicale,” of which mention has already been made, was no doubt a potboiler. With the folksongs must be associated the Variations for Pianoforte alone, or Pianoforte and Flute (or Violin), which he wrote in this and the following year and which were published as Op. 105 and 107. The suggestion had come from Birchall; but Beethoven’s demands for an honorarium was thought too large by the English publisher, and though Beethoven modified them, nothing came of the project at the time. On February 21, 1818, Beethoven offered Thomson twelve “overtures” (in the sense of introductions, or preludes, no doubt) for 140 ducats, and twelve Themes and Variations for 100 ducats, both lots for 224 ducats. The Themes and Variations were accepted and published by Thomson. Beethoven composed sixteen Themes and Variations on folksong material in all; six of them were published by Artaria in Vienna (Op. 105) and the other ten by Simrock in Bonn (Op. 107).
Little is to be added to what has been said about the works published in 1818. Thomson’s Vol. V, the settings for which had been made earlier, was published on June 1, Thomson’s announcement in the preface reading: “On the first of June, 1818, was published by George Thomson, Nr. 3, Royal Exchange, Edinburgh, and by T. Preston, 97 Strand, London, the fifth Volume of Select Scottish Melodies with Symphonies and Accompaniments to each Melody for the Pianoforte, Violin and Violoncello, composed by Haydn and Beethoven.” Four of the settings are by Haydn; the rest by Beethoven. The song “Resignation” was published on March 31, as supplement of the Vienna “Modezeitung.”
Footnotes
1 Probably the Quintet for Pianoforte and Wind-Instruments, Op. 16, published in March, 1801.
2 “Cäcilia.” IX, p. 219.
3 The English editor of this biography found trombone parts written out by Beethoven among Mr. Thayer’s posthumous papers; they belonged to the Trio in the Scherzo of the Ninth Symphony, and Beethoven’s instructions to the copyist where to introduce them in the score plainly showed that they were an afterthought.
4 It was not the case this time, for the manuscript of this Concerto bears in the composer’s hand the date “1800.”
5 In a Conversation Book from the year 1825, Holz writes that till then “Christus am Ölberg” had always drawn full houses, but that the court official in charge of musical affairs (Hofmusikgraf) had not allowed further performances to be given.
6 Anton Kraft was 14½ years old at the time.
7 The following observation on the sonata by Czerny is also interesting: “In the Sonata written for Bridgetower and dedicated to Kreutzer, Op. 47 (of which the first movement was composed in four days and the other two [?] added from a sonata already completed), the concluding passage is said to be borrowed from a piece of Kreutzer’s already in print. I had this assurance immediately after the publication of the Beethoven Sonata from a French musician (1805). It would be worth while to investigate the matter. Perhaps therein lies the reason of its dedication.” And further: “Bridgetower was a mulatto and played very extravagantly; when he played the sonata with Beethoven it was laughed at.”
8 Letters and other documents, some of which were placed in Mr. Thayer’s hands by Samuel Appleby, Esq., relative to Bridgetower, are printed in an appendix to Vol. II of the first German edition of this biography and as foot-notes and otherwise in Vol. III. What is essential in the memoranda and documents can be put into a much smaller compass. The subscription for the concert amounted to 1140 florins and the list was headed by the English envoy. Bridgetower’s father was known in England as the “Abyssinian Prince,” and Mr. Thayer speculates whether the title was genuine or but a sobriquet given to him suggested by Dr. Johnson’s “Rasselas”; but it will appear presently that he was called an “African Prince,” not an Abyssinian; how his father got to Biala in Poland, where Bridgetower was born, or whether his mother was a German or a Pole, remains a mystery which has not yet been cleared up. The first memorandum of information in Mr. Thayer’s collection was in the shape of an excerpt from a communication from London written by Abt Vogler and printed in Bossler’s “Musikalische Correspondenz” on July 7, 1790. Abt Vogler’s letter bears date London, June 6, 1790; in it he said:
“Last Wednesday, June 2nd, I attended a concert here in Hanover Square where two young heroes contested with each other on the violin and all music-lovers and cognoscenti found most agreeable entertainment for three hours. The two played concertos alternately and both won the warmest applause. The quartet, however, which was played by young virtuosi whose combined ages did not reach 40 years, by virtue of a fine, cheerful, witty and yet harmonious performance exceeded all the expectations that experienced players could gratify. The first violin was played by Clement of Vienna, eight and one-half, the second by Bridgetower of Africa, ten years of age.”
The Prince of Wales, afterwards King George IV, took the youth into his service as first violinist in the Pavilion at Brighton. The next piece of information which reached Thayer told of Bridgetower’s first concert in Dresden on July 24, 1802. A second concert was given on March 18, 1803, at which a brother of the violinist, who played the violoncello, took part. A letter from Friedrich Lindemann, a member of the Prince of Wales’s orchestra, dated January 14, 1803, contained the information that a letter of Bridgetower’s forwarded to Brighton by a certain “Billy” Cole had been placed in the hands of the Prince, who read it at once, appeared to be highly satisfied, and granted the writer’s request to be permitted to go to Vienna. Thayer did not learn the dates of Bridgetower’s birth or death, but Dr. Riemann in his revision of the second Volume says that he died “between 1840 and 1850.” This is an error.
In the May number for 1908 of “The Musical Times” (London) Mr. F. G. Edwards printed the results of an investigation into Bridgetower’s life, and provided some new and definite information from a collection of letters and documents in the possession of Arthur F. Hill, F.S.A. From this article it appears that Bridgetower was a pupil of Barthélemon, Giornovichi, Thomas Attwood and—as he claimed—Haydn. If he really was a pupil of Haydn, he must, as Mr. Edwards pointed out, have been in the neighborhood of Vienna before he had completed his tenth year. To this the present writer adds that if he had been a pupil of Haydn’s the latter would not have omitted his name in the list of names which he made of the London musicians on his first visit to the English metropolis, for he included “Clement petit,” who was then between ten and eleven years old. (See, “Music and Manners in the Classical Period,” by H. E. Krehbiel, p. 77.) He made his first public appearance in Paris at a Concert Spirituel on April 13, 1789. In the announcement of this concert he was described as “Mr. Georges Bridgetower, né aux colonies anglaises, âgé de 9 ans.” (Yet his passport issued by the police authorities, gives Biala in Poland as his birthplace.) A concert for his benefit was given on May 27, 1789, at the Salle du Panthéon. Soon thereafter he crossed the channel and, if his father is to be believed, he played for the first time in England before George III and his court at Windsor Castle. Next he appears at Bath, the “Morning Post” of November 25, 1789, reporting “Amongst those added to the Sunday promenade were the African Prince in the Turkish attire. The son of this African Prince has been celebrated as a very accomplished musician.” The same newspaper, on December 8, a fortnight later, tells of a concert given on the Saturday morning immediately preceding the publication which was “more crowded and splendid than has ever been known at this place, upwards of 550 people being present. Rauzzini was enraptured, and declared that he had never heard such execution before, even from his friend La Motte, who was, he thought, much inferior to this wonderful boy. The father was in the gallery, and so affected by the applause bestowed on his son, that tears of pleasure and gratitude flowed in profusion.”
It would seem as if the modern methods of advertising musical artists is far behind the old in the impudent display of charlantanry. The plain “Georges” of the first Paris concert, the later George Polgreen, in the announcement of his first concert in Bath becomes George Augustus Frederick. Why? The Christian name of the Prince of Wales was George Augustus Frederick. In this announcement he is described as “a youth of Ten Years old, Pupil of the celebrated Haydn.” The newspapers were amiable or gullible, or both.
The lad played a concerto between “the 2d and 3d Acts” of “The Messiah” at a performance of Handel’s oratorio given for the benefit of Rauzzini on Christmas eve of the same year. He gave a concert in Bristol on December 18, 1789, leading the band “with the coolness and spirit of a Cramer to the astonishment and delight of all present,” and on New Year’s day, 1790. Next he went to London, where, at Drury Lane Theatre on February 19, 1790, he played a solo at a performance of “The Messiah.” Referring to the Lenten concerts of that year, Parke says in his “Musical Memoirs”: “Concertos were performed on the oboe by me and on the violin for the first time by Master Bridgetower, son of an African Prince, who was attended by his father habited in the costume of his country.” The concert described by Abt Vogler was under the patronage of the Prince of Wales. At the Handel Commemoration of 1791 in Westminster Abbey, Bridgetower and Hummel, in scarlet coats, sat on either side of Joah Bates at the organ and pulled out the stops for him. He played in the orchestra at the Haydn-Salomon concerts in 1791, at several of the Lenten concerts in the King’s Theatre in 1792, and on May 28 he performed a concerto by Viotti at Mr. Barthélemon’s concert, the announcement stating that “Dr. Haydn will preside at the pianoforte.” (Haydn’s note-book contains no mention of the concert, which would in likelihood have been the case had Bridgetower ever been his pupil.) He was plainly on terms of intimacy with such musicians as Viotti, François Cramer, Attwood, and later of Samuel Wesley, who wrote of him in a tone of enthusiastic appreciation.
In 1802, being then in the Prince of Wales’s band at Brighton, he obtained leave, as Thayer notes, to visit Dresden and take the baths at Teplitz and Carlsbad; eventually, too, as we have seen, to visit Vienna. The passport issued to him in Vienna for his return to London described him as “a musician, native of Poland, aged 24 years, medium height, clean shaven, dark brown hair, brown eyes and straight, rather broad nose.” He seems to have become a resident of London and to have continued in favor with musical and other notables for a considerable space, for Dr. Crotch asks his aid in securing the patronage of the Prince Regent for a concert.
He received the degree of Bachelor of Music, on presentation of the usual exercise, from the University of Cambridge in 1811. There follow some years during which his life remains obscure, but in which he lived on the Continent. He was in Rome in 1825 and 1827; back in London in 1843, when Vincent Novello sent him a letter which he signed “your much obliged old pupil and professional admirer.” John Ella met him in Vienna in 1845, but he was again in London in 1846, and there he died, apparently friendless and in poverty, on February 29, 1860. In the registry of his death, discovered by Mr. Edwards, his age is set down as 78 years; but he must have been eighty if he was nine when he played at the first concert in Paris in 1789. He was born either in 1779 or 1780. He published some pianoforte studies in 1812 under the title “Diatonica Armonica” which, with a few other printed pieces, are to be found in the British Museum. A ballad entitled “Henry,” which was “Sung by Miss Feron and dedicated with permission to Her Royal Highness the Princess of Wales,” was evidently composed in 1810.
9 “Hr. Karl v. Beethoven lives auf-der-Wien 26.” “Staats-Schematismus,” 1803, p. 150; and ibid. 1804, p. 154. “Hr. Ludwig van Beethofen, auf-der-Wien 26.”—See “Auskunftsbuch,” 1804, p. 204. “An-der-Wien, No. 26. Bartolomä Zitterbarth, K. K. Prin. Schauspielhaus.”—See “Vollständiges Verzeichniss aller... der numerirten Häuser, deren Eigenthümer,” etc., etc., Wien, 1804, p. 133.
10 A letter printed in 1909 by Leopold Schmidt in his collection from the archives of the Simrock firm, confirms the change of lodgings to the theatre and also brother Karl’s activity as correspondent and arranger. In it he offers a grand Sonata for violin, to appear simultaneously in London, Leipsic, Vienna and Bonn, for 30 florins; a grand Symphony for 400 florins. When the “Kreutzer” Sonata was published (it was announced by Träg on May 18, 1805) Karl acknowledged the receipt of a copy in a letter to Simrock, adding that all the other publishers sent six copies of the works printed by them and asking for the remaining five. Simrock took him to task rather sharply for what he considered a piece of presumption, in a letter which he enclosed to Ferdinand Ries with the statement that he might read it if he wanted to. “I bought the Sonata of Louis van Beethoven,” says the indignant publisher, “and in his letter concerning it there is not a word about giving him six copies in addition to the fees—a matter important enough to have been mentioned; I was under the impression that Louis van Beethoven composed his own works; what I am certain of is that I have fully complied with all the conditions of the contract and am indebted to nobody.” In the note to Ries he calls Karl’s conduct “impertinent and deserving of a harsher treatment, for Herr Karl seems to me incorrigible.”
11 Thayer considered the “first street to the left” to be the Herrengasse. J. Böck (Gnadenau) argued in “Die Musik.” Vol. II, No. 6, that the house in which the “Eroica” was composed was the present Hauptstrasse No. 92 of Döbling and bore the old No. 4 of the Hofzeile. In 1890 the owner of the house and the Männergesangsverein of Döbling placed a tablet on the “Eroica” house, whose occupants “were still in possession of a tradition concerning Beethoven’s occupation of it.” So says Dr. Riemann.
12 Th. von Frimmel discusses the Beethoven portraits in his “Neue Beethoveniana,” p. 189 et seq., and “Beethoven-Studien,” Vol. II (1905).
13 A copy of this portrait which belonged to Thayer is now in the possession of Mrs. Jabez Fox, and is presented in photogravure as frontispiece to the present volume.
14 The publication of a complete edition of his composition frequently occupied the mind of Beethoven. In 1806 Breitkopf and Härtel tried to get all of Beethoven’s works for publication by them; it is likely that similar efforts on the part of Viennese publishers date back as far as 1803. Later the plan plays a rôle in the correspondence with Probst and Simrock. As late as 1824 it was urged by Andreas Streicher. It has already been said that Beethoven at an early date desired to make an arrangement with a publisher by which he might be relieved of anxiety about monetary matters. He wanted to give all his compositions to one publisher, who should pay him a fixed salary.
15 Nottebohm, “Skizzenbuch, etc., 1803,” p. 56, says “quartet.”
16 Kreutzer came to Vienna with Bernadotte in 1789.
17 “Orpheus,” 1841, p. 248.
18 Allg. Mus. Zeit. XXIV, p. 320.
19 But Ries says that Beethoven hired these lodgings besides those in the theatre.
20 See, in the “Allg. Mus. Zeit.” III, a criticism of “Nelson’s Great Seabattle,” for pianoforte, violin and violoncello by Ferd. Kauer. Years afterward this piece may have been confounded with the Symphony in Dr. Bertolini’s memory. From Otto Jahn’s papers we learn that Dr. Bertolini told him that the first idea of the “Sinfonia eroica” was suggested to Beethoven by Bonaparte’s expedition to Egypt (May, 1798); and the rumor of Nelson’s death at the battle of Aboukir (June 22), at which Nelson was wounded in the head, was the cause of the funeral march. Czerny wrote: “According to Beethoven’s long-time friend, Dr. Bertolini, the first idea of the ‘Sinfonia eroica’ was suggested by the death of the English general Abercrombie; hence the naval (not land-military) character of the theme and the entire first movement.” Music of a naval character to celebrate the death of an army officer! Czerny seems to have been at least temporarily weak either in history or logic.
21 Dr. Schmidt is of opinion that this anecdote was contributed to his journal by Hieronymus Payer, certainly good authority.
22 “Full moon, July 22,” almanac of 1804.
23 This honorarium was a share in the receipts.
24 In the second (German) edition of Thayer’s “Life,” etc., Dr. Riemann amends this statement in the text as follows: These statements of Treitschke’s prove to be inaccurate, inasmuch as it has definitively been determined that Beethoven began work on “Leonore” before Paër’s opera had been produced in Dresden, i. e., October 3, 1804. This is proved by the discovery of sketches for the early numbers of the opera among sketches for the “Eroica” symphony, and is confirmed by Ries. The latter says: “When he composed ‘Leonore’ he had free lodgings for a year in the Wiedener Theatre; but as these opened on the courtyard they were not agreeable to him. He therefore hired, at the same time, quarters in the Rothes Haus on the Alserkaserne.” “Now,” Nottebohm continues, “Beethoven lived in the Theater-an-der-Wien in May, 1803, and later in the Rothes Haus in the spring of 1804.” Consequently he must have worked on the opera before the spring of 1804. Nottebohm assumes that between the abandonment of work on Schikaneder’s text and the beginning of work on “Leonore” there could not be more than a quarter of a year. It is very probable that Beethoven dropped work on Schikaneder’s text when the latter’s activity as director came to an end on February 11, 1804; but it does not follow that he may not already have approached the setting of Bouilly’s text, as translated into German by Sonnleithner, who now undertook the work of administration. At any rate it is an error to assert that the commission to compose the book was not offered to him until the fall of 1804. Indeed, the question is whether or not Beethoven’s occupancy of lodgings in the theatre was interrupted at all. It ought also to be borne in mind that in view of his relations with Baron von Braun and Sonnleithner, Beethoven may have known before the conclusion of the contract that Schikaneder’s direction was to be terminated—reasons enough for believing that there is nothing improbable in the theory that the composer began work on “Leonore” before the end of 1803.
25 Dr. Riemann here inserts: “If this was not the case the explanation lies in the fact that the attention of Sonnleithner, who had to provide texts for both Beethoven and Cherubini, had previously been directed to the ‘Léonore’ of Bouilly and Gaveaux, and Beethoven had already begun work on it.”
26 It was not until February 8, 1809, that Paër’s opera was performed in Vienna, long after Beethoven had withdrawn his opera and when Baron von Braun was no longer Intendant. The story to which Ferdinand Hiller gave currency about the production of Paër’s opera and the attendance of Beethoven upon it in company with the composer must be rejected for chronological reasons. (Riemann.)
27 In September, 1804, Muzio Clementi, who was not only a fine musician but also a clever business man, made an arrangement with Breitkopf and Härtel, by which he secured all the compositions which Beethoven might bring that firm, for England at one-half the honorarium paid to the composer. (See an article by Max Unger in “The Monthly Record,” Nov.-Dec., 1908.)
28 Nottebohm’s researches (cf. “Zweite Beethoveniana,” p. 416 et seq.) show that Beethoven sketched all the movements of the Triple Concerto, Op. 56, in 1804; that the beginning of the work on the “Waldstein” Sonata. Op. 53, dates back to 1803, or at the latest the early part of 1804; sketches for Op. 54 are missing, but the three numbers of Op. 57 are so fully represented among the opera sketches that Schindler’s statement that the so-called “Appassionata” Sonata was composed at Count Brunswick’s in 1806 is to be understood as referring only to its definitive working out and the making of a fair copy; the date of the performance of “Leonore” (“Fidelio”), taken in connection with a revision of the air in E major, show that the “Leonore” sketchbook, between which and the book of 1803 there seems to have been another, of which no trace has been found, may have extended to the beginning of 1805.
29 Again played by him at the opening of Schuppanzigh’s Augarten concerts in the Spring.
30 See Nottebohm’s study of the sketches for “Fidelio” in “Zweite Beethoveniana,” p. 409 et seq.; also what Jahn has to say, and the results of Erich Prieger’s labors in connection with the reprint of the original form of the opera.
31 Jahn, “Gesammelte Schriften,” p. 244.
32 To the opinions of the reviewers some attention must be given; it does not seem advisable to quote them in extenso. The “Freymüthige” describes the military occupation of Vienna, the officers quartered in the city proper, the private soldiery in the suburbs. At first the theatres were empty, but gradually the French began to visit them and at the time of writing were more numerous in the playhouses than the Austrians. “Fidelio,” the new opera by Beethoven, did not please. It was given a few times only and the house was empty after the first performance. The music did not meet the expectations of the cognoscenti and music-lovers, lacking the passionate expression which is so compelling in Mozart and Cherubini. The music is beautiful in places, but as a whole the opera is far from being a perfect or successful work. The “Zeitung für the Elegante Welt” records that the music is “ineffective and repetitious,” and did not add to the writer’s opinion of Beethoven’s talent for vocal writing formed on hearing his cantata (“Christus am Ölberg”). In its issue of January 8, 1806, the correspondent of the “Allg. Mus. Zeitung” says that he had expected something very different, in view of Beethoven’s undisputed talent. Beethoven had often sacrificed beauty to newness and singularity and therefore something new and original had been expected, but these were the qualities which were least noticeable. The music is distinguished neither by invention nor execution. The overture is not comparable with that of “Prometheus.” As a rule there is nothing new in the vocal parts; they are generally too long, the text is ceaselessly repeated and the characterization misses fire, as, for instance, in the duet after the recognition. A canon in the first act and an aria in F [E] are more successful, though the pretty accompaniment with its three horns obbligato and bassoon is somewhat overloaded. The choruses, especially the song of the prisoners, are a failure. Dr. Henry Reeve, of Norwich, England, one of the earliest collaborators on the “Edinburgh Review,” then a young man of 25, was in Vienna at the time of the French invasion and attended the second representation of the opera on November 21st. Sir George Grove sent a copy of a page from his journal to Thayer. He thought the plot a sad mixture of bad action and romantic situations, but the airs, duets and choruses worthy of all praise. The “overtures,” of which there was one for every act, were too artificial to be generally agreeable and an appreciation of their beauties would require frequent hearing. Beethoven sat at the pianoforte and conducted the performance—a little, dark, young-looking man, who wore spectacles.
33 “Signale für die Musikalische Welt,” June 21, 1866.
34 Twice only.
35 In the chapter immediately preceding the present one in the revised German edition of this biography, Dr. Riemann introduces the following: “Through the efforts of Otto Jahn, Gustav Nottebohm and Erich Prieger, it has been made possible measurably to observe the transformations which ‘Fidelio’ underwent between its first production and its publication. The mysterious disappearance (possibly theft) of several scores made it extremely difficult to determine the form in which it was represented—‘Fidelio’ in three acts in 1805, ‘Leonore’ in two acts in 1806, and ‘Fidelio’ in two acts in 1814—the statements touching the omissions and restorations of single numbers being insufficient and not free from contradictions. About 1850, however. Otto Jahn succeeded in putting together a score of the second revision of 1806 from the separate parts; of this he published a vocal score with pianoforte accompaniment towards the close of 1853 through Breitkopf and Härtel. He also gave some hints concerning its variations from the score of 1805. After another half-century Erich Prieger collected the material for a restoration of the work as it was at the first production in 1805, compiled a vocal score and gave it to the public through Breitkopf and Härtel. More than that—he occasioned its performance at the centennial celebration in the Royal Opera House in Berlin.” From Prieger’s preface we take in part the following statements:
“In 1807 Breitkopf and Härtel published three numbers from the second revision of 1806—viz: the Trio in E-flat, ‘Ein Mann ist bald gewonnen’ (afterwards elided), the canon quartet, and the duet ‘Gut, Söhnchen, gut’; not until 1810 was a vocal score of the second version published. It came from the press of Breitkopf and Härtel, but was without overtures and finales. The overture in C, No. 3, which was performed with the opera in 1806, was published by Breitkopf and Härtel, also in 1810; the overture in C, No. 2, with which the representation of 1805 began, edited by Otto Jahn, was published by B. and H. at the end of 1853. (It was performed in Leipsic on January 27 of that year.) Nottebohm notes the performance of the four overtures on January 11, 1840, and a publication in 1842; but this refers to the work as disfigured by cuts. The so-called ’first’ C major overture found amongst Beethoven’s posthumous effects and published by Haslinger as Op. 138 is in reality the first of the series, the one which, according to Schindler’s report (third edition, I, 127), was tried over once at Prince Lichnowsky’s and put aside as too simple, but purchased at once by Haslinger. It is true that Nottebohm discovered sketches for the overture in company with sketches for the symphony in C minor and, from this fact, argued that the overture had been composed between April, 1807, and December, 1808 (see ‘Beethoveniana,’ pp. 60 et seq.): but in his analysis of the sketchbook of 1803, extending from October, 1802, to April, 1804, he shows the presence of sketches for ‘Leonore’ among such for the ‘Eroica,’ which proves that Beethoven worked on the opera as early as 1803 and that ’these labors were so far advanced when the performance of Paër’s opera became known (October 3, 1804) that there could be no thought of an abandonment.’ But this demolishes the theory that Op. 138 must have been composed in 1807-08, and we are compelled to believe with Kalischer that Schindler’s account is correct and that Haslinger (Steiner and Co.) had for years been in possession of the first overture to ‘Leonore’ which ’had been laid aside after a trial in 1805,’ and that in 1823, at a time when Schindler was Beethoven’s confidant, the composer demanded that it be published and Haslinger refused, saying: ‘We bought those manuscripts and paid for them; consequently they are our property, and we can do with them as we will.’ Only one thing remains problematical, and that is, what could have persuaded Haslinger to state that he had found the overture in a packet of dances which he purchased at the sale of Beethoven’s effects. Kalischer calls attention to a letter from Fanny Hensel to Rebekka Dirichlet, written after the music festival at Düsseldorf in 1836 under the direction of Mendelssohn (see ‘Die Familie Mendelssohn,’ II, 9): ‘Oh, Becky! We have got acquainted with an overture to ‘Leonore’; a new piece. It is notorious that it has never been played; it did not please Beethoven and he put it aside. The man had no taste! It is so refined, so interesting, so fascinating that I know few things which can be compared with it. Haslinger has printed a whole edition and will not release it. Perhaps he will do so after this success.’ That seems to have been the case; but Haslinger permitted the work to be played as early as February 7, 1828, at a concert of Bernhard Romberg’s and elsewhere. In his book ‘Beethoven’s Studien im Generalbass, etc.,’ 1832, Seyfried connects this overture with the project, never carried out, of a production of the opera in Prague in 1807. ‘For the theatre in Prague,’ he says, ‘Beethoven wrote a less difficult overture which Haslinger, afterward R. I. Court Music Dealer, acquired at auction’; to which Haslinger replied: ‘This overture is already engraved in score and orchestral parts and, together with other arrangements of it, will yet appear in the course of this year.’ Nottebohm, too, convinced that the sketches for the overture had to be placed in 1807, and doubtless influenced by Seyfried’s statement, accepted the theory that it had been intended for Prague. Seyfried’s statement, however, in view of the involved story of the manuscript in the hands of Haslinger, lacks credibility, and is probably to be charged to the account of Haslinger, who may not have wanted to tell the truth for fear that it might lessen the market value of the work.”—
To this the English editor feels in duty bound to say that Nottebohm’s argument seems to him at all points invulnerable. The autograph of the overture is no longer in existence. The score bought by Haslinger and the parts are copies which Beethoven corrected. On the first violin part the copyist had written “Ouvertura”; Beethoven added “in C, Characteristic Overture.” Under this title the composition was announced by Haslinger in 1828. He did not publish it at the time, but there were many references to it at its performance at Romberg’s concert and at other times as a “Characteristic” overture which had been found among Beethoven’s posthumous papers. Between 1828 and 1832, when Haslinger finally gave the work to the public, somebody made the discovery, which ought to have been made at sight of the manuscript, certainly at the first performance in 1828 (the melody of Florestan’s song occurring in it as one of the themes), that there was a connection between it and “Fidelio.” When Haslinger published it, therefore, he abandoned the title under which he had announced it four years before, and called it: “Overture in C, composed in the year 1805 for the opera ‘Leonore,’ etc.” Every student knows how valuable Nottebohm’s studies of the sketches are in the determination of dates. Composers usually write the overtures to their operas last; indeed, they must do so when utilizing thematic material drawn from the vocal numbers. Mr. Thayer has already called attention to the fact that the vocal numbers were taken up in the order of their occurrence, as Beethoven’s sketches show. They also show that the overture was sketched after all the vocal numbers had been planned. And the overture thus sketched was that known as No. 2. There is no hint of the overture No. 1 in the sketches made in 1804 and the beginning of 1805. Schindler says that Haslinger bought the overture immediately after it had been laid aside by Beethoven. That would have been in 1805. But Haslinger was not in Vienna till 1810. If Steiner and Co., with which firm Haslinger associated himself shortly after his arrival in the Austrian capital and of which the firm of Tobias Haslinger was the successor, was meant by Schindler, it remains a mystery that the publishers, so intimately connected with Beethoven, should have kept an overture under lock and key for 23 years and then have given it out as a work bought at the sale of Beethoven’s effects. That circumstance could only awaken the suspicion that the composer did not think it worthy of his name and fame. If he did so think, he would not have demanded that Haslinger publish it in 1823. Judging by internal evidence the overture certainly seems to be an earlier work than the overtures which the world knows by the titles “Leonore,” Nos. 2 and 3; but contemporary reports (a letter from Vienna printed in the “Journal des Luxus und der Moden,” Weimar, 1808) offer evidence in addition to the testimony of Seyfried that Beethoven did write a new overture for the projected Prague performance. No doubt Beethoven was convinced, soon after the revival in 1806, that the third “Leonore” was too long and too severe a piece for its purpose; he was still of that opinion when he revised the opera for the revival of 1814, as is evidenced by his composing the “Fidelio” overture in E, and, more than that, consenting to the use of the overture to “The Ruins of Athens” at the first performance. Mr. Thayer was quite as capable of judging of the value of the evidence in the case as his editors; he was familiar with Nottebohm’s contention; and in his history of the year 1807 he unhesitatingly sets down the overture known as “Leonore, No. 1” as that designed for Prague. There is no new evidence so far as this writer knows which could justify a reversal of the opinion which has prevailed amongst musical scholars since 1872.
36 Frimmel, in his “Beethoven” (second edition, 1893 p. 42), tells the story in essentially the same manner on the authority of a grandson of Dr. Weiser, house physician of Prince Lichnowsky; Dr. Weiser’s version had previously been printed by Franz Xaver Bach in the “Wiener Deutsche Zeitung” of August 31, 1873. In both cases the story ends with Beethoven’s sending a letter to Lichnowsky containing this passage: “Prince, what you are you are by accident and birth; what I am I am through myself. There have been and will still be thousands of princes; there is only one Beethoven.” Authentic or not, the expression might well have come from the lips of Beethoven in a fit of anger.
37 Thomson’s memory was a little at fault when this preface was written; the proposal was made to Beethoven before Haydn’s death.
38 But on March 27, 1806, Beethoven offered the Concerto to Hoffmeister and Kühnel together with “Christus am Ölberg” for 600 florins. The work, if not completed, must have been well under way early in the year.
39 See the “Grenzboten,” April 3, 1857.
40 Young Wilding: “Oh how they [the women] melt at the Gothic names of General Swapinbach, Count Rousoumoffsky, Prince Montecuculi and Marshal Fustinburgh.” (“The Liar.”)
41 In June, 1906, Dr. Kalischer published two short notes written by Beethoven to Bigot. They are without date. The first explains Beethoven’s departure from Bigot’s house on the occasion of a visit as due to a sudden attack of fever; the second, accompanying some music, reads as follows: “I intended to visit you last night, but recalled in time that you are not at home on Saturdays—and I discover that I must visit you very often or not at all—I do not yet know which shall be my choice, but I almost believe the latter—because by so doing I shall evade all compulsion of having to come to you.”
42 Here Dr. Riemann has introduced into the text: “The serious interest which Beethoven felt for Therese could be questioned or ignored by the biographers so long as certain letters of Gleichenstein were accepted as belonging to the year 1807, which we must certainly now assign to the spring of 1810, a time when Therese had passed her 18th year and may have been 20 since (if the record of her age at her death is correct) she may have been born in 1791, so that, in view moreover of the Italian origin of her family, it was scarcely apposite to speak of her as ’half a child’ in 1810.”
43 Quid licet Jovi non licet bovi; the maxim ought to be repeated every time this familiar story is told. Moreover, those who repeat Beethoven’s remark oftenest always omit a very significant word in it: “Und so erlaube ich sie!” i. e., “When used in the manner illustrated in the measure in question, I allow them.” Beethoven gave no general license.
44 Seyfried’s memory has here in part played him false.
45 Another slight mistake. Schindler was in possession of Beethoven’s glasses and they were by no means “very strong.”
46 One of Beethoven’s puns, the point of which is lost in the translation: “Schönere Noten brächten mich schwerlich aus den Nöthen.”
47 The genesis of the fourth symphony, in B-flat, Op. 60, is but imperfectly known. Nottebohm’s studies of the sketchbooks, which are so frequently helpful, fail us utterly here. The autograph score bears the inscription, “Sinfonia 4ta, 1806, L. v. Bthvn.” Having been played in March, 1807, at one of the two subscription concerts at Lobkowitz’s, it was, of course, finished at that time. Beethoven referred to it in his letter to Breitkopf and Härtel from Grätz on September 3, 1806. This is not convincing proof that it was all ready at the time, but certainly that it was well under way. On November 18 he wrote to the same firm that he could not then give them the promised symphony, because a gentleman of quality had purchased its use for six months. It is within the bounds of possibility that this reference was to the symphony in C minor, the sketches for which date back at least to 1805, though it was not completed till March, 1808, at the earliest. It would seem that work on the C minor symphony was laid aside in favor of the fourth, which was either written or sketched in the late summer and fall of 1806, and completed in Vienna in time for the performance in March, 1807.
The symphony is dedicated to Count Oppersdorff, a Silesian nobleman. The castle of the Counts Oppersdorff lies near the town of Ober-Glogau, which in early times was under their rule. Count Franz von Oppersdorff, who died in Berlin in 1818, was a zealous lover of music who maintained in his castle an orchestra which he strove to keep complete in point of numbers by requiring all the officials in his employ to be able to play upon an orchestral instrument. Partly through bonds of blood and marriage, partly through those of friendship, the family of Oppersdorff was related to many of the noble families of Austria—Lobkowitz, Lichnowsky, etc. The castle of Lichnowsky at Grätz, near Troppau, was scarcely a day’s journey from Ober-Glogau. Thus it happened that Prince Lichnowsky, in company with Beethoven, paid a visit to Count Oppersdorff at his castle, on which occasion the orchestra played the Second Symphony. This, as the evidence indicates, was in the fall of 1806.
48 Dr. Riemann, who introduced this letter in the body of the text of this biography, preceded it with the following observations on the significance of the transaction between Beethoven and Clementi: “This business plays an extraordinarily important rôle in the next three years of Beethoven’s life (until the spring of 1810). The publication of its details has made portions of the account in the first edition of this work wholly untenable, since those portions were based on the assumption that the conclusion of the contract with Clementi had been followed also by the prompt payment of the honorarium (in 1807), whereas, as a matter of fact, the payment was delayed for three years, as has been plainly shown by the correspondence between Clementi and Collard. Clementi, it would seem, spent the eight years following 1802, when he went to St. Petersburg with Field, till 1810, entirely on the Continent (in St. Petersburg, Berlin, Leipsic, Rome) and sojourned several times in Vienna. We know from Ries’s account that he did not come into contact with Beethoven during his extended stay in 1804, but we also know that as early as the fall of 1804, he tried to secure the right of publishing Beethoven’s works in England.”
49 This is given from Jahn’s copy, to which is appended the following note: “Titles of the 6 works with changed dedications: 3 quartets, the name Rasoumowsky changed in Beethoven’s handwriting to à son Altesse le Prince Charles de Lichnowsky. The name of Frau von Breuning stricken out of the dedication of the arrangement of the Concerto. The Pianoforte Concerto originally dedicated with a German title to Archduke Rudolph, then with a French title à son ami Gleichenstein.” None of these changes was made; the “six works” came out with the dedications originally intended.
50 This letter (to which allusion has been made in the chapter devoted to Beethoven’s love-affairs) was first printed from the original owned by Count Géza von Brunswick in the “Blätter für Theater und Musik” (No. 34). If the date, “May 11, 1806,” was written by Beethoven and is not an error by a copyist, it provides another instance of the composer’s irresponsibility in dating his letters; for the reference to the contract with Clementi is irrefutable evidence that it was written in 1807. Beethoven’s remark about getting great without the help of a monument reared by Therese von Brunswick is evidently an allusion to the fact that the Countess erected a monument to her father in the grounds of the family-seat in Hungary, and might properly enough be cited, together with the commissioned kiss, as proof of the intimacy between the Brunswicks and Beethoven. Had there been talk of another family monument at Martonvásár? Beethoven’s remark might easily be thus interpreted. The sister whom he had asked to write about the quartets was doubtless Josephine, Countess von Deym. The sportive remark about Schuppanzigh’s marriage with one like him is explained by the fact that the violinist was of Falstaffian proportions.
51 The Editor of the English edition feels it to be his duty to permit Thayer to reiterate his argument in favor of the year 1807, as that in which the love-letter was written, notwithstanding Dr. Riemann’s curt rejection of it in the German edition. The question is still an open one.
52 Nottebohm concludes from a study of the sketches that the Symphony in C minor was completed in March, 1808, and the “Pastoral” Symphony later, though the two were sketched during the same period, in part, and there is a remote possibility that the latter, which was written down with unusual speed, was finished as soon as the former. In support of this theory is the circumstance that at the concert on December 22, 1808, at which both were produced, the “Pastoral” was numbered 5 and the C minor 6. Both symphonies were offered to Breitkopf and Härtel in June, 1808, and bought by the firm in September. In the letter offering them Beethoven observed the present numbering. A stipulation in the letter that the symphonies should not be published until six months after June 1, suggests the probability that the right to perform them in private had been sold to Prince Lobkowitz and Count Rasoumowsky, to whom in common the works are dedicated.
53 Query: The same whom in 1812 Count Ferd. Waldstein married?
54 On June 8, 1808, Beethoven offered the Mass in C to Breitkopf and Härtel, along with the fifth and sixth symphonies and the sonata for pianoforte and violoncello, Op. 69, for 900 florins. He wrote: “I do not like to say anything about my mass or myself, but I believe I have treated the text as it has seldom been treated.” The answer of Breitkopf and Härtel is not of record, but to the offer which it contained, Beethoven replied on July 16 with a letter in which he offered the mass, two symphonies, the sonata for ’cello and two other pianoforte sonatas (or in place of these, “probably” another symphony) for 700 florins. Then he says: “You see that I give more and take less—but that is the limit; you must take the mass, or I cannot give you the other works—for I am considering honor and not profit merely. ‘There is no demand for church music,’ you say, and you are right, if the music comes from mere thorough-bassists, but if you will only have the mass performed once you will see if there will not be music-lovers who will want it.... I will guarantee its success in any event.” In a third letter, without date, which throws light on the well-nigh insuperable difficulties experienced by a famous composer a century or so ago in securing the publication of a large ecclesiastical work, Beethoven says: “To the repeated proposal made by you through Wagener, I reply that I am ready to relieve you of everything concerning the mass—I make you a present of it, you need not pay even the cost of copying, firmly convinced that if you once have it performed in your winter concerts at Leipsic you will surely provide it with a German text and publish it.... The reason for my having wished to bind you to publish this mass is in the first place and chiefly because it is dear to my heart and in spite of the coldness of our age to such works.” A later letter (of date April 5, 1809) to Breitkopf and Härtel shows that the gift of the mass was not accepted. Beethoven changed its dedication several times. On October 5, 1810, he wrote to Breitkopf and Härtel that it was dedicated to Zmeskall; on October 9, 1811, he gives notice that a change in the dedication would have to be made because “the woman is now married and the name must be changed; let the matter rest, therefore, write to me when you will publish it and then the work’s saint will doubtless be found.” Eventually the “saint” proved to be Prince Kinsky.
55 This letter was doubtless followed by a billet to Gleichenstein reading as follows: “I think—you would better have them pay you 60 florins more than the 1500 or, if you think that it would be consistent with my honesty—the sum of 1600—I leave this wholly to you, however, only honesty and justice must be the polestar which is to guide you.” The transaction to which the letter and note refer must have been the sale of the compositions, the British rights for which had been sold to Clementi. The quartet was probably one of the Rasoumowsky set and the symphony that in B-flat, since the fifth and sixth were not published by the Viennese Bureau but by Breitkopf and Härtel.
56 Alois Fuchs related that when Beethoven heard from Krumpholz of Napoleon’s victory at Jena he exclaimed: “Pity that I do not understand the art of war as well as I do the art of music; I would conquer him yet!”
57 Nevertheless a letter, of which a copy was placed in the hands of Thayer at a later date, indicates that an oratorio “Die Sündfluth” was written by Hammer-Purgstall, and also that the correspondence between Beethoven and the Orientalist took place in 1809. It is dated “Ash Wednesday,” the year not being mentioned, but refers to the departure of the Persian Ambassador and the fact that H. Schick had acquainted the writer with Beethoven’s desire to have an Indian chorus of a religious character for composition.
58 Röckel in his letter to Thayer says: “That Beethoven did not abandon the idea of composing another opera was shown by the impatience with which he could scarcely wait for his friend Collin to make an opera book for him of Shakespeare’s ‘Macbeth.’ At Beethoven’s request, I read the first act and found that it followed the great original closely; unfortunately Collin’s death prevented the completion of the work.”
59 Schindler here is mistaken. The “walk toward the Kahlenberg” took them northerly into the valley between Heiligenstadt and Nussdorf, where an excessively idealized bust of the composer now marks the “Scene by the Brook.” After thirty years of absence from Vienna, Schindler’s memory had lost the exact topography of these scenes; and a friend to whom he wrote for information upon it mistook the Grinzing brook and valley for the true ones. This explanation of his error was made by Schindler to the present writer very soon after the third edition of his (Schindler’s) book appeared.
60 “But the note of the yellowhammer, both in England and in Austria, is not an arpeggio—cannot in any way be twisted into one, or represented by one. It is a quick succession of the same note, ending with a longer one, sometimes rising above the preceding note, but more frequently falling. In fact, Schindler himself tells us that it was the origin of the mighty theme which opened the C minor Symphony!”—Grove, “Beethoven and His Nine Symphonies,” p. 211.
61 Carl Holz related a story to Jahn, which he may very well have heard from Beethoven himself. Jahn’s memorandum of it is in the following words: “Scherzo of the Pastorale. In Heiligenstadt a drunken bassoonist thrown out of the tavern, who then blows the bass notes.”
62 Some of the information for which Thayer hoped was supplied by his translator, Dr. Deiters, and has been printed as a foot-note in the preceding chapter. Something more appears from several documents which have come to light since Mr. Thayer wrote, but, it must be confessed, it seems more bewildering than illuminative. One of these is a letter which was published in the “Signale” of Leipsic in September, 1880. It is without date, but an allusion to the felon with which Beethoven was afflicted fixes the time of its writing about March, 1808. The significant part of the letter is as follows: “To-day I have little time to write more to you, I only want to inform you that your symphony has long been ready and I will send it to you by the next post—you may retain 50 florins, for the copying, which I will have done for you, will cost that sum at least—in case you do not want the symphony, however, let me know the fact before the next post—in case you accept it, rejoice me as soon as possible with the 300 florins still due me—The last piece in the symphony is with 3 trombones and flautino—not with 3 kettledrums, but will make more noise than 6 kettledrums and, indeed, better noise—I am still under treatment for my poor innocent finger and because of it have not been able to go out for a fortnight—farewell—let me hear something from you soon, dear Count—it goes ill with me.” The document which Dr. Riemann says “obviously” accompanied this letter (though we cannot see why) runs as follows: “Receipt for 500 florins from Count Oppersdorff for a Sinfonie which I have written for him.” This is dated “1807 on the 3rd of February.” There is another receipt for 150 florins dated March 29, 1808, but nothing to show what the money was paid for except a memorandum accompanying it which seems to be partly in the handwriting of Beethoven, partly in that of Oppersdorff, and states that 200 florins had been paid in June, 1807, for the “5 Sinfoni” (the numeral is vague), but that the symphony had not been received. The reference to the trombones in the finale of the symphony proves that it was the fifth that was in question.
On November 1, 1808, Beethoven writes the letter printed above in the body of the text. Why Dr. Riemann should have thought it necessary to consider the first letter of contemporaneous date with the first receipt is not plain, nor why he should surmise that Beethoven had enclosed the receipt in the letter before he received the money which was not paid at the time. To this Editor it seems as if the confused tangle might be explained in part, at least, as follows, though the explanation leaves Beethoven under a suspicion which cannot be dispelled until more is learned of the dealings between him and Count Oppersdorff: On the occasion of Beethoven’s visit to Count Oppersdorff in company with Lichnowsky in the summer or fall of 1806, the Count commissioned the composer to write a symphony for him; Beethoven had begun work on the Fifth Symphony, but laid it aside and during the remainder of his stay at Grätz and in the winter of 1807 wrote the Symphony in B-flat which is dedicated to Count Oppersdorff; for this he received 500 florins on February 3, 1807; he did not send the Count the score, as was the custom, for exclusive use during a fixed period, but turned it over to Lobkowitz for performance, being in urgent need of money; a year later he substituted the Fifth for the Fourth and accepted from Count Oppersdorff 150 florins in March and 200 in June for it without delivering it, this sum being, it may be presumed, a bonus for the larger work, the Count apparently having asked for something employing an unusual apparatus (hence the “3 kettledrums”); this symphony was also withheld in the end, for reasons which are not known, and Oppersdorff had to content himself with the mere dedication of the Symphony in B-flat originally designed for him.
Dr. Riemann’s comment on the transactions is this: “The letter of November 1, 1808, proves conclusively that Count Oppersdorff could not have received either the C minor or the B-flat Symphony for his use for the customary half year; for the B-flat Symphony was performed by Lobkowitz in March, 1807; it was sold to Clementi and also to the Industriecomptoir in the summer, delivered for publication at the latest in the fall of 1807 when Beethoven had to return the 1500 florins to his brother Johann. The C minor Symphony was performed at the concert in the Theater-an-der-Wien on December 22, 1808, offered to Breitkopf and Härtel as early as June, 1808, sold on September 14, 1808, and published in April, 1809. To all appearances, Count Oppersdorff was compelled to look upon the 350 florins as remuneration for the mere dedication of the Symphony in B-flat which was published by the Industriecomptoir in March, 1808 (score not until 1821 by Simrock). The name of Count Oppersdorff does not appear again in the life-history of Beethoven.”
63 Czerny did not know that Beethoven had formed the idea of this work full eight years before. See notice on the Petter sketchbook ante, Chapter II.
64 The agreement between this memorial and the letters written on the subject (apparently to Gleichenstein—though Thayer was not willing to commit himself on this point) make it most probable that he was the author of the document. Even the sentimental suggestion that the contributors might look upon themselves as co-authors of the great works to come, went out from Beethoven in one of the notes probably sent to Gleichenstein.
65 On this letter Dr. Riemann comments as follows: “This letter proves conclusively that in the spring of 1809, Beethoven was not yet thinking of a union with Therese Malfatti and that all letters to Gleichenstein containing hints of that nature are of later date. But it may safely be assumed that the settlement of a fixed income upon him together with the receipts from his compositions set Beethoven seriously to thinking of marriage. Although Dr. Malfatti, uncle of the sisters Therese and Anna, had been Beethoven’s house physician since the death of Dr. Schmidt (February 13, 1808), it was not until some time in the course of the year 1809, that Beethoven’s inclination towards Therese gradually developed until it led to a formal proposal of marriage in the spring of 1810.”
66 “One of these sisters,” writes Thayer, “was sent to him (in 1807-8?), she then being but some twelve years of age. He gave her a good education, and brought her out as a singer, when Hummel fell in love with her, married her and withdrew her from the stage. I asked Röckel if she could by any possibility have been the person with whom Beethoven in 1809-10 had a marriage project? He proved to me that she was not. So that story is put at rest.”
67 The letter is incorrectly dated “1811” in the Kalischer Collection.
68 If the estrangement between Beethoven and his brother was of earlier date than this, it would appear as if the siege of Vienna had brought them together again.
69 In view of the many indications, especially in the letters to Breitkopf and Härtel, that Beethoven did not work with any continuity from the beginning of May to the end of July, this memorandum assumes a different aspect and might serve to prove that the resumption of work on the first movement of the E-flat Concerto was not made till June or July, and that the entire Meinert sketchbook belongs to the period from July to October.
70 Nor is this longer to be maintained, since Beethoven reports these errors to Breitkopf and Härtel on July 26, 1809, “having had attention drawn to them by a good friend.”
71 Nottebohm, “Zweite Beethoveniana,” p. 188 et seq., contends that the pages in the so-called “Pettersches Skizzenbuch” containing the sketches for “Macbeth” and the D major Trio were not originally part of the book and that it dates from 1812. Neverthless, Thayer, who was familiar with the views divergent from his, is entitled to have his argument set forth as he wrote it.
72 Czerny’s statements must be corrected in a few respects in view of Beethoven’s own statements in a letter to Breitkopf and Härtel, dated August 21, 1810, as will appear later.
73 “The statement in the first edition, that Beethoven perhaps spent some time with the Brunswicks in Hungary in the summer of 1809, lacks all evidence” (says Dr. Riemann).
74 In their efforts in later years to sustain this theatre in brilliant style, “the Counts Raday and Brunswick were ruined.”
75 See the entire correspondence between Beethoven and Thomson in the appendix to the original edition of this biography.
76 See Reichardt’s “Vertraute Briefe, geschrieben auf einer Reise nach Wien und den Österreichischen Staaten zu Ende das Jahres 1808 und zu Anfang 1809,” under date November 30, December 5, December 10, December 16, December 25, December 31, 1808, and January 15, March 6, March 27 and No. 37 (without date), 1809.
77 The letters to Gleichenstein were placed by Nohl and after him by Thayer in the year 1807. Their references to money matters and incidents which seem to point to the acquisition of a larger sum than usual, especially the first, which indicates that Beethoven had recently had an English bill of exchange cashed by his banker, connect them pretty obviously with the payment received from Clementi and Co. Bringing these letters into connection with others which were indubitably written in 1810, Dr. Riemann makes the argument which follows in the body of the text as to the person whom Beethoven expected to marry when he sent to Wegeler on May 2d of that year for a copy of his baptismal certificate. Thayer pursued the theory that the lady was Countess Therese von Brunswick. The English editor has thought it wise to follow Dr. Riemann in assigning the letters to the year 1810, and permitting his German associate to make his argument in favor of Therese Malfatti, as he has already permitted Thayer to urge that the “Immortal Beloved” of the love-letter and the hoped-for bride of 1810 were one and the same person. The personality of the “Immortal Beloved” is not implicated in Dr. Riemann’s contention, but only the date when the tender relations between Beethoven and Countess Brunswick came to an end. On that point there is no evidence. Thayer, as we have seen and shall see again, believed that Beethoven had proposed marriage to Therese Malfatti; but he thought it was in 1811. Of the evidence introduced by the Clementi incident, Thayer knew nothing, as it was not unearthed until five years after his death.
78 This account of the first meeting of Bettina and Beethoven is compiled from her letters to Goethe and Pückler-Muskau, and notes of her conversation with the writer. How deep and clear the impressions of their first interviews with Beethoven, even to minute incidents, remained upon the memories of both Mme. von Arnim and Mme. von Arneth, when seventy years of age, the writer had opportunity to know by hearing them from their own lips. In the printed letters of the former to Pückler-Muskau, the part relating to this first meeting is lucid and satisfactory, but the confusion of memory visible in the rest of the letter renders it nearly worthless.
79 From the “Athenæum.” There are a few variations in the letter as printed in the Nuremburg journal and in “Ilius Pamphilius”—“Bettine” is changed to “friend,” “frog” to “fish,” “and on the bastion” is omitted, “fascinated” (gebannt) is altered to “seized” (gepackt). A few other differences are grammatical errors.
It seems proper at this place for the English Editor to remark that Mr. Thayer’s argument in favor of the authenticity of the Bettina letters was printed in the Appendix to Vol. III of the original edition with a concluding foot-note by Dr. Deiters in which he said that he had not been convinced by his author’s painstaking exposition that the letters are genuine. Dr. Riemann in the second German edition prints the letters and the argument in the text, distributing the latter in two chapters and appending a foot-note in which he gives it as his opinion that only the second (that dated February 10, 1811, the autograph of which is in existence) is authentic as a letter, while the other two, though probably based on observations made by Beethoven to Bettina, were put into epistolary shape by her. One of Bettina’s letters to Pückler-Muskau, which tells of Beethoven’s rudeness to Goethe as illustrated in the anecdote which plays so important a rôle in the third letter, would seem to bear out this theory. But it is also likely that Beethoven’s original letters were tricked out by her for literary effect, which would help to explain the disappearance of the autographs of the letters of 1810 and 1812. The second letter, which was printed in facsimile in the Marx-Behncke critical biography of Beethoven (4th ed., 1884), was in possession of Pastor Nathusius in Quedlinburg in 1902.
80 Clemens Brentano, brother of Bettina and Franz, who had written the text of a cantata on the death of Queen Louise.
81 Goethe’s answer to this letter is printed in the Weimar Collection of the poet’s correspondence. Vol. XXII, No. 615. It is worth producing here:
Carlsbad, June 25, 1811.
Your friendly letter, very highly esteemed Sir, was received through Herr von Oliva much to my pleasure. For the kindly feelings which it expresses towards me I am heartily grateful and I can assure you that I honestly reciprocate them, for I have never heard any of your works performed by expert artists or amateurs without wishing that I might sometime have an opportunity to admire you at the pianoforte and find delight in your extraordinary talents. Good Bettina Brentano surely deserves the friendly sympathy which you have extended to her. She speaks rapturously and most affectionately of you and counts the hours spent with you among the happiest of her life.
I shall probably find the music which you have designed for Egmont when I return home and am thankful in advance—for I have heard it spoken of with praise by several, and purpose to produce it in connection with the play mentioned on our stage this winter, when I hope thereby to give myself as well as your numerous admirers in our neighborhood a great treat. But I hope most of all correctly to have understood Herr von Oliva, who has made us hope that in a journey which you are contemplating you will visit Weimar. I hope it will be at a time when the court as well as the entire musical public will be gathered together. I am sure that you would find worthy acceptance of your services and aims. But in this nobody can be more interested than I, who, with the wish that all may go well with you, commend myself to your kind thought and thank you most sincerely for all the goodness which you have created in us.
82 This second letter does not seem to have been preserved.
83 At this point in the biography, Thayer, believing that the broken marriage engagement which had had so powerful an effect on Beethoven’s spirits and intellectual energies in 1810 had been one entered into with Countess Therese Brunswick, introduces the letters to Gleichenstein and makes the following comments, which the English Editor prefers to introduce in a foot-note rather than to put them in the body of the text, as is done in the second German edition, and give them a false interpretation: “The allusion to Gleichenstein’s marriage with the younger of the sisters Malfatti, which took place near the end of May, sufficiently indicates the date of these notes; and the statement made in a former chapter—that Beethoven once offered his hand in marriage to the elder, Therese—accounts satisfactorily for the strong excitement under which they were written; for, that this offer was not made before this time (1811) has been—nor after, soon will be—made clear.
“There is nothing inconsistent with ordinary experience and observation—certainly not with Beethoven’s character as a lover—in placing this occurrence here, a year after the failure of the marriage project. His weakness was not in seeking a wife, for this was wise and prudent, but in the selection of the person; in imagining that the young girl’s admiration for the artist—her respect and regard for the friend of her parents and of Gleichenstein—had with increasing years (she was now nineteen) grown into a warmer feeling; and in misconceiving the attentions, civilities and courtesies extended to him by all the members of the family, as encouragement to a suit, the possibility of which had, probably, never entered the mind of any one of them. As Gleichenstein could not have been ignorant of his friend’s recent love-troubles, one may well conceive the surprise, dismay and perplexity, which this sudden whim must have caused him. It placed him in a dilemma of singular difficulty. How he escaped from it, there are no means of knowing; the affair was, however, so managed, that the rejection of Beethoven’s proposal caused no interruption—or at most a temporary one—in the friendly relations of all the parties immediately concerned. At this distance of time and in the feeble light afforded us, the whole matter has all the appearance of a mere whimsical episode in the composer’s life causing him some fleeting disquiet and mortification; but there is no reason to infer that his disappointment was either very severe or very lasting. If, however, this be a mistaken view, it was all the more fortunate that a previous engagement now forced him to turn his thoughts again to composition and gave him no leisure to play the love-lorn Corydon.”
84 It is not a violent presumption that the portrait referred to here was that of Count Brunswick’s sister Therese; at least there is strong support for it in a letter published by Marie Lipsius (La Mara) in Breitkopf and Härtel’s “Mittheilungen” for March, 1910 (p. 4102). It is from Beethoven to Therese Brunswick, the original of which has not been found, but which exists in the form of a transcript in a letter written by Therese to her sister Josephine, dated February 2, 1811, now in the possession of Therese’s grandniece, Irene de Gerando-Teleki. The letter reads as follows:
“Through Franz I have also received a souvenir of our noble Beethoven which gave me much joy; I do not mean his sonatas, which are very beautiful, but a little writing which I will immediately copy literally:
“‘Even without prompting, people of the better kind think of each other, this is the case with you and me, dear and honored Therese; I still owe you grateful thanks for your beautiful picture and while accusing myself as your debtor I must at the same time appear before you in the character of a beggar in asking you if perchance you feel the genius of painting stirring within you to duplicate the little hand-drawing which I was unlucky enough to lose. It was an eagle looking into the sun, I cannot forget it; but do not think that I think of myself in such a connection, although it has been ascribed to me, many look upon a heroic play without being in the least like it. Farewell, dear Therese, and think occasionally of your truly revering friend
Beethoven.’”
Therese complied with Beethoven’s request. On February 23 she admonished her sister: “My request to you, dear Josephine, is to reproduce that picture which you alone are able to do; it would not be possible for me to create anything of the kind.” And later she repeats in French: “You have told me nothing about Beethoven’s eagle. May I answer that he shall receive it?” If the picture referred to by Beethoven in his letter to the Countess was in his possession before February 11, 1811, as appears from the Countess’ letter to her sister, how came it to be in the hands of Count Brunswick in July? Here is another unsolved riddle.
85 This letter, in French with Beethoven’s autograph signature, is preserved in the British Museum. The cantata referred to was to have been a setting of Campbell’s “Battle of the Baltic.” Returning to England from the Continent in 1801, the poet saw the preparations for the Battle of Copenhagen. Campbell was highly esteemed in Germany, especially by Goethe and Freiligrath, the latter of whom imitated his “The Last Man.”
86 It was four months before the performance took place.
87 Fare well.
88 Nottebohm contends that the book extends from the end of 1811 to the beginning of 1813. See “Zweit. Beeth.,” pp. 289, 290.
89 Kinsky, 725, 80; Archduke Rudolph, 604, 84; Lobkowitz, 282, 26.
90 After the large payment for a year and a quarter which Beethoven received from Kinsky on July 31, 1810, the Prince continued to pay 450 florins regularly every quarter but on July 26 (from March to May), 1811, with the memorandum: “450 bank-notes, or 90 florins notes of redemption,” and again the same on August 30 (for June-August), 1811;—i. e., one-fifth of the stipulated sum. It was not until the issuance of the Court Decree of September 13, 1811, that the more favorable rate of the above table was established. It is to be assumed that the payments thereafter were made in accordance with the scale, 185 florins in notes of redemption for 450 florins; the receipts have not been preserved. (See “Beethoven und Prinz Kinsky,” Frimmel’s “II. Beethoven-Jahrbuch,” 1909, by V. Kratochvil.) Lobkowitz’s payments were suspended in September, 1811, for nearly four years, his assumption of the management of the theatres having thrown his financial affairs into disorder and caused the sequestration of his estates.
91 An untranslatable pun.
92 Under date of London, 14th February, 1875, Mr. E. Speyer writes: “My father... on a visit to Vienna in 1832, made the acquaintance of the Abbé Stadler, who communicated to him the following curious fact in relation to Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, viz: That the theme of the Trio was nothing more nor less than a Lower-Austrian Pilgrimage Hymn (Wallfahrtgesang), which the Abbé himself had frequently heard sung.” This correspondent’s father was the W. Speyer, or Speier, whose name so often appears in old volumes of the “Allg. Mus. Zeit.”
93 Here Beethoven was mistaken. Haydn composed accompaniments for a volume of Scottish songs for Napier, a London publisher, without ritornellos or violoncello; he wrote as Beethoven wrote for Thomson—with violoncello part as well as ritornellos. In a later letter (of February 19) the same error is repeated.
94 Laub and Jahn read “R”; Köchel, “M.” The former might be the publisher Rizzi, the latter Mollo.
95 “Andreas Baron von Forray, husband of Countess Julie Brunswick, a cousin of Count Franz Brunswick, was a good pianoforte player and great music lover,” says Köchel.
96 Related by Court Councillor Wittescheck and confirmed by Schindler, who had “this fact” from Maximiliane—then Frau von Plittersdorf.
97 Dr. Riemann, who believes that Beethoven’s “Immortal Beloved” was Countess Therese Brunswick but places the love-letter, or letters, in the year 1812, accounts for this date on the hypothesis that Beethoven reached Teplitz (whence he assumes, of course, that the letters were sent) on the fifth of the month but was registered on the seventh, on which day he was reported from his lodgings.
98 The following information about Beethoven’s association with Varnhagen in the summer of 1812, and much that is new about Beethoven’s meetings with Goethe, is Dr. Riemann’s contribution to Thayer’s biography. It is based on the correspondence between Varnhagen and Rahel Levin, a study: “Beethoven, Goethe und Varnhagen von Ense mit ungedruckten Briefen an Beethoven, Oliva, Varnhagen, etc.,” by Dr. Emil Jacobs, published in the second December installment of “Die Musik,” 1904, and the Weimar Collection of Goethe’s letters.
99 Giovanni Battista Polledro (1781-1853), violinist, concertmaster in Dresden in 1814, Court Chapelmaster in Turin in 1824.
100 By Turkish music is meant military music with drums, cymbals, etc.
101 Dr. Riemann adds: “perhaps because he had heard that the Sebalds were in Teplitz”; but, as the letter to the Archduke shows, he was already expecting to be ordered back to Teplitz on August 12.
102 Meaning Rudolph.
103 The credit of suggesting this crushing argument against the authenticity of the letter belongs to Dr. Deiters.—A.W.T.
104 An album once owned by Amalie Sebald contains this inscription:
Ludwig van Beethoven
Den Sie, wenn Sie auch wollten,
Doch nicht vergessen sollten.
Teplitz, August 8, 1812.
The couplet might be rudely translated:
Whom, even if you would
Forget, you never should.
“At that date,” says Thayer, Beethoven “was not in Teplitz; the 1812 should doubtless be 1811, and was probably added long afterwards by some one who knew nothing of their meeting the previous year.”
105 A bass trombone in F, a fourth lower than the tenor trombone.
106 A slip of memory; the composition, which was used at Beethoven’s funeral, is for 4 trombones.
107 Beethoven had begun to work industriously on the Eighth Symphony before he went to Teplitz; indeed, he seems to have reported to Breitkopf and Härtel in a letter which has not been preserved, but which was sent from Franzensbrunn, that he had finished two symphonies; for the “Allg. Mus. Zeit.” of September 2, 1812, says: “L. van Beethoven, who took the cures first at Töplitz, then in Karlsbad and is now in Eger, has... again composed two new symphonies.” But the autograph bears the inscription: “Linz in October, 1812.”
108 Correct. Mälzel was then for a few months again in Vienna.
109 Thayer is writing from the point of view touching Beethoven’s love-affairs which was justified by all the evidence that had been discovered up to the time of his writing and, in fact, up to the time of his death. He thought that the object of the love-letters, which he insisted in placing in 1806, was “in greatest probability” Countess Brunswick; he knew that Beethoven had proposed marriage to Therese Malfatti, but plainly thought the passion for her neither profound nor lasting; he was inclined to believe that the broken marriage engagement of 1810, was with the Countess Brunswick and that she dropped out of his life with the failure of his marriage project. The discovery of the letter of February, 1811, from Therese to her sister in which his letter to her about the portrait is quoted, shows Thayer to have been in error in this. In his revision of the chapter before us, Dr. Riemann proceeded from an entirely different point of view. In his belief the love-letters were written in 1812, and to Therese Brunswick. In place of the opening passages which the English Editor has thought proper to retain, he substituted the following:
“The convincing reasons advanced in the preceding chapter for placing the love-letter of July 6-7 in the year 1812, give an entirely different light to the so-called ‘Journal’ in the Fischoff manuscript. If that day, in the beginning of July, 1812, which led to a mutual confession of love forms a climax in Beethoven’s heart-history, which can scarcely be doubted, the entry in the journal makes it sure that the obstacles to a conjugal union which are intimated have not disappeared, but, on the contrary, have proved to be insuperable. The first entry is dated merely 1812, and in likelihood was written at the end of the year. Whether or not the initial which shows a flourish is really an A is a fair question. Those who see more than superficial playfulness in the relations between Beethoven and Amalie Sebald will of course see her name in the letter.” It should be observed here that in the chapter devoted to the year 1812, Dr. Riemann interpolated an extended argument, following the lines of Dr. San-Galli’s brochure, to show that the letters were written in 1812 from Teplitz—Dr. San-Galli says to Amalie Sebald, Dr. Riemann to Countess Brunswick.
110 Here is Dr. Riemann’s interpretation: “That the reference is to the obstacles standing in the way of a marriage, can scarcely be controverted. Compare with this what Fanny Giannatasio del Rio says on September 16, 1816, in her journal: Five years before he had got acquainted with a person, union with whom would have been to him the greatest happiness of his life. ‘It is still as on the first day, I have not been able to get it out of my mind.’ The words ’got acquainted five years ago’ apply rather to Amalie Sebald or Bettina von Arnim than to Therese Brunswick; but it should be borne in mind that the young woman is reporting a conversation overheard from some distance between Beethoven and her father.”
111 This document is signed and sealed by Karl v. Beethoven, R. I. Cashier, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Baron Johann von Pasqualati, Peter von Leben and Fr. Oliva as witnesses.
112 This date is obviously an error of the copyists. The letter was written to Oliva who, on January 27, 1813, recalling it to Varnhagen’s mind, copies it as “your letter of June 9, of last year.” Moreover, Beethoven was in Prague several days before July 9, 1812.
113 Thus the title in the first edition; Dr. Riemann changes the word to “The highly esteemed Society” and says that it meant the Association of the Friends of Art and Music for the purpose of giving the charity concerts.
114 The celebrated dancer and ballet-master.
115 In a foot-note to Schindler’s account of the performance of the battle-piece, Moscheles, the English translator, says: “I must claim for my friend Meyerbeer the place here assigned to Hummel, who had to act in the cannonade; and this I may the more firmly assert as the cymbals having been intrusted to me, Meyerbeer and I had to play from one and the same part.” At the repetitions of the work on January 2 and 24 ensuing, Hummel directed what may well be called the “battery.” As there were two large drums, one on one side of the stage and one on the other, Hummel no doubt played one and Meyerbeer the other. Being pianists, nothing but instruments of percussion could have been assigned them.
116 Concerning the revision of “Fidelio” there is much information in the so-called Dessauer sketchbook (now in the archives of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna), which unquestionably belongs in the year 1814. This sketchbook contains first of all the two new finales for the opera. On page 72 is the remark: “For Milder, B-flat above,” which no doubt refers to the measure before the last in Leonore’s aria. Then follow, p. 82, Florestan’s air, p. 90 the melodrama, p. 108 the recitative “Abscheulicher, wo eilst du hin,” p. 112 “Un lieto Brindisi,” p. 123 sketches for a symphony “2nd movement Corni,” p. 133 “Sanft wie du lebtest” (the “Elegiac song”), p. 141 “Symphony, 2nd movement,” p. 142 “Sanft wie du lebtest,” again, p. 148 “Ihr weisen Gründer” (Homage Cantata), p. 160 “Europa steht” (“Der glorreiche Augenblick”) with only two or three measures of music, pp. 161-164 again “Ihr weisen Gründer.” Besides these, Nottebohm recognized sketches for the Farewell song for Tuscher (“Die Stunde schlägt”), for the first movement of the Sonata, Op. 90, and to the overtures to “Fidelio” and “Namensfeier.”
117 Beethoven here, of course, alludes only to the arrears in payments on his annuity of Lobkowitz and Kinsky.
118 Johann Alois Michalcovics, “Königl. Stadthaltereiagent” in Ofen, had been some years before in the same office with Zmeskall in Vienna, and a member of that jovial musical circle of which young Beethoven was the prominent figure. Like Zmeskall and Brunswick, he was a fine violoncellist.
119 The Archduke was so troubled with gout in his hands that he had to abandon pianoforte playing.
120 Schuppanzigh.
121 At this time Moscheles was a regular listener at the quartet performances at Schuppanzigh’s. Concerning one of them, he writes (“Aus Moscheles’ Leben,” I, p. 18): “I sat beside Spohr, we exchanged opinions about what we heard: Spohr spoke with great heat against Beethoven and his imitators.”
122 “In April, 1814, Beethoven received from Munich news of the performance of the Battle Symphony in that city by Mälzel, and also a report that the latter had said that he had to recompense himself with this work for a debt of 400 ducats which Beethoven owed him.” Schindler I, 3rd ed., p. 236.
123 The documents in the controversy between Beethoven and Mälzel alluded to, together with Mr. Thayer’s comments on them, are appended in this foot-note to prevent a too long interruption of the biographical narrative:
Deposition
Of my own volition I had composed a Battle Symphony for Mälzel for his Panharmonica without pay. After he had had it for a while he brought me the score, the engraving of which he had already begun—[Beethoven probably meant that Mälzel had begun the preparation of the cylinder—H.E.K.] and wanted it arranged for full orchestra. I had previously formed the idea of a Battle (Music) which, however, was not applicable to his Panharmonica. We agreed to perform this work and others of mine in a concert for the benefit of the soldiers. Meanwhile I got into the most terrible financial embarrassment. Deserted by the whole world here in Vienna, in expectation of a bill of exchange, etc., Mälzel offered me 50 ducats in gold. I took them and told him that I would give them back to him here, or would let him take the work with him to London in case I did not go with him—in which latter case I would refer him to an English publisher who would pay him these 50 ducats. The Academies were now given. In the meantime Mälzel’s plan and character were developed. Without my consent he printed on the placards that it was his property. Incensed at this he had to have these torn down. Now he printed: “Out of friendship for his journey to London”; to this I consented, because I thought that I was still at liberty to fix the conditions on which I would let him have the work. I remember that I quarrelled violently with him while the notices were printing, but the too short time—I was still writing on the work. In the heat of my inspiration, immersed in my work, I scarcely thought of Mälzel. Immediately after the first Academy in the University Hall, I was told on all hands by trustworthy persons that Mälzel was spreading it broadcast that he had loaned me 400 ducats in gold. I thereupon had the following printed in the newspaper, but the newspaper writers did not print it as Mälzel is befriended with all of them. Immediately after the first Academy I gave back to Mälzel his 50 ducats, telling him that having learned his character here, I would never travel with him, righteously enraged because he had printed on the placards, without my consent, that all the arrangements for the Academy were badly made and his bad patriotic character showed itself in the following expressions—I [unprintable]—if only they will say in London that the public here paid 10 florins; not for the wounded but for this did I do this—and also that I would not let him have the work for London except on conditions concerning which I would let him know. He now asserted that it was a gift of friendship and had this expression printed in the newspaper without asking me about it in the least. Inasmuch as Mälzel is a coarse fellow, entirely without education, or culture, it may easily be imagined how he conducted himself toward me during this period and increased my anger more and more. And who would force a gift of friendship upon such a fellow? I was now offered an opportunity to send the work to the Prince Regent. It was now impossible to give him the work unconditionally. He then came to you and made proposals. He was told on what day to come for his answer; but he did not come, went away and performed the work in Munich. How did he get it? Theft was impossible—Herr Mälzel had a few of the parts at home for a few days and from these he had the whole put together by some musical handicraftsman, and with this he is now trading around in the world. Herr Mälzel promised me hearing machines. To encourage him I composed the Victory Symphony for his Panharmonica. His machines were finally finished, but were useless for me. For this small trouble Herr Mälzel thinks that after I had set the Victory Symphony for grand orchestra and composed the Battle for it, I ought to have him the sole owner of this work. Now, assuming that I really felt under some obligation for the hearing machines, it is cancelled by the fact that he made at least 500 florins convention coin, out of the Battle stolen from me or compiled in a mutilated manner. He has therefore paid himself. He had the audacity to say here that he had the Battle; indeed he showed it in writing to several persons—but I did not believe it, and I was right, inasmuch as the whole was not compiled by me but by another. Moreover, the honor which he credits to himself alone might be a reward. I was not mentioned at all by the Court War Council, and yet everything in the two academies was of my composition. If, as he said, Herr Mälzel delayed his journey to London because of the Battle, it was merely a hoax. Herr Mälzel remained until he had finished his patchwork (?), the first attempts not being successful.
Beethoven, m. p.
II.
Explanation and Appeal to the Musicians of London by Ludwig van Beethoven
Herr Mälzel, who is at present in London, on his way thither performed my Victory Symphony and Wellington’s Battle at Vittoria in Munich, and, according to report, will also give concert performances of it in London as he was also willing to do in Frankfort. This leads me publicly to declare: that I never under any circumstances yielded or gave these works to Herr Mälzel, that nobody possesses a copy of them, and that the only one which I gave out was sent to his Royal Highness, the Prince Regent of England.
The performance of these works on the part of Herrn Mälzel, therefore, is a fraud on the public, inasmuch as according to this explanation he is not in possession of them, or if he is in possession of them an infringement on my rights, as he has obtained them in an illegal manner.
But even in the latter case the public will be deceived, for that which Herr Mälzel will give them to hear under the title: Wellington’s Battle at Vittoria and Victory Symphony, must obviously be a spurious or mutilated work, since he never received anything of these works from me except a single part for a few days.
This suspicion becomes certainty when I add the assurance of musicians of this city whose names I am empowered to mention in case of necessity, that Herr Mälzel said to them on leaving Vienna that he was in possession of the work and showed them parts of it, which, however, as I have already proved, could be nothing else than mutilated and spurious parts.
Whether Herr Mälzel is capable of doing me such an injury?—is answered by the circumstance that he had himself announced as the sole undertaker of my two concerts given here in Vienna for the benefit of the soldiers wounded in the war, at which only works of mine were performed, in the public prints, without an allusion to my name.
I therefore call upon the musical artists of London not to suffer such an injury to me, their colleague, by a performance arranged by Herrn Mälzel of the Battle of Vittoria and the Victory Symphony, and to prevent such an imposition on the London public in the manner set forth.
Vienna, July 25, 1814.
III.
Certificate
We, the undersigned, certify in the interest of truth and can vouch under oath if necessary: that there were several conferences between Herrn Louis van Beethoven and the Court Mechanician, Herrn Mälzel of this city, at the house of the undersigned. Dr. Carl v. Adlersburg, the which had for their subject the musical composition called: “The Battle of Vittoria” and the visit to England; at these, Herr Mälzel made several propositions to Herrn van Beethoven to secure the work aforementioned, or at least the right of first performance for himself. But as Herr Mälzel did not appear at the last meeting arranged for, nothing came of the matter, the propositions made to the former not having been accepted by him.
Vienna, October 20, 1814.
Joh. Freiherr v. Pasqualati,
[L. S.]
K. K. priv. Grosshändler.
Carl Edler von Adlersburg,
Hof-und Gerichts-Advocat
[L. S.]
K. K. Öffentlicher Notar.
The so-called “Deposition” is, says Thayer, in truth, nothing more than an ex-parte statement prepared for the use of his lawyer by a very angry man, in whom a tendency to suspicion and jealousy had strengthened with advancing years and with the increase of an incurable infirmity. Mälzel’s contra-statement to his lawyer is lost. He had no young disciple planning with zeal to preserve it and give it, with his version of the story, to posterity.
The Merits of Mälzel’s Case
No one, who is ignorant of Schindler’s honestly meant, but partisan representations, or who, knowing them, can disabuse his mind of any prejudgment thence arising, can read Beethoven’s statement without misgivings; all the more, if the facts proved by Moscheles and Stein—tacitly admitted, though utterly suppressed, in the document—are known to him. Nor will he be convinced by all the force of the harsh language of denunciation, that Mälzel did not act honestly and in good faith, when he called the “Victory” his property.
There is nothing in the first part of the statement that requires comment; though in passing it may be observed, that the pathos of “deserted by the whole world here in Vienna” would be increased if one could forget the Archduke, the Brentanos, the Streichers, Breitkopf and Härtel, Zmeskall, and others. It must be borne in mind (in Beethoven’s favor) that the paper was written several months after the events of which it speaks; that it was drawn up at a time when its writer was excessively busy; that it bears all the marks of haste and want of reflection; that it was obviously intended for his lawyer’s eye alone; that there is evident confusion of memory as to times and events; and that—be it repeated—it is the ex-parte statement of an angry man. Take the “400 ducats in gold”; here Beethoven’s memory must have played him false, certainly as to the time, probably as to the substance of what he heard from the “trustworthy persons.” Mälzel could have had no possible motive to utter so glaring a falsehood; but every motive not to do so. A few weeks later, he might and very probably did assert, that the damages to him arising from the sacrifice of the “Victory” as a piece for his Panharmonicon, from the expense of his prolonged stay in Vienna, from the loss of the holiday season in Munich, from the time, study and labor spent in experiments on Beethoven’s ear-trumpets, and from his exclusion from all share in these profitable concerts, which he alone had made possible—that these damages were not less than 400 ducats. Nor does such an estimate appear to be a gross exaggeration. “I therefore had the following printed in the newspaper,” continues Beethoven. If the passage which follows be what he desired to have printed, the reasons why the editors refused are sufficiently obvious; if they had cherished no regard for Mälzel and had believed him in the wrong, they must have suppressed such a communication for Beethoven’s own sake.
The character of Mälzel—drawn in a few dark lines by his opponent—has no bearing on the real point at issue; it may, however, be observed as remarkable, that Beethoven alone made the discovery, and this not until—after some years of close intimacy and friendship—he had quarrelled with him. There are not many, who having so sagaciously planted and seen the harvest gathered in by another—who, smarting under the disappointment, and irritated by the loss of so much time, pains and labor—would sit down quietly, exhibit Job’s patience, and refrain from all expressions of feeling not suited to a lady’s boudoir; nor is it to be supposed that Mälzel acted this Christian part; but then Beethoven was hardly the man to cast the first stone at the sinner.
The sudden resolution to send the “Wellington’s Victory” to the Prince Regent of England, was obviously part and parcel of the proceedings against Mälzel, the object being to defeat there any production of the work by him. Beethoven himself was the only loser by it. The prince never said “thank you” for it.
In the argument against the correctness of Mälzel’s copy of the work, Beethoven is, to say the least, unfortunate. His opponent may have had, from him, only single parts (in the second paper it stands “a single part”!); but the circumstances were such that Mälzel could have had no difficulty in obtaining temporary use of most if not all the parts, and there were plenty of “musical handicraftsmen” amply capable, after so many rehearsals and public performances, of producing a copy in the main correct.
It is painful to one who loves and reveres the memory of Beethoven, to peruse the closing passages of this document; it is, fortunately, not necessary to comment upon their character. It was not necessary for Beethoven to speak of Mälzel’s share in the composition of the work, in the first of these papers; the opposing lawyer would attend to that; but was it just and ingenuous to suppress it entirely in the appeal to the London musicians? Schindler asserts that this appeal prevented Mälzel from producing it. It could have had no such effect. The simple truth is, that in those days for a stranger like Mälzel to undertake orchestral concerts in London would have been madness. The new Philharmonic Society, composed of all the best resident musicians, had hardly achieved an assured existence.
The third paper is testimony to a single fact and is so impartially drawn, so skilfully worded, as not to afford a point for or against either of the parties. Schindler closes his history of the affair thus: “The legal proceedings in Vienna were without result, however, the defendant being far away and his representatives knowing how to protract the case unduly, whereby the plaintiff was subjected to considerable expense and ever new annoyances. For this reason our master refrained from prosecuting the case further, since meanwhile the facts had become widely known and had frightened the false friend from making new attempts. The court costs were divided evenly by the litigants. Mälzel never returned to Vienna, but at a later period appealed in a letter to the friend whom he had swindled when he thought that he needed his recommendation for the metronome. This letter, dated Paris, April 19, 1818, is here. In it he represents to Beethoven that he was at work for him upon a hearing machine for use in conducting; he even invites him to accompany him on a journey to England. The master expressed his satisfaction with the metronome to the mechanician; but he never heard more concerning the machines.”
Now Schindler’s own account of the first two occasions when he spoke with Beethoven, copied into the text, partly with a view to this, shows that he could have no personal knowledge of the Mälzel affair, except its issue; and an examination of his pages proves further, that his account of it is but a paraphrase of Beethoven’s statement. His own words, written in a Conversation Book, demonstrate that the greater portion of the above citation is nonsense; for those words inform us that Mälzel returned to Vienna in the autumn of 1817; that, then and there, peace was made between the parties, and the old friendship restored; and that thereupon they passed a jovial evening together in the “Kamehl,” where Schindler himself sang soprano in the “Ta, ta, ta,” canon to the bass of Mälzel! What is the historic value of a narrative so made up and ending with such an astounding lapse of memory?
Mälzel spent his last years mostly in Philadelphia and other American cities. A few men of advanced years are still living there, unless recently passed away—(Thayer is writing in the eighth decade of the nineteenth century)—who retain an affectionate and respectful memory of him as a gentleman and man of culture; they will rejoice in this, at the least, partial vindication of their old friend. Candor and justice compel the painful admission that Beethoven’s course with Mälzel is a blot—one of the few—upon his character, which no amount of misrepresentation of the facts can wholly efface; whoever can convince himself that the composer’s conduct was legally and technically just and right, must still feel that it was neither noble nor generous.
Mälzel died suddenly on July 21, 1838, on an American brig, while on a voyage between the United States and the West Indies.
124 Eselshaut—“Ass’s Skin.”—A fairy play of that name with music by Hummel was performed on March 10, 1814, in the Theater-an-der-Wien.
125 Dr. Leopold Sonnleithner, in the “Recensionen” of Vienna (1861. p. 592), corrects a mistake in an obituary notice of Chapelmaster Gläser with the remark: “I can very well remember that the opera (‘Fidelio’) was rehearsed and conducted by Josef Weigl.” Dr. Sonnleithner’s authority is justly so decisive in all matters pertaining to the musical annals of Vienna, and even the slightest errors are so very rare in his writings, that if one occurs it must be corrected upon unimpeachable authority, to prevent its passing into history. Now, in the manuscript text-book above cited, is written below the list of properties: “Herr Umlauf, conducts”; and near the end of the manuscript overture to “Fidelio” stands in Beethoven’s hand: “Indicate to Umlauf where the trombones enter.” Treitschke is thus so fully confirmed as to leave no doubt that in this instance Dr. Sonnleithner’s memory played him false.
126 Beethoven’s play on words cannot be reproduced in translation.
127 He had forgotten, evidently, that he no longer lived in the fourth storey.
128 It should be 1808.
129 Probably on account of his deafness; for Moscheles adds: “I had seen Artaria speaking close to his ear.”
130 Can there be any doubt now that Beethoven took Bettina to one of the rehearsals?
131 In August Schmidt’s “Musikalisches Taschenbuch, Orpheus,” for 1841.
132 Judging from the internal evidence this letter is of date, July 10. On Saturday, July 2, “Coriolan” was given, and Beethoven may well have been present. The note was written on a Sunday. July 10 was a Sunday.
133 Seyfried had long been accustomed to write for four horns. Speaking of his own compositions in 1806, he says: “Moreover I wrote... for my excellent horn-players several divertimenti for four obbligati French horns.”
134 Dr. Riemann opines that the confusion of opinion concerning the air sprang from the erroneous statement of the reporter of the “Allg. Mus. Zeitung” that the new air of the benefit performance was accompanied by four horns; and that the error was pardonable, inasmuch as the three horns actually used are supplemented by a fourth obbligato part for the bassoon. Nottebohm (“Zweite Beethoveniana,” pp. 302-306), is of the opinion that Beethoven did not compose the scena anew for the benefit performance of 1814. But what shall we say to Beethoven’s announcement: “For this performance two new pieces have been added”?
135 Another untranslatable play on words: “Diese Einnahme ist wohl mehr eine Ausnahme,” etc.
136 June 23rd, 1860, in Salzburg.
137 Received July 4, 1859. The venerable man was then eighty-seven years of age.
138 The letters written by Beethoven to Dr. Kanka, Archduke Rudolph and Baron Pasqualati, relative to this subject, are printed in full in the German editions of this biography: Appendix VIII to Vol. III in the first edition, Appendix III to Vol. III in the second. As they contribute nothing to the facts in the controversy with Prince Kinsky’s heirs, the English Editor felt himself justified in omitting them here with this direction to the curious student where they may be found.
139 See the Laybach Circular of May, 1821.
140 See Nottebohm’s “Beethoveniana,” Chap. XIV.
141 Since this was written, Herr Nottebohm has kindly communicated a supplementary article on this overture containing portions of newly discovered sketches with the remark by Beethoven: “Overture for any occasion—or for concert use” and closing thus: “The last sketches were written about March, 1815.” “This seems a contradiction of the date given at the beginning of the autograph (October 1, 1814). This contradiction can be explained. Beethoven evidently noted the date when he began writing out the score, but interrupted the work (because the overture was not performed on the name-day of the Emperor?) and did not take it up again until several months had passed, when the sketches and hints for passages which occur later may have originated.” Certainly this is possible; but the different dates assigned to the Petter sketchbook (1809 in this work, 1812 in the “Beethoveniana”) necessarily lead to an irreconcilable divergence of opinion. A studious reconsideration of the subject ends in the conviction that the historic evidence, as it now stands, renders unnecessary any alterations in the text.
142 Meyerbeer.
143 That Beethoven transcribed the march in the Sonata, Op. 26, for orchestra is confirmed by the following letter of Chapelmaster Ad. Müller (père) written to the author in answer to a note of inquiry:
“Highly respected Sir!
“To your valued letter I have to make reply as follows: I certainly have in my autograph collection the autograph of the orchestral score of the funeral march contained in the great Sonata for Pianoforte, Op. 26: The score consists of six sheets and twelve pages—written throughout in Beethoven’s hand. On the 1st, 8th and 12th pages there are marginal notes for the copyist.
“The piece is orchestrated for 2 flutes, 2 clarinets in C, 2 horns in D, 2 horns in E, to which are added four staves for instruments which are not named, probably for trumpets and trombones. [To judge by the setting rather for the string quartet.]
“I received this score of the celebrated master from the art and music dealer Tobias Haslinger in the year 1829-30 with the remark, here faithfully reported, that he gave me the manuscript with pleasure as a souvenir, inasmuch as he would by no means print or publish the composition in this form. This score therefore is unique! The piece is in B minor....
“Your ever ready
“Adolph Müller.”
Together with the other music to “Leonore Prohaska” the march is printed in the Complete Edition of Breitkopf and Härtel, Series 25, No. 272.
144 The circumstances connected with the last postponement of this concert and the onerous conditions which Count Palffy sought to impose upon Beethoven are interestingly told by Dr. Frimmel in his “Beethoven-Studien, Vol. II,” p. 41 et seq.
145 In Jahn’s notices these sums are doubled. This audience is doubtless the one referred to by Schindler, as being proposed by the Empress, or perhaps was a consequence of that one.
146 “Fidelio” had its first performance in Prague on November 21, 1814. Liebich was the director of the theatre, and C. M. von Weber chapelmaster.
147 it was Smart, who also made Beethoven’s Mass in C known in England. On April 3rd, 1816, the “Kyrie” as a “First Hymn” with an English text by Arnold, was on the programme; March 17, 1817, the “Second Hymn,” and at last the complete work.
148 German: Stein = English: stone.
149 No. 3, Op. 90; No. 4, “Tremate, empj, tremate,” Op. 116; No. 8, Op. 97; No. 9, Op. 96; No. 10, “King Stephen,” Op. 117; No. 11, “Namensfeier,” Op. 115; No. 12, “Ruins of Athens,” Op. 113.
150 Dr. Riemann interprets Beethoven’s “B. M.” as standing for “Bacchus Motive.”
151 The conversations with Neate took place in January, 1861. The writer was indebted to the late Henry F. Chorley, for the pecuniary means of making his very valuable researches in England, and one of the bitter consequences of the unavoidable delay in writing this work, is, that Chorley can never read it.—A. W. T.
152 It is sufficient to say here, that instead of composing new ones as expected, he gave Neate the overtures to “King Stephen,” the “Ruins of Athens” and the so-called “Namensfeier,” and received for them 75 guineas.
153 Jahn related this incident to the writer, with much humor, in the Autumn of 1860. In 1867, he allowed Dr. Alfred Schöne to edit the correspondence for publication by Breitkopf and Härtel.
154 J. B. Cramer was associated with John Addison under the style of Cramer and Co.
155 Mr. Birchall’s successor was C. Lonsdale, who had been his principal assistant and who had conducted the correspondence with Beethoven; and the business is at this writing in the hands of Mr. Lonsdale’s son Robert. From both these gentlemen, the author received great kindness and valuable aid in his English researches. The letter in the text was not in their possession, but has since been communicated to this work by Mr. S. Ganz. This excepted, the correspondence may be read in the “Jahrbücher für Musikalische Wissenschaft,” 1ten Band, by Breitkopf and Härtel. 1863.
As our reading of the English paper mentioned in the text differs from that in the “Jahrbücher” it is here subjoined.
“Mr. Beethoven send word to Mr. Birchall that it is severall days past that he has sent for London, Wellington’s Battel Simphonie and that Mr. B. may send for it at Thomas Coutts. Mr. Beethoven wish Mr. Bl. would make ingrave the sayd Simphonie so soon as possible and send him word in time the day it will be published, that he may prevent in time the publisher at Vienna.
“To regard the 3 Sonatas which Mr. B. shall receive afterwards there is not wanted such a gt. hurry and Mr. B[eethoven] will take the liberty to fixe the day when the are to be published. Mr. B[eethoven] sayd tha Mr. Solomon has a good many tings to say concerning the Simphonie in (?) Mr. B[eethoven] wish for an answer so soon as possible concerning the days of publication.”
The letter here queried, does not belong to the English Alphabet, but the “Battle and Victory Symphony” is meant.
156 This was an error, as Karl was baptized on April 8, 1774.
157 A letter, preserved in the Beethoven House Museum at Bonn (Kalischer, “Sämmtliche Briefe” II, 310), to Madame Antonie von Brentano mentions that Karl had been pensioned, but this may have been written after an application had been made and before it had been refused. The letter says: “Among the individuals (whose number is infinite) who are suffering, is my brother who was obliged to have himself pensioned because of his ill health, conditions are very hard just now, I do all that is possible, but that is not much.” He then offers Brentano a pipe-bowl belonging to his brother, who thinks that it might be sold for 10 louis d’or, remarking: “he needs a great deal, is obliged to keep a horse and carriage in order to live (for he is as desirous to keep his life as I am willing to lose mine).”
158 “Aus dem Schwarzspanierhause,” by Dr. Gerhard von Breuning. Vienna, Rosner, 1874. Dr. Breuning prints the note of reconciliation (which has appeared in this work) as subsequent to this affair. We are unable to agree with him.
159 Dr. Gerhard von Breuning places this incident in 1804, Thayer in 1815. The cause of the quarrel which was followed by a reconciliation in 1804, has been explained.
160 Saint Peter was a rock! Bernardus was a Saint!
161 Nottebohm’s study of the sketchbooks used by Beethoven in 1815 (See “Zweit. Beeth.,” pp. 314-20) discloses that he worked upon sketches for works which were never finished—a Symphony in B minor, Pianoforte Concerto in D, and several Fugues, besides experimenting with the opera “Bacchus.” There are also sketches for compositions written in 1816, such as the song-cycle “An die ferne Geliebte” and the Sonata, Op. 101.
162 The German original was acquired in 1913 at a sale of autographs by Mr. Richard Aldrich.
163 Also in score.
164 Published in 1909 by Leopold Schmidt in his “Beethoven Briefe an N. Simrock, etc.”
165 Birchall.
166 Salomon.
167 The Prince Regent had never ordered this work nor had his permission to present and dedicate it to him been asked before sending it. Beethoven resented the fact that he had not been recompensed until the day of his death.
168 Dr. Riemann, holding to his theory that the love-letter to the “Immortal Beloved” was written on July 6, 1812, changes Thayer’s concluding words to make them read: “That this cycle, which advances Beethoven so greatly as a song composer, was directed to the addressee of the love-letter of July 6, 1812, can be accepted as certain.”
169 To the Quartet in F minor, Op. 95.
170 This composition, solo and chorus, E-flat major, 4-4, forty-three measures long, had for a text only these words:
“Long life to our dear Prince
May he live!
May noble deeds be his loveliest calling,
Then shall he not forgo the loveliest reward.
May he live, etc.”
A copy of this, received many years ago from Dr. Edmund Schebek, is inscribed “Evening of April 12, 1822, before the birthday of His Ser. Prince Ferdinand Lobkowitz.” This young Prince completed his 25th year on April 13, 1822. It is clear, therefore, that this inscription refers to a performance, not to the composition of the little work.
171 The anecdote told by Mendelssohn of Beethoven’s playing to relieve the sorrow of the Baroness has a complement in a document found among the posthumous papers of Thayer. On December 25, 1864, Thayer received a poem from Frau von Arneth (Antonie Adamberger) written by Gustav Frank, a production of no literary value but based upon an incident thus told in a note attached to it: After the burial of Baroness von Ertmann’s only child, the grief-stricken woman was unable to find the consolation which comes with tears. Greatly concerned thereat, her husband, General von Ertmann, took her to Beethoven, who without a word sat down to the pianoforte and played until the Baroness’s sobs testified that relief had come. Thayer endorsed on the copy of the poem which he made: “It is a fact in Beethoven’s and Frau Dorothea v. Ertmann’s intercourse.”
172 Mr. Fry was for many years editorial writer and music critic of the “New York Tribune,” with which Mr. Thayer was also associated for a time.
173 Since Thayer wrote, all these letters have been published in German as well as in English translation and may easily be consulted by the student.
174 Dr. Herman Deiters, who wrote the concluding two volumes of Thayer’s biography, making use of the material and framework left by the author, devotes twenty-nine pages in the appendix of the fourth volume to Fanny Giannatasio’s notes of Beethoven’s intercourse with her father’s family and her sentiments concerning the composer. These notes, together with a number of letters, had been used by Edward Duboc (Robert Waldmüller) in the preparation of two articles which were published in the “Grenzboten” of April 3 and 10, 1857. A complete transcript of the diary was found by the editor of the present edition of this biography among Thayer’s posthumous papers and forwarded to Dr. Deiters. The circumstances under which the transcript was made deserve to be set forth here. When Thayer took up his permanent abode in Europe for the purpose of prosecuting his researches concerning Beethoven, the manuscript was owned by Frau Pessiak, granddaughter of Kajetan Giannatasio del Rio, daughter of Fanny’s sister Anna, familiarly known as “Nanni.” Through the mediation of Dr. Gerhard von Breuning, Thayer had come into possession of a copy of such passages of the diary as referred to Beethoven. On his first visit to Vienna, Thayer called upon Frau Pessiak, then a prominent teacher of singing in the Austrian capital, to thank her for her kind help. The acquaintance thus made, quickly ripened into a cordial friendship, and when Thayer was about to return to his home, the lady, to his surprise and delight, placed the manuscript into his hands and gave him permission to carry it with him to Trieste for examination at leisure. One reason for the act was, if possible, to obtain a rectification of what she considered a grievous wrong done to her aunt’s memory by Ludwig Nohl. This writer had, some time before, importuned her for the privilege of reading the diary and using it in the preparation of his biography of Beethoven. After many protestations, due to the fact that a number of letters from Beethoven to her grandfather had mysteriously disappeared from the family archives (Thayer found some of them later in the possession of a music publishing house in London), Frau Pessiak yielded to Nohl’s requests. Shortly after the manuscript had been returned to her, there appeared a booklet entitled: “Eine stille Liebe zu Beethoven. Nach dem Tagebuch einer jungen Dame. Von Ludwig Nohl.” (Second edition, Leipsic, 1902), in which excerpts, wrenched from their context, were made the foundation of a story of a romantic, but unconfessed and unrequited passion for the composer on the part of the unnamed author of the diary. Frau Pessiak felt deeply wounded that such unauthorized and unpardonable use had been made of an effusion designed only for the eyes of its writer, and wanted now to learn whether or not the deduction was consistent with the utterances of the diary as a whole. Thayer, after a study of the manuscript and all the circumstances connected with the relations between Beethoven and the family of the writer, thought not; and his conclusion, evidently, was that of Dr. Deiters also, who printed copious extracts compassing all the references to Beethoven found in the manuscript.
A Young Woman’s Sentimental Journal
In explanation of the sentimental tinge of some of the young woman’s utterances, which taken alone might easily be interpreted as secret confessions of a deeper feeling than mere admiration, friendship and sympathy, it is urged that Fanny Giannatasio del Rio began her diary, which is not a continuous record, on January 1, 1812, when she was twenty-two years old; she, therefore, was twenty-six when Beethoven became a frequent visitor at her father’s house. She was very musical (so much so that Beethoven did not hesitate to play four-hand pieces with her), and had been an admirer of his music before she met him. Two affairs of the heart, both unhappy in their outcome—(her first lover proved unworthy, her second was an invalid and like an honorable man unwilling to burden her life with his sufferings; he died in 1815)—had left her inclined to the melancholy mood, with a hunger for affection and an almost passionate longing to extend sympathy to those who seemed to her to be in need of care and love. Her outpourings frequently touch on the border of extravagant sentimentality; but calm reflection generally intervenes with its wholesome clog. So that, on the whole, they can be, perhaps ought to be, interpreted as nothing more than a disclosure of a warm interest in the great composer on the part of a generous-souled young woman filled with the literary habits of the period mixed with an overwhelming admiration for his genius and nobility of character and an impulsive desire to bring some cheer into his lonely life. Moreover, after the withdrawal of the nephew from the institute and the cessation of intercourse between Beethoven and the Giannatasio family, his name disappears from the diary, though it was continued till 1824.
The friendship which existed for years between Thayer and Frau Pessiak is attested in two letters from the latter to the former in which the lady’s recollections of her grandparents and their intercourse with Beethoven are set forth. Some of the anecdotes contained in these letters deserve record here. Once, Frau Pessiak relates, there arose a serious disagreement between her grandfather and Beethoven concerning the latter’s nephew, which resulted in the boy’s dismissal from the institute. Thereupon Beethoven wrote to Anna Giannatasio begging her to intercede with her father and get his consent to Karl’s return, but at the same time to keep the fact of the writing secret and to burn the letter as soon as it had been read. The lady respected both wishes, the latter dictated by the composer’s pride, but she burned the letter with a heavy heart. “My mother’s admiration for Beethoven,” adds Frau Pessiak, “was like that of my aunt, so that his wish was to her a command.” While at a picnic party in the environs of Vienna, Beethoven stood beside the writer’s mother on the most beautiful observation point. Suddenly he took out his note-book, tore out a leaf, drew a staff upon it, jotted down the melody of the song, “Wenn ich ein Vöglein wär” (Treitschke’s “Ruf vom Berge,” No. 219, in Thayer’s “Chronological Catalogue”) and handed it to his companion with the words: “Now, Miss Nanni, do you write the bass for it.” “My mother cherished the leaf as a precious souvenir for a long time, then gave it to me because, as she said, I was the most musical one of the family, and would best appreciate the treasure. I have it preserved under a glass and frame.” One day Beethoven brought with him the song from “Faust” beginning: “Es war einmal ein König, der hatt’ einen grossen Floh” (“Once upon a time there was a king who had a large flea”). “Aunt and mother had to try it.” Then Beethoven took his seat at the pianoforte and played the conclusion in which he turned his thumb and with it struck two adjoining keys at the same time, laughed and said: “That’s the way to kill him!” On the occasion of Anna Giannatasio’s birthday, Beethoven came and offered a musical congratulation. Approaching her he sang with great solemnity the melody of a canon to the words: “Above all may you want happiness and health, too,—”. Then he stopped and the lady protested that the wish that she might fail in happiness and health was scarcely a kind one; whereupon Beethoven laughed and finished the sentiment with “at no time.” Here is the canon:
175 This letter is dated “February 23, 1816”—another obvious blunder of the kind to which Beethoven was prone; it should of course be 1817. In the letter to Steiner last referred to he asks the publisher to keep the dedication a secret, as he intended it to be a surprise. Thayer accepted the date and explained the discrepancy with the suggestion that Beethoven had forwarded a manuscript copy to the baroness. The theory is no longer tenable. The lady could scarcely be surprised by a printed copy if she already had the Sonata in manuscript and also the letter which so plainly shows that the Sonata was written for her. It is also plain that Schindler was in error when he stated that the Sonata had been played in public in February, 1816. According to Nottebohm (“Zweite Beethoveniana,” p. 344), the autograph of the Sonata bears the inscription: “Neue Sonata für Ham....., 1816, im Monath November.” Its forthcoming appearance in print was announced in Kanne’s “Musik-Zeitung” under date January 23, 1817.
176 The principal contributions to Beethoven’s biography from Czerny’s pen are in Schmidt’s “Wiener Allg. Mus. Zeitung,” 1845, No. 113; Cock’s “Musical Miscellany,” London, 1852; and manuscript notes in Jahn’s papers.
177 It is Thayer who is speaking here.
178 “Mödling,” said Potter in narrating the incidents of his association with Beethoven to Mr. Thayer in 1861; but Potter was nearly 69 years old at the time and his memory of the suburbs of Vienna may have been a trifle faulty. Beethoven was in Mödling in 1818, but it has not been learned that he went thither after his sojourn in Heiligenstadt and Nussdorf in 1817. At any rate, he was in Nussdorf till late September, perhaps early October, and was then on the eve of a new experiment in housekeeping so that he might have his nephew with him, concerning which he wrote to Giannatasio in Vienna on November 12. There is nothing in his letters to Frau Streicher and others at this time to indicate a change to Mödling, whither he went in May of the next year after he had reported Potter’s visits to Ries in March.
179 This agrees with the theory that the first meetings took place at some other place. To Ries, Beethoven wrote on March 5, 1818: “Botter [sic] visited me a few times; he appears to be a good man and has talent for composition.”
180 Other instances of this nature have been recorded in this biography. In December, 1811, a visitor, Xaver Schnyder von Wartensee, reported to Nägeli in Zürich that Beethoven had said to him: “All Viennese, from the Emperor to the bootblack, are good for nothing.” “I asked him,” von Wartensee continues, “if he took no pupils?” “No,” he replied, “teaching is a disagreeable task; he had only one pupil who gave him a great deal of trouble and whom he would like to get rid of if he could.” “And who is he?” “Archduke Rudolph.”
181 Treitschke had provided the libretto of “Romulus”; it does not appear that Beethoven ever began its composition.
182 The letter, which is reproduced in facsimile in Schindler’s biography, is a more or less fantastic scrawl or flourish which may be read as an “R” as well as an “M.”
183 The letter to Thayer is dated May 21, 1873. Mälzel, it will be remembered, lived in Philadelphia for some time before his death at sea on July 21, 1838.
184 Thus copied by Fischoff.
185 Beethoven does not seem always to have maintained so reverential a feeling for the instrument as is indicated by the above statement. In Thayer’s note-book the American editor of this biography found this anecdote: “Once Beethoven told Stein that some strings in his Broadwood Pf. were wanting, and caught up the bootjack and struck the keys with it to show.”
186 We have contented ourselves with mere references to Beethoven’s letters to Madame Streicher in this period. They are mostly brief notes monotonously asking help in domestic affairs, and, though frequently interesting because of their exhibition of characteristic traits and moods, too insignificant to justify the cumbering of these pages with their literal contents. Those who wish to do so can read them in any of the German collections of Beethoven’s letters or in the English translation by Shedlock. But Kalischer’s notes and dates and sometimes Mr. Shedlock’s translation ought to be critically scrutinized. The letter referred to above, however, deserves to be given in full.
“Best Madame von Streicher!
“It was not possible to reply to your last letter sooner. I would have written to you a few days ago when the servants were sent away, but hesitated in my determination until I learned that it was Frau D. in particular who hindered Karl to make full confession. “He ought to spare his mother,” she told him; and Peppi coöperated with her; naturally they did not want to be discovered; they worked together shamefully and permitted themselves to be used by Frau v. Beethoven; both received coffee and sugar from her, Peppi money and the old one probably also; for there can be no doubt that she was herself at the house of Karl’s mother; she said to Karl that if I drove her away from my service she would go straight to his mother. This happened at a time when I had reproved her for her conduct with which I had frequent occasion to be dissatisfied; Peppi who often played the eavesdropper when I spoke with Karl appears to have tried to tell the truth, but the old one accused her of stupidity and scolded her stoutly—and so she remained silent and tried to throw me off the trail. The story of this abominable deception may have lasted about six weeks—they would not have got off so easy with a less magnanimous man. Peppi borrowed 9 or 10 florins for stuff for shirts and I afterwards made her a present of the money and instead of 60 she got 70 florins; she might have denied herself these wretched bribes. In the case of the old woman, who was always the worse, hate may have played a part as she always thought herself neglected (although she got more than she deserved) for the scornful smile on her face one day when Karl embraced me, made me suspect treachery and how shameless and deceitful such an old woman could be. Just imagine, 2 days before I came here K. went to his mother one afternoon without my knowledge and both the old woman and P. knew it. But now listen to the triumph of a hoary-headed traitress; on the way hither with K. and her, I spoke with K. about the matter in the carriage, although I did not know all, and when I expressed the fear that we should not be safe in Mödling, she exclaimed “I should only rely upon her.” O the infamy of it! This was only the 2nd time in the case of a person of such venerable age that such a thing happened to me. A few days before I sent both away I had told them in writing that under no circumstances were they to accept anything for Karl from his mother. Instead of repenting, Peppi tried secretly to take revenge on Karl, after he had confessed all which they knew from the fact that in writing, I had said that all had been discovered—I expected that they would both beg my pardon after this, instead of which they played me one wicked trick after the other. As no betterment was to be expected in such obstinate sinners and I had every moment to fear another piece of treachery, I decided to sacrifice my body, my comfort to better self, my poor, misguided Karl and out of the house they went as a warning example to all those who may come after. I might have made their certificates of character a little less favorable; I set down the time of service of each at full six months although it was not true. I never practise vengeance; in cases where I oppose myself to other people, I never do more against them than is necessary to protect myself against them or to prevent them from doing further harm. On account of Peppi’s honesty in general I am sorry to have lost her for which reason I made her certificate more favorable than that of the old woman, and she appears to have been led astray by the old woman but that P.’s conscience was not at ease she showed by saying to Karl that “she did not dare go back to her parents,” and, in fact I believe she is still here—I had suspected treachery for a long time until one evening before my departure I received an anonymous letter the contents of which filled me with dread; but they were only suspicions. Karl, whom I took to task at once in the evening confessed but not all. As I often treat him harshly and not without cause, he was too greatly afraid to admit everything at once. In the midst of the struggle we reached here. As I often questioned him, the servants noticed it and the old woman in particular tried to persuade him not to admit the truth. But when I gave Karl my sacred assurance that all would be forgiven if he would but confess the truth, while lying would plunge him into a deeper abyss than that in which he already was, everything came to the light of day—add to this the other data which I gave you before concerning the servants and you will have the shameful story of the two traitresses clearly before you. K. did wrong, but—mother—mother—even a bad one remains a mother. To this extent he is to be excused, particularly by me who know his intriguing, passionate mother too well. The priest here knows already that I know about him for K. had already told me. It is likely that he was not fully informed and that he will be careful; but to guard against K.’s being mistreated by him, since he appears to be rather a rude man, the matter may rest for the nonce. But as K.’s virtue was put to the test for there is no virtue without temptation, I purposely pass the matter by until it happens again (which I do not expect) in which case I will so bethwack his reverence with such spiritual cudgels, amulets with my sole guardianship and consequent privileges that the whole parish will shake. My heart has been terribly shaken up by this affair and I can scarcely recover myself. Now to my housekeeping; it needs your help; how necessary it is to us you already know; do not be frightened away, such a thing might happen anywhere, but if it has once happened and one is in a position to hold it up to one’s new servants, it is not likely that it will occur again. You know what we need—perhaps the French woman, and whatever can be found in the way of a chambermaid, good cooking remains the principal thing, even in the matter of economy, for the present we have a person who cooks for us, but badly. I cannot write you more to-day, you will perceive that in this matter I could not act differently; it had gone too far. I do not yet invite you to visit me here for everything is still in confusion; nevertheless it will not be necessary to send me to a lunatic asylum. I can say that I already suffered from this thing fearfully while I was yet in Vienna, though I kept silent. Farewell; do not make anything of this known as some one might think prejudicially of K.; only I who know all the driving wheels here can testify for him that he was terribly misled. I beg of you soon to write us something comforting, touching the art of cooking, washing and sewing.
“I am very ill and in need of a stomach restorative.
“Mödling, June 18 (10?), 1818.”
187 It was this priest, evidently, against whom Beethoven threatened to launch the thunderbolts of his wrath so as to shake the earth in a certain event, as he told Madame Streicher.
188 In the letter to Ries.
189 Evidently Joseph Valentine, a violoncello player, father of Jacob Dont, the violinist, chiefly famous as a teacher of his instrument in Vienna.
190 Mr. Thayer made or procured transcripts of the records of the tribunals in which the struggle for the possession of Karl van Beethoven were made. Students whose curiosity is not satisfied by these pages are referred to Appendix III of Vol. IV of the German edition of this biography.
191 In one of the Conversation Books used by Beethoven in 1820, there occurs this remark in Beethoven’s handwriting: “... when it learned that my brother was not of the nobility. It is singular, so far as I know, that there is a hiatus here which ought to be filled, for my nature shows that I do not belong among these plebs”; and, in February, 1820, when Peters had observed his dissatisfaction: “The common citizen should be excluded from higher men, and I have gotten amongst them.” “In three weeks,” Peters wrote, he would have nothing to do with citizens and magistracy. He would yet be asked for assistance and receive the most favorable report concerning his appeal. Not long afterward the Appellate Court brought in its decision in his favor in the guardianship matter.
192 Hotschevar’s accusation was evidently rankling in his breast.
193 It is the short piece in B-flat published as a supplement to the Berlin “Allgem. Musik. Zeit.” on December 8, 1824, under the title “Dernière pensée musicale.” Beethoven’s autograph inscription runs: “Auf Aufforderung geschrieben Nachmittags am 14. August 1818, von Beethoven.” “Letzter musikalischer Gedanke.”
194 Beethoven had written: “To the two pieces which I wrote down on the name-day of Y. R. H., two others have been added, the last of which is a large Fugato, so that the whole constitutes a grand sonata which will soon be published and long ago in my heart was designed for you; the latest happening to Y. R. H., is not in the least responsible for this.”
195 Nor even, as Thayer opined, that they had been delivered in manuscript to the Archduke on that day.
196 “Notizen,” p. 149.
197 This letter was first printed in Vol. IV of the German edition of Thayer’s biography—not, as Mr. Shedlock says, in his translation of Kalischer’s collection. Vol. IV appeared in 1907; Mr. Shedlock’s translation in 1909. Dr. Deiters found a transcript of the letter among the posthumous papers of Mr. Thayer, who had it from Mr. J. Marshall, of London. Its pages had been separated by some vandal who probably wanted to sell two autographs instead of one. Mr. Marshall bought the sheets at two different autograph sales and, recognizing their relationship, united them. The letter appears afterwards to have come into the hands of Mr. A. F. Hill, who loaned it to Mr. Shedlock.
198 Beethoven had sketched a promising Trio in F minor, in 1816, along with the song-cycle and the Sonata in A major, and this, probably, was in his mind.