The Childhood of Beethoven--An Inebriate Grandmother and
a Dissipated Father--The Family Homes in Bonn--The Boy’s
Schooling--His Music Teachers--Visits Holland with his Mother.
THE DATE OF BEETHOVEN’S BIRTH
There is no authentic record of Beethoven’s birthday. Wegeler, on the
ground of custom in Bonn, dates it the day preceding the ceremony of
baptism--an opinion which Beethoven himself seems to have entertained.
It is the official record of this baptism only that has been preserved.
In the registry of the parish of St. Remigius the entry appears as
follows:
_Parentes_:
_D: Joannes van
Beethoven & Helena
Keverichs, conjuges_
_Proles_:
_17ma Xbris.
Ludovicus_
_Patrini_:
_D: Ludovicus van
Beethoven &
Gertrudis Müllers
dicta Baums_
The sponsors, therefore, were Beethoven’s grandfather the chapelmaster,
and the wife of the next-door neighbor, Johann Baum, secretary at the
electoral cellar. The custom obtaining at the time in the Catholic
Rhine country not to postpone the baptism beyond 24 hours after the
birth of a child, it is in the highest degree probable that Beethoven
was born on December 16, 1770.[13]
Of several certificates of baptism the following is copied in full for
the sake of a remark upon it written by the master’s own hand:
_Department de Rhin et Moselle
Mairie de Bonn._
_Extrait du Registre de Naissances de la Paroisse
de St. Remy à Bonn._
_Anno millesimo septingentesimo septuagesimo, de decima septima
Decembris baptizatus est Ludovicus. Parentes D: Joannes van
Beethoven et Helena[14] Keverichs, conjuges. Patrini, D: Ludovicus
van Beethoven et Gertrudis Müllers dicta Baums._
_Pour extrait conforme
délivré à la Mairie de Bonn._
_Bonn le 2 Juin, 1810._
[_Signatures and official seals._]
On the back of this paper Beethoven wrote:
“Es scheint der Taufschein nicht richtig,
1772 da noch ein Ludwig vor mir. Eine Baumgarten
war glaube ich mein Pathe.
Ludwig van Beethoven.”[15]
The composer, then, even in his fortieth year still believed the
correct date to be 1772, which is the one given in all the old
biographical notices, and which corresponds to the dates affixed to
many of his first works, and indeed to nearly all allusions to his
age in his early years. Only by keeping this fact in mind, can the
long list of chronological contradictions, which continually meet the
student of his history during the first half of his life, be explained
or comprehended. Whoever examines the original record of baptism in
the registry at Bonn, sees instantly that the certificate, in spite of
Beethoven, is correct; but all possible doubt is removed by the words
of Wegeler:
Little Louis clung to this grandfather ... with the greatest
affection, and, young as he was when he lost him, his early
impressions always remained lively. He liked to speak of his
grandfather with the friends of his youth, and his pious and
gentle mother, whom he loved much more than he did his father, who
was only severe, was obliged to tell him much of his grandfather.
Had 1772 been the correct date the child could never have retained
personal recollections of a man who died on December 24, 1773. A
survey of the whole ground renders the conclusion irresistible that at
the time when the boy began to attract notice by his skill upon the
pianoforte and by the promise of his first attempts in composition,
his age was purposely falsified, a motive for which may perhaps be
found in the excitement caused in the musical world by the then recent
career of the Mozart children, and in the reflection that attainments
which in a child of eight or ten years excite wonder and astonishment
are considered hardly worthy of special remark in one a few years
older. There is, unfortunately, nothing known of Johann van Beethoven’s
character which renders such a trick improbable. Noteworthy is it that,
at first, the falsification rarely extends beyond one year; and, also,
that in an official report in 1784 the correct age is given. Here an
untruth could not be risked, nor be of advantage if it had been.
Dr. C. M. Kneisel, who championed the cause of the house in the
Bonngasse in a controversy conducted in the “Kölnische Zeitung” in
1845, touching the birthplace of Beethoven, remarks that the mother
“was, as is known, a native of the Ehrenbreitstein valley and separated
from her relatives; he (Johann van Beethoven) was without relatives and
in somewhat straitened circumstances financially. What, then, was more
natural than that he should invite his neighbor, Frau Baum, a respected
and well-to-do woman, _in whose house the baptismal feast was held_, to
be sponsor for his little son?” This last fact indicates clearly the
narrowness of the quarters in which the young couple dwelt. Does it
not also hint that the grandfather was now a solitary man with no home
in which to spread the little feast? Let Johann van Beethoven himself
describe the pecuniary condition in which he found himself upon the
death of his father:
Most Reverend Archbishop,
Most Gracious Elector and Lord, Lord.
Will Your Electoral Grace graciously be pleased to hear that my
father has passed away from this world, to whom it was granted to
serve his Electoral Grace Clemens August and Your Electoral Grace
and gloriously reigning Lord Lord 42 years, as chapelmaster with
great honor, whose position I have been found capable of filling,
but nevertheless I would not venture to offer my capacity to Your
Electoral Grace, but since the death of my father has left me in
needy circumstances my salary not sufficing and I compelled to
draw on the savings of my father, my mother still living and in a
cloister at a cost of 60 rth. for board and lodging each year and
it is not advisable for me to take her to my home. Your Electoral
Grace is therefore humbly implored to make an allowance from the
400 rth. vacated for an increase of my salary so that I may not
need to draw upon the little savings and my mother may receive the
pension graciously for the few years which she may yet live, to
deserve which high grace it shall always be my striving.
Your Electoral Grace’s
Most humble and obedient
Servant and musicus jean van Beethoven.
There is something bordering on the comic in the coolness of the hint
here given that the petitioner would not object to an appointment as
his father’s successor, especially when it is remembered that Lucchesi
and Mattioli were already in Bonn and the former had sufficiently
proved his capacity by producing successful operas, both text and
music, for the Elector’s delectation. The hint was not taken; what
provision was granted him, however, may be seen from a petition of
January 8, 1774, praying for an addition to his salary from that made
vacant by the death of his father, and a pension to his mother who is
kept at board in a cloister. A memorandum appears on the margin to the
effect that the Elector graciously consents that the widow, so long as
she remains in the cloister, shall receive 60 rth. quarterly. Another
petition of a year later has been lost, but its contents are indicated
in the response, dated June 5, 1775, that Johann van Beethoven on the
death of his mother shall have the enjoyment of the 60 rth. which had
been granted her. The death of the mother followed a few months later
and was thus announced in the “Intelligenzblatt” of Bonn on October 3,
1775: “Died, on September 30, Maria Josepha Pals (_sic_), widow van
Beethoven, aged 61 years.” In a list of salaries for 1776 (among the
papers at Düsseldorf) for the “Musik Parthie” the salary of Johann van
Beethoven is given at 36 rth. 45 alb. payable quarterly. The fact of
the great poverty in which he and his family lived is manifest from
the official documents (which confirm the many traditions to that
effect) and from the more important recollections of aged people of
Bonn brought to light in a controversy concerning the birthplace of
the composer. For instance, Dr. Hennes, in his unsuccessful effort to
establish the claims of the Fischer house in the Rheingasse, says: “The
legacy left him (Johann van Beethoven) by his father did not last long.
That fine linen, which, as I was told, could be drawn through a ring,
found its way, piece by piece, out of the house; even the beautiful
large portrait showing the father wearing a tasseled cap and holding a
roll of music, went to the second-hand shop.” This is an error, though
the painting may have gone for a time to the pawnbroker.
From the Bonngasse the Beethovens removed, when, is uncertain, to a
house No. 7 or No. 8 on the left as one enters the Dreieckplatz in
passing from the Sternstrasse to the Münsterplatz. They were living
there in 1774, for the baptism of another son on the 8th of April of
that year is recorded in the register of the parish of St. Gangolph,
to which those houses belonged. This child’s name was Caspar Anton
Carl, the first two names from his sponsor the Minister Belderbusch,
the third from Caroline von Satzenhofen, Abbess of Vilich. Was this
condescension on the part of the minister and the abbess intended to
soothe the father under the failure of his hopes of advancement? From
the Dreieckplatz the Beethovens migrated to the Fischer house, No. 934
in the Rheingasse, so long held to be the composer’s birthplace and
long thereafter distinguished by a false inscription to that effect.
Whether the removal took place in Ludwig’s fifth or sixth year is not
known; but at all events it was previous to the 2nd of October, 1776,
for upon that day another son of Johann van Beethoven was baptized in
the parish of St. Remigius by the name of Nicholas Johann. Dr. Hennes
in his letter to the “Kölnische Zeitung” lays much stress upon the
testimony of Cäcilia Fischer. He says: “the maiden lady of 76 years,
Cäcilia Fischer, still remembers distinctly to have seen little Louis
in his cradle and can tell many anecdotes about him, etc.” The mistake
is easily explained without supposing any intentional deception:--62
years afterwards she mistook the birth of Nicholas Johann for that of
Ludwig. According to Fischer’s report the family removed from this
house in 1776 for a short time to one in the Neugasse, but returned
again to the house in the Rheingasse after the palace fire in 1777.
One thought which suggests itself in relation to these removals of
Johann van Beethoven may, perhaps, be more than mere fancy: that in
expectation of advancement in position upon the death of his father he
had exchanged the narrow quarters of the lodging in the rear of the
Clasen house for the much better dwelling in the Dreieckplatz; but upon
the failure of his hopes had been fain to seek a cheaper place in the
lower part of the town down near the river.
THE BOY BEETHOVEN’S EARLY STUDY
There is nothing decisive as to the time when the musical education
of Ludwig van Beethoven began, nor any positive evidence that he,
like Handel, Haydn or Mozart, showed remarkable genius for the art
at a very early age. Schlosser has something on this point, but he
gives no authorities, while the particulars which he relates could not
possibly have come under his own observation. Müller[16] had heard
from Franz Ries and Nicholas Simrock that Johann van Beethoven gave
his son instruction upon the pianoforte and violin “in his earliest
childhood.... To scarcely anything else did he hold him.” In the
dedication of the pianoforte sonatas (1783) to the Elector, the boy
is made to say: “Music became my first youthful pursuit in my fourth
year,” which might be supposed decisive on the point if his age were
not falsely given on the title-page. This much is certain: that after
the removal to the Fischer house the child had his daily task of
musical study and practice given him and in spite of his tears was
forced to execute it. “Cäcilia Fischer,” writes Hennes (1838), “still
sees him, a tiny boy, standing on a little footstool in front of the
clavier to which the implacable severity of his father had so early
condemned him. The patriarch of Bonn, Head Burgomaster Windeck, will
pardon me if I appeal to him to say that he, too, saw the little Louis
van Beethoven in this house standing in front of the clavier and
weeping.” To this writes Dr. Wegeler:
I saw the same thing. How? The Fischer house was, perhaps still
is, connected by a passage-way in the rear with a house in the
Giergasse, which was then occupied by the owner, a high official
of the Rhenish revenue service, Mr. Bachen, grandfather of Court
Councillor Bachen of this city. The youngest son of the latter,
Benedict, was my schoolmate, and on my visits to him the doings
and sufferings of Louis were visible from the house.
It must be supposed that the father had seen indications of his
son’s genius, for it is difficult to imagine such an one remaining
unperceived; but the necessities of the family with the failure of the
petition for a better salary--sent in just at the time when the Elector
was so largely increasing his expenditures for music by the engagement
of Lucchesi and Mattioli and in other ways--are sufficient reasons for
the inflexible severity with which the boy was kept at his studies. The
desire to say something new and striking on the part of many who have
written about Beethoven has led to such an admixture of fact and fancy
that it is now very difficult to separate them. One (Schlosser) tells
his readers that “the greatest joy of the lad was when his father took
him upon his knees and permitted him to accompany a song on the clavier
with his tiny fingers,” while others tell the tale of his childhood
in a manner to convey the idea that the father was a pitiless tyrant,
the boy a victim and a slave--an error which a calm consideration of
what is really known of the facts in the case at once dispels. There
is but one road to excellence, even for the genius of a Handel or a
Mozart--unremitted application. To this young Ludwig was compelled,
sometimes, no doubt, through the fear or the actual infliction of
punishment for neglect; sometimes, too, the father, whose habits were
such as to favor a bad interpretation of his conduct, was no doubt
harsh and unjust. And such seems to be the truth. At any rate, the boy
at an early date acquired so considerable a facility upon the clavier
that his father could have him play at court and when he was seven
years old produce him with one of his pupils at a concert in Bonn.
Here is the announcement of the concert as it was reproduced in the
“Kölnische Zeitung” of December 18, 1870, from the original:
AVERTISSEMENT
To-day, March 26, 1778, in the musical concert-room in the
Sternengasse the Electoral Court Tenorist, Beethoven, will have
the honor to produce two of his scholars, namely, Mlle. Averdonck,
Court Contraltist, and his little son of six years. The former
will have the honor to contribute various beautiful arias, the
latter various clavier concertos and trios. He flatters himself
that he will give complete enjoyment to all ladies and gentlemen,
the more since both have had the honor of playing to the greatest
delight of the entire Court.
Beginning at five o’clock in the evening.
Ladies and gentlemen who have not subscribed will be charged a
florin. Tickets may be had at the aforesaid Akademiesaal, also of
Mr. Claren auf der Bach in Mühlenstein.
Unfortunately we learn nothing concerning the pieces played by the boy
nor of the success of his performance. That the violin as well as the
pianoforte was practised by him is implicitly confirmed by the terms
in which Schindler records his denial of the truth of the well-known
spider story: “The great Ludwig refused to remember any such incident,
much as the tale amused him. On the contrary, he said it was more to be
expected that everything would have fled from his scraping, even flies
and spiders.”
PAUCITY OF INTELLECTUAL TRAINING
The father’s main object being the earliest and greatest development
of his son’s musical genius so as to make it a “marketable commodity,”
he gave him no other school education than such as was afforded in
one of the public schools. Fischer says he first attended a school in
the Neugasse taught by a man named Huppert[17] and thence went to the
Münsterschule. Among the lower grade schools in Bonn was the so-called
Tirocinium, a Latin school, which prepared pupils for the gymnasium but
was not directly connected with it, but had its own corps of teachers,
like the whole educational system of the period, under the supervision
of the Academic Council established by Max Friedrich in 1777. The
pupils learned, outside of the elementary studies (arithmetic and
writing are said to have been excluded), to read and write Latin up to
an understanding of Cornelius Nepos. Johann Krengel, a much respected
pedagogue, was teacher at the time and was appointed municipal
schoolmaster in 1783 by the Academic Council. In 1786 he transferred
the school to the Bonngasse. To this school young Beethoven was sent;
when, is uncertain. His contemporary and schoolfellow Wurzer, Electoral
Councillor and afterwards president of the Landgericht, relates the
following in his memoirs:[18]
One of my schoolmates under Krengel was Luis van Beethoven, whose
father held an appointment as court singer under the Elector.
Apparently his mother was already dead at the time,[19] for Luis
v. B. was distinguished by uncleanliness, negligence, etc. Not a
sign was to be discovered in him of that spark of genius which
glowed so brilliantly in him afterwards. I imagine that he was
kept down to his musical studies from an early age by his father.
Wurzer entered the gymnasium in 1781; Beethoven did not. This,
therefore, must have been the time at which all other studies were
abandoned in favor of music. In what manner his education was otherwise
pieced out is not to be learned. The lack of proper intellectual
discipline is painfully obvious in Beethoven’s letters throughout his
life. In his early manhood he wrote a fair hand, so very different from
the shocking scrawl of his later years as to make one almost doubt the
genuineness of autographs of that period; but in orthography, the use
of capital letters, punctuation and arithmetic he was sadly deficient
all his life long. He was still able to use the French tongue at a
later period, and of Latin he had learned enough to understand the
texts which he composed; but even as a schoolboy his studies appear to
have been made second to his musical practice with which his hours out
of school were apparently for the most part occupied. He was described
by Dr. Müller as “a shy and taciturn boy, the necessary consequence of
the life apart which he led, observing more and pondering more than
he spoke, and disposed to abandon himself entirely to the feelings
awakened by music and (later) by poetry and to the pictures created
by fancy.” Of those who were his schoolfellows and who in after years
recorded their reminiscences of him, not one speaks of him as a
playfellow, none has anecdotes to relate of games with him, rambles on
the hills or adventures upon the Rhine and its shores in which he bore
a part. Music and ever music; hence the power of clothing his thoughts
in words was not developed by early culture, and the occasional bursts
of eloquence in his letters and recorded conversations are held not to
be genuine, because so seldom found. As if the strong mind, struggling
for adequate expression, should not at times break through all barriers
and overcome all obstacles![20] Urged forward thus by the father’s
severity, by his tender love for his mother and by the awakening of his
own tastes, the development of his skill and talents was rapid; so much
so that in his ninth year a teacher more competent than his father was
needed.
BEETHOVEN AND VAN DEN EEDEN
The first to whom his father turned was the old court organist van den
Eeden, who had been in the electoral service about fifty years and had
come to Bonn before the arrival there of Ludwig van Beethoven, the
grandfather. One can easily imagine his willingness to serve an old
and deceased friend by fitting his grandson to become his successor;
and this might account for Schlosser’s story that at first he taught
him gratis, and that he continued his instructions at the command and
expense of the Elector. The story may or may not be true, but nothing
has been discovered in the archives at Düsseldorf confirming the
statement; in fact concerning the time, the subjects and the results
of van den Eeden’s instruction we are thrown largely upon conjecture.
“In his eighth year,” says Mäurer in his notices, “Court Organist
van den Eeden took him as a pupil; nothing has been learned of his
progress.” This, if Mäurer was correct in stating his age, would have
been about 1778. It is after this that Mäurer refers to his study under
Pfeiffer. Independently of all this Fischer says: “His father not being
able to teach him more in music, and suspecting that he had talent
for composition, took him at first to an aged master named Santerrini
who instructed him for a while; but the father thought little of this
teacher, did not consider him the right man and desired a change.”
This desire resulted in securing Pfeiffer through the mediation of
Grossmann. There was no musician Santerrini in the court chapel, but an
actor, named Santorini, was a member of Grossmann’s troupe; he cannot
be considered in this connection. There is evidently a confusion of
names, and the whole context, especially the reference to the “aged
master,” shows that no other than van den Eeden was meant by the
teacher who gave instruction for a short time before Pfeiffer.
Schlosser does not say that this instruction was on the organ and
it is unlikely that the boy, who was destined for a more systematic
instruction in pianoforte playing, was put at the organ at so early
an age. It was a deduction, probably, from the fact that van den
Eeden was an organist and that later Beethoven displayed a great deal
of dexterity upon that instrument. It is noteworthy that Wegeler
(p. 11) says nothing definite as to whether or not Beethoven took
lessons from van den Eeden; he merely thought it likely, because he
knew no one else in Bonn from whom Beethoven could have learned the
technical handling of the organ. But there were several such in Bonn
irrespective of Neefe. Schindler makes certainty out of Wegeler’s
conjecture and relates that Beethoven often spoke of the old organist
when discoursing upon the proper position and movement of the body
and hands in organ and pianoforte playing, he having been taught to
hold both calm and steady, to play in the connected style of Handel
and Bach. This may have been correct so far as pianoforte playing is
concerned; but Schindler had little knowledge of Beethoven’s Bonn
period, and the possibility of a confusion of names is not excluded
even on the part of Beethoven himself, who received hints from several
organists. Mäurer, after speaking of Pfeiffer, continues as follows:
“Van den Eeden remained his only teacher in thorough-bass. As a man of
seventy he sent the boy Louis, between eleven and twelve years old, to
accompany the mass and other church music on the organ. His playing
was so astonishing that one was forced to believe he had intentionally
concealed his gifts. While preluding for the _Credo_ he took a theme
from the movement and developed it to the amazement of the orchestra so
that he was permitted to improvise longer than is customary. That was
the opening of his brilliant career.” Mäurer seems to know nothing of
Neefe when he says that van den Eeden was Beethoven’s only teacher in
thorough-bass. What he says, too, about the lad’s performance at the
organ as substitute obviously rests upon a confounding of van den Eeden
with another of Beethoven’s organ teachers--most likely Neefe.
It is our conjecture that van den Eeden taught the boy chiefly and
perhaps exclusively pianoforte playing, he being a master in that art;
but his influence was small. It must be remembered that van den Eeden
was a very old man, as whose successor Neefe had been chosen in 1781,
and who died in June, 1782. Nowhere does he, like the other teachers
of Beethoven, disclose individual traits; he is a totally colorless
picture in the history of Beethoven’s youth. Nor does it appear that
there was any intimacy between him and the Beethoven family, since
otherwise he would not have been missing in the notices of Fischer,
who does not even know his name. The judgment of the father that his
instruction was inefficient was probably correct.
OTHER TEACHERS OF THE BOY BEETHOVEN
A fitter master, it was thought, was obtained in Tobias Friedrich
Pfeiffer, who came to Bonn in the summer of 1779, as tenor singer in
Grossmann and Helmuth’s theatrical company. Mäurer, the violoncellist,
in some reminiscences of that period communicated to this work by
Professor Jahn, says that Pfeiffer was a skillful pianist and gave the
boy lessons, but not at any regular hours. Often when he came with
Beethoven, the father, from the wine-house late at night, the boy was
roused from sleep and kept at the pianoforte until morning;--a course
not particularly favorable to his progress at school, but one which
may be readily credited in the light of what is known of Pfeiffer and
Johann Beethoven, and one, moreover, which would cause the lessons
to make an enduring impression upon the memory. There is some reason
to think that the former was an inmate of the latter’s family, which
adds probability to the story. Although Pfeiffer was in Bonn but one
year, Wegeler affirms that “Beethoven owed most of all to this teacher,
and was so appreciative of the fact that he sent him financial help
from Vienna through Simrock.” To what extent Wegeler’s opinion as to
Beethoven’s obligations is correct, it would be difficult to decide;
but the utter improbability that a single year’s lessons from this
man would profit a boy eight and a half to nine and a half years old,
more than those from any other of his teachers, much longer and
systematically continued, is manifest. About this time the young court
musician Franz Georg Rovantini lived in the same house with Beethoven.
He was the son of a violinist Johann Conrad Rovantini who had been
called to Bonn from Ehrenbreitstein and who died in 1766. He was
related to the Beethoven family. The young musician was much respected
and sought after as teacher. According to the Fischer document the
boy Beethoven was among his pupils, taking lessons on the violin and
viola. But these lessons, too, came to an early end; Rovantini died on
September 9, 1781, aged 24.
A strong predilection for the organ was awakened early in the
lad and he eagerly sought opportunities to study the instrument,
apparently even before he became Neefe’s pupil. In the cloister of the
Franciscan monks at Bonn there lived a friar named Willibald Koch,
highly respected for his playing and his expert knowledge of organ
construction. We have no reason to doubt that young Ludwig sought him
out, received instruction from him and made so much progress that
Friar Willibald accepted him as assistant. In the same way he made
friends with the organist in the cloister of the Minorites and “made an
agreement” to play the organ there at 6 o’clock morning mass. It would
seem that he felt the need of familiarity with a larger organ than that
of the Franciscans. On the inside of the cover of a memorandum book
which he carried to Vienna with him is found the note: “Measurements
(_Fussmass_) of the Minorite pedals in Bonn.” Plainly he had kept an
interest in the organ. Still another tradition is preserved in a letter
to the author from Miss Auguste Grimm, dated September, 1872, to the
effect that Heinrich Theisen, born in 1759, organist at Rheinbreitbach
near Honneck on the Rhine, studied the organ in company with Beethoven
under Zenser, organist of the Münsterkirche at Bonn, and that the lad
of ten years surpassed his fellow student of twenty. The tradition
says that already at that time Ludwig composed pieces which were too
difficult for his little hands. “Why, you can’t play that, Ludwig,” his
teacher is said to have remarked, and the boy to have replied: “I will
when I am bigger.”
When Beethoven’s studies with van den Eeden began and ended,
whether they were confined to the organ or pianoforte, or partook
of both--these are undecided points. It does not appear that any
instruction in composition was given him until he became the pupil
of Neefe. In the _facsimile_ which follows the part devoted to
thorough-bass in the so-called “Studien,” the composer says: “Dear
Friends: I took the pains to learn this only that I might write the
figures readily and later instruct others; for myself I never had
to learn how to avoid errors, for from my childhood I had so keen a
sensibility that I wrote correctly without knowing it had to be so,
or could be otherwise.” This lends plausibility, at least, to another
anecdote related by Mäurer concerning an alleged precocious composition
by Beethoven:
THE STORY OF A FIRST COMPOSITION
About this time the English Ambassador to the Elector’s court,
named Kressner, who had extended help to the Beethoven family,
living scantily on a salary of 400 fl. [?], died. Louis composed
a funeral cantata to his memory--his first composition. He handed
his score to Lucchesi and asked him to correct the errors.
Lucchesi gave it back with the remark that he could not understand
it, and therefore could not comply with his request, but would
have it performed. At the first rehearsal there was great
astonishment at the originality of the composition, but approval
was divided; after a few rehearsals the approbation grew and the
piece was performed with general applause.
George Cressener came to Bonn in the autumn of 1755, and died there
January 17, 1781, in the eighty-first year of his age. The “about this
time” in Mäurer’s story agrees, therefore, well enough with that date;
it is, however, a suspicious circumstance that Mäurer had left the
service and returned to Cologne in the Spring of 1780 and, therefore,
was not eye-witness to the fact; and another that the circumstance
was not remembered by other members of the court chapel, not even by
Franz Ries, nor by Neefe, who, though not then a member, was already
in Bonn. “In 1780,” continues Mäurer, “Beethoven got acquainted with
Zambona, who called his attention to his neglected education, gave
him lessons daily in Latin, Louis continuing a year (in six weeks he
read Cicero’s letters!)--also logic, French and Italian--until Zambona
left Bonn in order to become bookkeeper for Bartholdy in Mühlheim.” In
the “Geheime Staats-Conferenz Protocollen,” May 20, 1787, one reads:
“Stephan Zambona prays to be appointed, _Kammerportier_, etc.,” to
which is appended the remark: “the request not granted.” Zambona is a
name, too, which, half a dozen years later, often appears in the Bonn
“Intelligenzblatt,” as that of a shopkeeper in the Market Place of that
town. If the story of the cantata be doubtful, that of these private
studies on the part of a boy in Beethoven’s position, only in his tenth
year and a schoolboy then if ever, like Hamlet’s possible dreams in the
sleep of death, must “give us pause.”
Mother and son undertook a voyage to Holland in the beginning of the
winter of 1781. The widow Karth, one of the Hertel family, born in 1780
and still living in Bonn in 1861, passed her childhood in the house No.
462 Wenzelgasse in the upper story of which the Beethovens then lived.
One of her reminiscences is in place here. She distinctly remembered
sitting, when a child, upon her own mother’s knee, and hearing Madame
van Beethoven--“a quiet, suffering woman”--relate that when she went
with her little boy Ludwig to Holland it was so cold on the boat
that she had to hold his feet in her lap to prevent them from being
frostbitten; and also that, while absent, Ludwig played a great deal
in great houses, astonished people by his skill and received valuable
presents. The circumstance of the cold feet warmed in the mother’s lap,
is precisely one to fasten itself in the memory of a child and form a
point around which other facts might cluster.[21]
Another incident related in connection with this journey to
Holland--not as a fact, but as one which she had heard spoken of in her
childhood--and one very difficult to comprehend, is, that some person,
whether an envious boy or a heartless adult she could not tell, drew a
knife across the fingers of Ludwig to disable him from playing!
FOOTNOTES:
[13] In one of Beethoven’s conversation books his nephew writes on
December 15, 1823: “To-day is the 15th of December, the day of your
birth, but I am not sure whether it is the 15th or 17th, inasmuch as we
can not depend on the certificate of baptism and I read it only once
when I was still with you in January.” The nephew, it will be observed,
does not appeal to a family tradition but to the baptismal certificate
and the uncertainty, therefore, is with reference to the date of
baptism, not of birth. Hence the deduction which Kalischer makes
(“Vossische Zeitung,” No. 17, 1891) that Beethoven was born on December
15. Hesse calls to witness a clerk employed in Simrock’s establishment
with whom Beethoven had business transactions, and who had written on
the back of the announcement of Beethoven’s death, “L. v. Beethoven was
born on December 16, 1770.”
[14] The mistake in the mother’s name is sufficiently explained by the
use of Lena as the contraction of both Helena and Magdalena.
[15] “The baptismal certificate seems to be incorrect, since there was
a Ludwig born before me. A Baumgarten was my sponsor, I believe. Ludwig
van Beethoven.”
[16] “Allg. Mus.-Ztg.,” May 23. 1827.
[17] There was no teacher of this name in Bonn at the time. There was a
Rupert, however, who may have been the one meant by Fischer.
[18] These memoirs are in manuscript. They were formerly in the
possession of Dr. Bodifée of Bonn, later in the Town Hall.
[19] Error; Beethoven’s mother did not die until 1787, long after he
had left school.
[20] Thayer’s characterization of the joyless boyhood of Beethoven
may submit to a slight modification, at least so far as his childhood
is concerned, without violence to the verities of history. Fischer
would have us believe that the lad took part with his brother Carl
in boyish capers which were not always of a harmless character. In a
letter to Simrock, Court Councillor Krupp relates: “My father, who
died in 1847, was a youthful friend and schoolmate of Ludwig and Carl
van Beethoven, and distantly related to the godmother of the former.
Thursdays were holidays for the schoolboys, and the brothers Beethoven,
L. and C., were then wont to come to the house of my grandparents, No.
28 Bonngasse (now belonging to my sister and me), and amuse themselves,
among other things, with target shooting. There was a wall between
the garden of our house and the gardens of the adjoining houses in
the Wenzelgasse against which the target was placed at which the boys
shot arrows; a hit in the centre brought forth a _Stüber_ (about 4
pfennigs) for the lucky marksman. Garden and wall are now (1890) in
the same condition as then. In the evening the Beethoven brothers went
home through the Gudenauergässchen. The family lived at the time in the
Wenzelgasse back of our house.” Here is an inaccuracy, for Ludwig van
Beethoven no longer went to school when the Beethoven family changed
their house in the Rheingasse for that in the Wenzelgasse--which was
probably about 1785. The letter continues: “Ludwig’s father treated him
harshly, especially when he was intoxicated, and sometimes shut him up
in the cellar.”
[21] There seems to have been no knowledge on the part of Beethoven’s
biographers of this visit to Holland until Thayer brought the incident
to notice. It is, therefore, highly significant that the Fischer
family also recalled the circumstance and, besides, knew what brought
it about. The sister of young Rovantini, who died in September, 1781,
was employed as governess in Rotterdam, and on receiving intelligence
of the death of her brother came to Bonn, together with her mistress
(whose name has not been preserved), to visit his grave. For a month
she was an inmate of the Beethoven house; there was a good deal of
music-making and some excursions to neighboring places of interest,
including Coblenz. The visitors invited the Beethoven family to make a
trip to Holland. Inasmuch as Johann van Beethoven could not get away,
the mother went with the lad, and, a party of five, they embarked upon
the voyage. This must have been in October or November, 1781, which
agrees with the story of the extreme cold encountered on the voyage.
They remained a considerable time, but whether or not Ludwig gave
a concert as he had intended, is not known. Despite the attentions
showered upon him by the wealthy lady from Rotterdam and the many
honors, the pecuniary results were disappointing. To Fischer’s question
how he had fared Beethoven is reported to have answered: “The Dutch are
skinflints (_Pfennigfuchser_); I’ll never go to Holland again.”