year, so far as has been learned, were the Pianoforte Concerto as
above stated; on March 22nd, march with chorus from “The Ruins of
Athens,” in Clement’s concert; on April 16th, the “Coriolan” Overture
in Streicher’s Pianoforte Warerooms, conducted by Schuppanzigh--the
first piece in the concert, which opened the way for the great
performance of Handel’s “Timotheus” in November, which in turn led to
the foundation of the Society of the Friends of Music; on April 24th,
the “Egmont” Overture in the Concert for the Theatrical Poor Fund; and
on May 5th, the overture to “Prometheus,” and the C minor Symphony
in Schuppanzigh’s first Augarten Morning Concert of the season. His
(Schuppanzigh’s) quartet productions were on Thursdays, at noon; “As it
is nearly 12 o’clock and I am going to Schuppanzigh’s,” says Beethoven
in a note to Zmeskall, on Thursday, February 20--unfortunately only
as an auditor. No record of the programmes during the season has been
discovered.
[Sidenote: REJECTS IMPUTATIONS ON HIS CONDUCT]
And now turn we to the selection from the Zmeskall correspondence:
(To Zmeskall)
January 19 (extract): Unfortunately I am always too much at liberty
and you never.
February 2: The enclosed billet is at least 8 days old.
Not extra-ordinary but very ordinary quill-cutter, whose virtuosity
assuredly shows a falling off in this specimen, these need a few
new quill-repairs.
When will you throw off your chains, when?
You are thinking again of me--accursed be for me the life in this
Austrian Barbary--I shall now go mostly to the Swan, as I cannot
escape too much attention in the other inns.
Farewell, as well as I wish that you may without me.
Most Extraordinary one we beg that your servant find some one to
clean out the rooms, as he knows the quarters he can at once fix
the price--but soon.
Carnival Ragamuffin!!!!!!!!!!!!!
February 8: Most Extraordinary, foremost Oscillator of the world
and that without lever!!!!
We are indebted to you for the greatest thanks for having endowed
us with a portion of your oscillatory power, we wish to thank you
for the same in person, and therefore invite you to come to the
Swan to-morrow, an inn whose name bears evidence that it was made
for the occasion when the talk is about such things.
(February 19.) Dear Z: Only yesterday did I receive written notice
that the Archduke will pay his share in notes of redemption--I
beg you now to note down for me approximately what you said on
Saturday so that I may send it to the other 2. They want to give
me a certificate that the Archduke pays in N. R., but I think this
is unnecessary, the more since these courtiers in spite of their
apparent friendship for me say that my demands are not ~just~!!!!!
O heaven help me to bear this; I am no Hercules who can help Atlas
bear up the world or do it in his stead. It was only yesterday that
I heard in detail how beautifully Herr Baron Kraft had spoken about
me at Zizius’s, had judged me--never mind dear Z. it will not be
for much longer that I shall continue the shameful manner in which
I am living here. Art, the persecuted one, finds everywhere an
asylum, did not Dædalus, shut up in the labyrinth invent the wings
which carried him ~upwards~ into the air, and I, too, will find
them, these wings.
The correspondence with the Archduke, of course including the notes to
his “spiritual adviser,” Baumeister, and his “chamberlain,” Schweiger,
in the very profuseness of its expressions of devotion, awakens some
mistrust of its writer’s sincerity. There is too much of profession.
True zeal in and a hearty performance of one’s duty need few verbal
attestations.
(To Baumeister)
March 12, 1812.
P. P.
Please send me the overture to the epilogue Ungarn’s Wohlthäter, it
must be hurriedly copied in order to be sent to Gratz for use there
in a concert for the poor. I count myself altogether too happy
when my art is enlisted for such charitable purposes. You need,
therefore, only tell H. I. High, our gracious lord, about it and he
will certainly be glad to have it delivered to you, the more gladly
since you know that all the property of my small intellectual
faculties is the sole property of H. I. Highness--as soon as the
overture is copied I will immediately return it to H. Imp. Highness.
In a note to the Archduke he excuses his absence the two previous days
because he was “unexpectedly” ill, “at just the time when he was about
to go” to him. In another he has “oftener than usual” waited upon him
“in the evening hour, but no one was to be found.” In another “certain
unexpected circumstances prevent” his attendance “to-day, but,” he
says, “I shall make use of the gracious privilege of waiting upon you
to-morrow evening.” In still another:
I have suffered much during the last few days, twofold I may say
because I could not follow my sincerest desire to devote a great
deal of time to you; but I hope I shall be through with it (I mean
my illness) this spring and summer.
The last of these selections affords another illustration of the
usefulness of the Archduke’s library to the composer. Its date has also
some importance in the discussion of the famous love-letter; and it is
the final notice of Beethoven before his departure from Vienna for the
summer.
(To Baumeister)
Sunday, June 28, 1812.
I beg of you most politely that you lend me the two trios for
pianoforte, violin and violoncello of my composition for to-day.
The first is in D major, the 2nd in E-flat, if I am not mistaken,
H. Imp. Highness has ~written copies~ of them in his library. Also
the sonata in A major with pianoforte and violoncello--separately
printed--also the sonata in A minor with pianoforte and violin,
is also only printed separately. You will receive everything back
again to-morrow morning.
A very interesting series of letters to Varena, and one very creditable
to Beethoven, began at the end of January this year and ended, so far
as is known, in 1815. Could the space be spared they would all be
printed here; but they may be read in the published collections of
Beethoven’s letters.
The arrangements of the Irish and Scottish songs for Thomson were
continued in this year. A French letter to Thomson under date
February 29, 1812, chiefly devoted to business matters, yet contains
some expressions which are characteristic of Beethoven’s views and
predilections.
Haydn himself assured me, that he also got 4 ducats in gold for
each song, yet he wrote only for violin and pianoforte without
ritornellos or violoncello.[93] As regards Herr Koželuch, who
delivers each song to you for 2 ducats, I congratulate you and
the English and Scotch publishers on a taste which approves him.
In this field I esteem myself a little higher than Herr Koželuch
(~Miserabilis~), and I hope and believe that you have sufficient
discrimination to do me justice.
[Sidenote: THOUGHTS OF A VISIT TO ENGLAND]
He repeats his request that the texts be sent with the Scottish
songs, asks if violin and violoncello are to be treated ~obbligato~
or if the pianoforte might compose an ensemble in itself, and closes,
after having again demanded 9 ducats in gold, with: “we need the gold
here, for our country is at present only a paper fountain, and I in
particular, for I shall probably leave this country and go to England
and then to Edinburgh in Scotland, and rejoice in the prospect of there
making your personal acquaintance.”
The letter to Brunswick which follows, has been printed with the date
1809; but in that year Beethoven was not in the Pasqualati house; he
was then on the most cordial terms with Oliva (barring the disagreement
at Teplitz in 1811); and his satisfaction with the “honorable
decree”--the annuity contract--which retained him in Vienna, was at
the flood. The date, 1812, renders every point in the letter, except
who is meant by “R,” perfectly intelligible.[94] “T” is the manuscript
Trio, Op. 97; “S,” the printed sonata, “Les Adieux, etc.,” Op. 81a;
“the quartet” is Op. 95, also in manuscript; “nothing decisive” refers
to the non-receipt of the desired written instructions from Kinsky and
Lobkowitz to their cashiers respecting the notes of redemption, and
the “unhappy war” was that movement by Napoleon which proved to be the
fatal invasion of Russia.
The letter reads:
Dear friend! Brother!
I ought to have written you earlier; I did so 1000 times in my
heart. You ought to have received the T. and S. much earlier; I
cannot understand how R. could have detained these so long from
you. To the best of my recollection I told you that I would send
both sonata and trio, do as you feel inclined, keep the sonata or
send it to Forray[95] as you please, the quartet was designed for
you long ago, my disorderliness alone is to blame that you receive
it only now. And speaking of disorder I am unfortunately compelled
to tell you that it still persecutes me on every hand, nothing
decisive has been done in my affairs; the unhappy war may delay the
final settlement still more or make the matter worse. At one time
I resolve upon one thing, at another time upon a different one,
unfortunately I must remain in the neighborhood until the matter is
settled. O unhappy decree, seductive as a siren, against which I
should have stopped my ears with wax and had myself bound so that
I could not sign, like Ulysses. If the billows of war roll nearer
here I shall come to Hungary; perhaps in any event, if I must care
for my miserable self I shall no doubt beat my way through--away,
nobler, loftier plans! Infinite are our strivings, the vulgar puts
an end to all!
Farewell dear brother, be such to me, I have no one to whom I can
give the name, do as much good around you as the evil times will
permit.
In the future put the following directions on the coverings of
letters to me.
“To H. B. v. Pasqualati.”
The rascal Oliva (no noble r-s-l however) is going to Hungary, do
not have too much to do with him; I am glad that this connection
which was brought about by sheer necessity, will by this be
entirely broken off.--More by word of mouth--I am now in Baden, now
here--to be inquired for in Baden at the Sauerhof.
The cause of the estrangement between Beethoven and Oliva is hinted
at in two letters from Oliva to Varnhagen. On March 25, Oliva writes:
“I should like to write you a great deal about the things that sadden
me, about Stoll, and Beethoven still more, but I must postpone it--I
was ill lately and it moves me greatly to write about things which
are so painful”; and in a letter of June 3, after asking Varnhagen
in behalf of Beethoven to deliver a letter to Prince Kinsky and seek
to persuade the Prince to come to a decision in the matter of paying
the annuity contract in notes of redemption, he adds: “Concerning my
unfortunate affairs I can only say that Of.” [Offenheimer, the Vienna
banker, Oliva’s employer, is meant] “has treated me very shabbily and
I am compelled to seek another engagement, perhaps I shall accept
Beethoven’s renewed offer and go with him to England. Stoll cheated me
in a very miserable manner and even sought to bring about a rupture
with Beethoven, in which he was almost successful; I am completely
separated from him.” Beethoven’s wrath, to which he gave expression
in his letter to Brunswick, seems to have been assuaged and their
friendship continued as before until the departure of Oliva for Russia
in 1820.
There is a little Trio in one movement, which bears the superscription
in Beethoven’s hand: “Vienna, June 2, 1812. For my little friend Max.
Brentano to encourage her in pianoforte playing.” On one of his visits
to the Brentanos, soon after, “the little maiden, whom he occasionally
teased, in a fit of childish petulance unexpectedly poured a bottle of
ice-cold water over his head when he was overheated.”[96]
[Sidenote: NOTABLE GATHERING AT TEPLITZ]
This was the year in which Beethoven allowed a mask to be taken, at the
desire of Streicher, who wished to add his bust to those which already
adorned his pianoforte warerooms. The bust was executed by Professor
Klein, a pupil of the famous sculptor Fischer, and still adorns the
hall for which it was designed. The effigy is the one which has been
so often copied and is generally attributed to Dannhauser. That artist
was born in 1805, and must have been indeed remarkably precocious, if
Beethoven consented to have him, at the age of seven years, plaster his
face with gypsum! In May, the son of the Corsican advocate Bonaparte
held court at Dresden and received his father-in-law, Emperor Franz,
Frederick William of Prussia, the princes of the Rheinbund, etc.,
etc. Before the end of June, he had crossed the Niemen with his half
million of men on his fatal march to Moscow. As if from a presentiment
and in the hope of the disastrous failure of the foolhardy invasion
of Russia, Teplitz (that neutral ground, but central point of plot
and agitation against the parvenu Emperor) became the scene of a
virtual congress of imperial personages, or their representatives,
accompanied by families, ministers and retinues. Ostensibly they met
for health, recreation, social diversion; but views and opinions were
exchanged and arrangements made for such concerted action as the result
in Russia might render politic. Herr Aug. Rob. Hiekel, Magisterial
Adjunct in Teplitz, has kindly communicated copious excerpts from the
lists of arrivals that summer, from which these are selected, through
the friendly mediation of Dr. Schebek of Prague, which is gratefully
acknowledged:
May 29. Emperor Franz, with a large retinue--Wrbna, Althaer,
Kinsky, Zichy, etc., etc.
June 4. Marie Louise, Empress of France and retinue; the Grand Duke
of Würzburg and retinue.
July 2. The Empress of Austria and household; the Duke Anton of
Saxony, with wife and household.
July 7. The Duke of Saxe-Weimar.
July 14. The King of Saxony with wife and royal household.
July 25. Prince Maximilian of Saxony with wife and royal household.
August 11, 15. Prince Wittgenstein, Baron von Humboldt, and the
Prince of Curland, in Prussian service, etc., etc.
Passing from the royal and diplomatic circles, we note:
April 19. Baroness von der Recke, with Demoiselle Meissner and Herr
Tiedge.
July 7. Herr Ludwig van Beethoven, Composer, of Vienna, lives in
the Eiche, No. 62.[97]
July 8. Herr Carl, Prince von Lichnowsky.
July 15. Hr. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Grand Ducal Privy
Councillor of Weimar, etc., etc., in the Gold. Schiff, No. 116.
July 24. Herr Ludwig Baron von Arnim, landowner, with wife, then
his sister-in-law, Frau v. Savigny, of Berlin.
August 5. Hr. Joachim, Baron v. Muench-Bellinghausen.
August 7. Hr. Clemens Brentano, ~Partikulier~ of Prague.
August 9. Frau Wilhelmine Sebald, wife of the Royal Prussian
Commissioner of Justice, with sister Madame Sommer, of Berlin.
August 18. Hr. Fried. Karl von Savigny, Professor, etc., of Berlin.
August 19. Hr. Varnhagen von Ense, R. I. Lieutenant v. Vogelsang,
of Prague.
No hint anywhere appears that Beethoven renewed his intercourse with
Tiedge and Countess von der Recke--they had, no doubt, departed before
his arrival--nor that a meeting took place between him and any one of
those persons who arrived on and between the 1st of August and the
19th of the same month. With Varnhagen,[98] too, the meetings during
the sojourn at Teplitz this year seem to have been few and fleeting.
On June 9, Varnhagen had reported to Oliva in Vienna concerning the
success of his visit to Prince Kinsky. On July 5 Beethoven arrived
in Prague in company with Oliva’s friend Willisen. Varnhagen writes
to Rahel on July 2: “I am writing after the arrival of Beethoven
and Willisen.” As appears from a letter from Beethoven to Princess
Kinsky dated December 20, 1812, Beethoven called upon the Prince and
received 60 ducats on account. Unfortunately he delayed the definitive
settlement of the annuity matter; had he attended to it at once he
would have been spared the negotiations which followed the sudden death
of the Prince.
On July 14th, Beethoven wrote a letter to Varnhagen from Teplitz in
which he said: “There is not much to be said about Teplitz, few people
and among the few nothing extraordinary, wherefore I live alone! alone!
alone!” Three days later Beethoven wrote to Breitkopf and Härtel,
promising some corrections in the Mass in C with the words: “We say to
you only that we have been here since the 5th of July, how are we?--on
that point much cannot yet be said, on the whole there are not such
interesting people here as were last year and are few--the multitude
seems fewer than few.”
[Sidenote: BEETHOVEN MEETS GOETHE]
On July 19, Goethe enters Beethoven’s name for the first time among his
“visits”--no doubt those made by him. On the same day he writes to his
wife, who had gone on to Karlsbad for a cure:
Say to His Serene Highness Prince Friedrich, that I can never
be with Beethoven without wishing that it were in the ~goldenen
Strauss~. A more self-contained, energetic, sincere artist I never
saw. I can understand right well how singular must be his attitude
towards the world.
Already on the next day Beethoven made a pleasure trip with Goethe
to Bilin, and on the 21st and 23rd Goethe spent the evening with
Beethoven. Hence the note on the 21st, “He played delightfully.” As
Arnim and Bettina are mentioned in the list of arrivals, it is easily
possible that this was the evening concerning which Bettina reported
to Pückler-Muskau. On the 27th of July, Beethoven went to Karlsbad on
the advice of his physician, Dr. Staudenheimer, and he did not return
to Teplitz till after September 8th, Goethe having already journeyed to
Karlsbad on August 11th. That there was no estrangement between them
is proved by the letter of Goethe to Christiane advising him to give
Beethoven a letter addressed to him; he therefore expected Beethoven to
return, which he did not do, because Staudenheimer sent him further on
to Franzensbrunn. Goethe’s letter says: “Herr van Beethoven went from
here to Karlsbad a few days ago; if you can find him, he would bring
me a letter in the shortest time.” On August 2nd, Beethoven is still
looked upon as the possible courier: “If I receive the consignment
through Beethoven I will write again, then nothing more will be
necessary” (because Goethe himself went to Karlsbad). In Karlsbad
Goethe and Beethoven may have met each other only between September 8
and 11. On September 12, Goethe departed; but on the 8th he had written
in his journal: “Beethoven’s arrival.”
In view of these things, Beethoven’s report to Archduke Rudolph from
Franzensbrunn on August 12th, which will appear presently, will be read
with greater interest, and the only known utterance of Goethe touching
Beethoven in the letter to Zelter be viewed with different eyes:
I made Beethoven’s acquaintance in Teplitz. His talent amazed me;
unfortunately he is an utterly untamed personality, not altogether
in the wrong in holding the world to be detestable, but who does
not make it any the more enjoyable either for himself or others by
his attitude. He is very excusable, on the other hand, and much to
be pitied, as his hearing is leaving him, which, perhaps, mars the
musical part of his nature less than the social. He is of a laconic
nature and will become doubly so because of this lack.
Many things which have been reported and had so much of a legendary
sound as to cause them to be received with doubt, may, under the
circumstances, serve to complete the story of the relations between
Goethe and Beethoven; such, for instance, as the familiar anecdote
according to which, when Goethe expressed his vexation at the incessant
greetings from passers-by, Beethoven is said to have replied: “Do not
let that trouble your Excellency, perhaps the greetings are intended
for me.” This is variously related to have occurred in a carriage at
Karlsbad and in the Prater, and during a walk together on the old walls
at Vienna; while the late Joseph Türk, the Vienna jeweler, who was in
Teplitz in the summer of 1812, makes that place the scene of the story.
It may, therefore, possibly have some foundation in truth.
Rochlitz, in 1822, reporting a conversation with Beethoven, has him
say: “In Karlsbad I got acquainted with him (Goethe)”; but he makes him
also say: “at that time, while I was veritably burning with enthusiasm
(~so recht im Feuer sass~), I also conceived my music for his Egmont.”
But this music was composed two years before. Beethoven’s allusion
here to the “Egmont” music certainly, and to meeting with Goethe in
Karlsbad probably, if correctly reported, prove nothing but the truth
of Schindler’s observation: “Beethoven’s memory of the past always
proved to be very weak.” Dr. Eduard Knoll, of Karlsbad, in a detailed
investigation of the dates of the visit of Goethe and Beethoven to
Teplitz and Karlsbad--which also fixes August 6th as the date of the
Beethoven-Polledro concert--comes to the same conclusion as the present
writer, namely: “In all probability Beethoven came in contact with
Goethe only in Teplitz, for during Beethoven’s presence in Karlsbad, it
can be proved Goethe was not there. But even in Teplitz the period of
their mutual presence was a rather limited one.”
[Sidenote: HELP FOR SUFFERERS AT BADEN]
On July 26th, a large portion of the town of Baden, near Vienna,
including the palace of Archduke Anton, the cloister of the Augustines,
the theatre and casino, the parochial church and the palace of Count
Esterhazy, was destroyed by a conflagration which broke out between
noon and 1 o’clock. In all, 117 houses were burned. “From Karlsbad
under date of August 7, it is reported,” writes the “Wiener Zeitung” of
August 29th, that “scarcely had the misfortune which recently befel the
inhabitants of Baden become known here before the well-known musicians
Herr van Beethoven and Herr Polledro[99] formed the benevolent purpose
to give a concert for the benefit of the sufferers. As many of the
guests of high station were already prepared to depart and it became
necessary to seize the favorable moment, and in the conviction that he
who helps quickly helps twofold, this purpose was carried out within
twelve hours.... Universal and rousing applause and receipts amounting
to 954 florins, Vienna Standard, rewarded the philanthropic efforts” of
the concert-givers. Beethoven himself gives a very different aspect to
this concert in a letter to Archduke Rudolph:
Franzensbrunn, August 12, 1812.
It has long been my duty to recall myself to your memory, but
my occupations in behalf of my health in part and partly my
insignificance made me hesitate. In Prague I missed Y. I. H. by
just a night; for when I went in the morning to attend upon you,
you had departed the night before. In Töplitz I heard Turkish[100]
music 4 times a day, the only musical report which I am able to
make. ~I was much together with Goethe.~ From Töplitz, however, my
physician, Staudenheim, commanded me to go to Karlsbad and from
there here, and presumably I shall have to go from here again to
Töplitz--what excursions! and yet but little certainty touching an
improvement in my condition! Till now I have had always the best
of reports concerning the state of Y. I. H.’s health, also your
continued favorable disposition and devotion to the musical muse.
Of an academy which I gave for the benefit of the city of Baden
destroyed by fire with the help of Herr Polledro, Y. I. H. is
likely to have heard. The receipts were nearly 1000 florins V. S.
and if I had not been embarrassed in the arrangements 2000 florins
might easily have been taken in. It was, so to speak, a ~poor
concert for the poor~. I found at the publisher’s here only some
of my earlier sonatas with violin, and as Polledro insisted I had
to play an old one. The entire concert consisted of a trio played
by Polledro, the violin sonata by me, another piece by Polledro
and then an improvisation by me. Meanwhile I am glad that the
poor Badensians benefited somewhat by the affair. Pray you accept
my wish for your high welfare and the prayer to be graciously
remembered by you.
Three days before, Beethoven had written in a letter to Breitkopf and
Härtel:
I must refrain from writing more, and instead splash around in
the water again. Scarcely have I filled my interior with an ample
quantity of it than I must have it dashed over my exterior. I will
answer the rest of your letter soon. ~Goethe is too fond of the
atmosphere of the Courts, more so than is becoming to a poet.~ Why
laugh at the absurdities of virtuosi when poets who ought to be the
first teachers of a nation, forget all else for the sake of this
glitter.
Beethoven arrived in Franzensbrunn on August 8, and on September 7
returned to Karlsbad, where he remained only a few days; after the
16th of September, he was again in Teplitz.[101] His arrival in
Franzensbrunn was simultaneous with that of the family Brentano from
Vienna.
[Sidenote: REBUKING THE COURTIER GOETHE]
Madame von Arnim in her letter to Pückler-Muskau gives some account of
the intercourse between Goethe and Beethoven:
They got acquainted with each other in Teplitz. Goethe was with
him! he played for him; seeing that Goethe appeared to be greatly
moved he said: “O, Sir, I did not expect that from you; I gave a
concert in Berlin several years ago, I did my best and thought that
I had done really well and was counting on considerable applause,
but behold! when I had given expression to my greatest enthusiasm,
there was not the slightest applause, that was too much for me. I
could not understand it; but the riddle was finally resolved by
this: the Berlin public is extremely cultured and waved its thanks
to me with handkerchiefs wet with the tears of emotion. This was
all wasted on a rude enthusiast like myself; I had thought that I
had merely a romantic, not an artistic audience before me. But I
accept it gladly from you, Goethe; when your poems went through
my brain they threw off music and I was proud to think that I
could try to swing myself up to the same heights which you had
reached, but I never knew it in my life and would least of all
have done it in your presence, here enthusiasm would have had to
have an entirely different outlet. You must know yourself how
good it feels to be applauded by intelligent hands; if you do not
recognize me and esteem me as a peer, who shall do so? By which
pack of beggars shall I permit myself to be understood?” Thus did
he push Goethe into a corner, who at first did not know how he
could set matters to rights, for he felt that Beethoven was right.
The Empress and the Austrian archdukes were in Teplitz and Goethe
was greatly distinguished by them, and it was by no means a matter
of indifference to him to disclose his devotion to the Empress;
he intimated as much with much solemn modesty to Beethoven.
“Nonsense,” said the latter, “that’s not the way; you’re doing no
good by such methods, you must plainly make them understand what
they have in having you or they will never find out; there isn’t
a princess who will appreciate Tasso any longer than the shoe of
vanity squeezes her foot--I treated them differently; when I was
asked to give lessons to Duke Rainer,[102] he let me wait in the
antechamber, and for that I gave his fingers a good twisting; when
he asked me why I was so impatient I said that he had wasted my
time in the anteroom and I could wait no longer with patience.
After that he never let me wait again; yes, I would have showed him
that that was a piece of folly which only shows their bestiality. I
said to him: “You can hang an order on one, but it would not make
him the least bit better; you can make a court councillor or a
privy councillor, but not a Goethe or a Beethoven; for that which
you cannot make and which you are far from being, therefore, you
must learn to have respect, it will do you good.”” While they were
walking there came towards them the whole court, the Empress and
the Dukes; Beethoven said: “Keep hold of my arm, they must make
room for us, not we for them.” Goethe was of a different opinion,
and the situation became awkward for him; he let go of Beethoven’s
arm and took a stand at the side with his hat off, while Beethoven
with folded arms walked right through the dukes and only tilted his
hat slightly while the dukes stepped aside to make room for him,
and all greeted him pleasantly; on the other side he stopped and
waited for Goethe, who had permitted the company to pass by him
where he stood with bowed head. “Well,” he said, “I’ve waited for
you because I honor and respect you as you deserve, but you did
those yonder too much honor.”
In these passages we have the substance of a large portion of the
famous third of the Beethoven-Bettina letters. Are they an abstract
of that letter or is the letter an expansion of them? In other words,
the question is forced upon us: Is that letter authentic? The last
paragraph of the Pückler letter affords a decisive answer: “Afterward
Beethoven came running to ~us~ and told us everything, and was as happy
as a child at having teased Goethe so greatly, etc., etc.” Who were
they to whom Beethoven came running? They are named in Herr Hiekel’s
list of visitors: Ludwig (Achim) von Arnim, his young wife Bettina
Brentano and Frau von Savigny, her sister! In the pseudo-letter we
read: “Yesterday we met the entire imperial family.” Therefore, if the
letter to Pückler be true--and it bears all the marks of being so--and
if the other be authentic, Beethoven is made to relate the story one
day and write a long letter containing it to the same person the next!
It follows: when such a letter in Beethoven’s well-known handwriting
shall be seen and accepted as authentic by competent judges, its
genuineness may be conceded but, henceforth, until then, never.[103]
[Sidenote: BEETHOVEN AND AMALIE VON SEBALD]
Beethoven returned to Teplitz with no amelioration, but rather an
increase of his maladies, and was compelled to remain until near or
perhaps quite the end of September. To his great satisfaction, he found
there the young lady who had so powerfully attracted him the previous
summer. The character of their renewed acquaintance is sufficiently
obvious from the series of notes following, which are given in the
order which appears to correspond best with their contents.
Teplitz, September 16, 1812.
For Amalie von Sebald:
Tyrant--I? Your tyrant? Only a misapprehension can lead you to say
this even if your judgment of me indicated no agreement of thought
with me! But no blame to you on this account; it is rather a piece
of good fortune for you--yesterday I was not wholly well, since
this morning I have grown worse; something indigestible was the
cause, and the irascible part of me appears to seize upon the bad
as well as the good; but do not apply this to my moral nature;
people say nothing, they are only people; they generally see
only themselves in others, and that is nothing; away with this,
the good, the beautiful needs no people. It is here without help
and that, after all, appears to be the reason of our agreement.
Farewell, dear Amalie; if the moon shines brighter for me this
evening than the sun by day you will see with you the least of men.
Your friend
Beethoven.
Dear, good Amalie. After leaving you yesterday my condition grew
worse and from last night till now I have not left my bed, I wanted
to send you word yesterday but thought it would look as if I wanted
to appear important in your eyes, so I refrained. What dream of
yours is this that you are nothing to me, we will talk about that
by word of mouth, dear Amalie; I have always wished only that my
presence might bring you rest and peace, and that you would have
confidence in me; I hope to be better to-morrow and that we may
spend the few hours which remain of your sojourn in the enjoyment
of nature to our mutual uplift and enlivenment. Good night, dear
Amalie, many thanks for your kind thought of your friend
Beethoven.
I will look through Tiedge.
I only wish to report that the tyrant is ~slavishly~ chained to
his bed. So it is! I shall be glad if I get along with the loss of
to-day. My promenade yesterday at sun-up in the woods, where it was
very misty, has increased my indisposition and probably delayed
my improvement. Busy yourself meanwhile with Russians, Lapps,
Samoyeds, etc., and do not sing too often the song, “Es lebe hoch!”
Your friend
Beethoven.
I am already better. If you think it ~proper~ to come to me alone
you can give me a great pleasure, but if you think it ~improper~
you know how I honor the liberty of all people, and no matter how
you act in this and all other cases, according to your principles
or caprice, you will always find me kind and
Your friend
Beethoven.
I cannot yet say anything definite about myself, sometimes I feel
better and next things appear to be in the old rut, or to be
preparing a long sickness for me. If I could give expression to my
thoughts concerning my sickness as definitely as I can express my
thoughts in music, I should soon help myself. To-day too, I must
keep to my bed. Farewell, and rejoice in your good health, dear
Amalie.
Your friend
Beethoven.
The sickness does not seem to increase exactly, but still to crawl
onward, so no standstill! this is all that I can tell you about
it. I must give up the thought of seeing you at home, mayhap your
Samoyeds will relieve you of their journey to the Polar regions, if
so come to
Beethoven.
Thank you for all the things which you think good for my body,
the necessities have been cared for--also my illness seems less
obstinate. I deeply sympathize with you in the sorrow which must
come to you because of the sickness of your mother. You know that I
like to see you, but I cannot receive you otherwise than lying in
bed. I may be able to get up to-morrow.--Farewell, dear Amalie--
Your somewhat weak
Beethoven.
(In Amalie Sebald’s handwriting):
My tyrant commands an account--here it is:
A fowl 1 fl. V. S.
The soup 9 kr.
With all my heart I hope that it may agree with you.
(In Beethoven’s handwriting):
Tyrants do not pay, but the bill must be receipted, and you can
do that best if you come in person. N. B. With the bill to your
humbled tyrant.[104]
Hard upon the first letter to Amalie Sebald there followed a letter
to Breitkopf and Härtel which confirms the statement concerning his
illness and its cause and discloses his desire to leave Vienna, though
temporarily, for concert purposes.
Beethoven’s health must have rapidly improved after the 16th of
September, for Chapelmaster Glöggl’s “Linzer Musik-Zeitung” announces
his arrival in that place on October 5th:
Now we have had the long wished for pleasure of having within our
metropolis for several days the Orpheus and greatest musical poet
of our time, Herr L. van Beethoven, and if Apollo is favorable to
us we shall also have an opportunity to admire his art and report
upon it to the readers of this journal.
He had come thither, probably direct ~via~ Prague and Budweis, to
pass a few weeks with his brother Johann, who gave him a large
room affording him a delightful view of the Danube with its busy
landing-place and the lovely country beyond. Franz Glöggl--later a
music publisher in Vienna, then a youth in Linz--shortly before his
death wrote down his reminiscences of the composer, for use in this
work.
Beethoven (he wrote) was on intimate terms of friendship with my
father, chapelmaster of the cathedral in Linz, and when he was
there in 1812, he was at our house every day and several times took
meals with us. My father asked him for an Aequale for 6 trombones,
as in his collection of old instruments he had a soprano and a
~quart~ trombone,[105] whereas only alto, tenor and bass trombones
were commonly used. Beethoven wanted to hear an Aequale such as was
played at funerals in Linz, and my father appointed three trombone
players one afternoon when Beethoven was expected to dine with us
and had them play an Aequale as desired, after which Beethoven sat
down and composed one for 6[106] trombones, which my father had his
trombonists play, etc.
Among the cavaliers who were in Linz was Count von Dönhoff, a
great admirer of Beethoven, who gave several soirées in his honor
during the composer’s sojourn. I was present at one of these.
Pieces were played and some of Beethoven’s songs were sung, and
he was requested to improvise on the pianoforte, which he did not
wish to do. A table had been spread with food in an adjoining room
and finally the company gathered about it. I was a young lad and
Beethoven interested me so greatly that I remained always near him.
Search was made for him in vain and finally the company sat down
without him. He was in the next room and now began to improvise;
all grew quiet and listened to him. I remained standing beside
him at the pianoforte. He played for about an hour and one by one
all gathered around him. Then it occurred to him that he had been
called to the table long before--he hurried from his chair to the
dining-room. At the door stood a table holding porcelain dishes.
He stumbled against it and the dishes fell to the floor. Count
Dönhoff, a wealthy cavalier, laughed at the mishap and the company
again sat down to the table with Beethoven. There was no more
thought of playing music, for after Beethoven’s fantasia half of
the pianoforte strings were broken. I recall this fantasia because
I was so fortunate as to have heard it so near him.
[Sidenote: INTERFERENCE WITH A BROTHER’S AFFAIRS]
One of Beethoven’s memoranda, copied into the Fischoff Manuscript, is
this: “In 1812, I was in Linz on account of B.” Supposing this B.
to stand for Beethoven’s brother it confirms certain very unpleasant
information obtained in Linz (1860), from perfectly competent
authority, namely, that the principal object of the journey thither was
to interfere in Johann’s domestic affairs.
Soon after coming to Linz, the apothecary, being unmarried and having
a house much too large for his necessities, leased a part of it to a
physician from Vienna, whose wife’s sister some time later joined them.
She, Therese Obermeyer, was described as possessing a very graceful and
finely proportioned figure, and a pleasing, though not beautiful, face.
Johann van Beethoven soon became acquainted with her, liked her, and
made her his housekeeper and--something more.
When it is considered, that the apothecary was a man of some
thirty-five years, that he had gained his present position entirely by
his own enterprise, perseverance and good fortune, and that, beyond
advice and remonstrance, his brother had no more right to meddle in
his private concerns than any stranger, it seems hardly credible
that Beethoven, with all his eccentricities of character, could have
come to Linz with precisely this purpose in view. But, according to
the evidence, this was so. Had the motive of his visit been simply
fraternal affection, and had he then and there first discovered his
brother’s improper connection with Therese, he could justly have
employed earnest expostulation and entreaty to the end of breaking it
off--but nothing more; if unheeded, he could leave the house. But to
come thither for this express object, and employ force to accomplish
it, was an indefensible assumption of authority. Such, at all events,
was Johann’s opinion, and he refused to submit to his brother’s
dictation. Excited by opposition, Ludwig resorted to any and every
means to accomplish his purpose. He saw the Bishop about it. He applied
to the civil authorities. He pushed the affair so earnestly, as at
last to obtain an order to the police to remove the girl to Vienna if,
on a certain day, she should be still found in Linz. The disgrace to
the poor girl; the strong liking which Johann had for her; his natural
mortification at not being allowed to be master in his own house;
these and other similar causes wrought him up almost to desperation.
Beethoven, having carried his point, might certainly have borne his
brother’s anger with equanimity; might have felt pity for him and
sought to soothe him in his trouble. But no; when Johann entered his
room with reproaches and upbraidings, he, too, became angry and a scene
ensued on which--let the curtain be drawn. It was, unhappily, more
disgraceful to Ludwig than Johann. The apothecary, to use the language
of the card-table, still had the commanding trump. Should he play it?
The answer is in the parochial register at Linz. It is the record
of marriage, November 8th, 1812, of Johann van Beethoven to Therese
Obermeyer. There is some slight reason to think that the journey to
Linz was suddenly undertaken in consequence of a false report that
Johann was about to marry Therese, and with the intention to prevent
it. Whether this be true or not he lost the game and immediately
hastened away to Vienna, angry and mortified that the measures he had
taken had led to the very result which he wished to prevent; had given
to the unchaste girl the legal right to call him “brother,” and had put
it in Johann’s power--should he in the future have cause to rue his
wedding-day--to reproach him as the author of his misfortune. Indeed,
when that unhappy future came, Johann always declared that Ludwig had
driven him into this marriage; how the composer then viewed the matter,
we shall see when the time comes. One sister-in-law had already been
to Beethoven a bitter source of shame and mortification; and now the
other?--Time must show. Here we part from the apothecary, and it will
be long before we meet him again.
Beethoven’s professional occupation in Linz was the completion of the
Eighth Symphony, which, on Johann van Beethoven’s doubtful authority,
was wrought out from the sketches during walks to and upon the
Pöstlingberg.[107] Schindler’s account of the origin of the famous
Allegretto Scherzando adds a new name to our ~dramatis personæ~.
[Sidenote: ASSOCIATION WITH MÄLZEL]
Johann Nepomuk Mälzel was the son of an organ-builder of Ratisbon.
He received a thorough musical education, and began life on his own
account as a performer upon and a teacher of the pianoforte of no mean
ability; but his extraordinary taste for mechanism and talent for
invention soon led him to exchange the music-room for the workshop. It
is somewhere related, that, having been appointed “Court Mechanician”
at Vienna and having a work to execute for the Empress, rooms were
assigned him, in 1809, in Schönbrunn. Soon after this, Napoleon
took possession of that palace, and while there played a game with
Kempelen’s chess player (of which Mälzel had become proprietor),
Allgaier being (probably) the person concealed in the chest. The
truth of the anecdote we cannot warrant. From Schönbrunn, Mälzel
removed to rooms in Stein’s pianoforte manufactory, and began the
construction of a new and improved panharmonicon, having sold his first
one in Paris. This was his principal employment in the year 1812.
Carl Stein (from whom the author derived this information) remembered
distinctly the frequent visits of Beethoven to Mälzel’s workshop,
the great intimacy of the two men, and the persevering efforts of
the mechanician to construct an ear-trumpet which the deaf composer
should find of practical use and benefit. It is well known, that of
the four instruments constructed, one was so far satisfactory as to
be used occasionally for some eight or ten years. The necessity and
practicability of inventing some kind of machine by which composers
should be able to indicate exactly the duration of a piece of music--in
other words, the rapidity of its execution--had been for several years
subjects of wide discussion. An article in the “Wiener Vaterländische
Blätter” of October 13, 1813, entitled “Mälzel’s musikalischer
Chronometer,” reads:
On his journeys through Germany, France and Italy, as a consequence
of his approved knowledge of mechanics and music, Herr Mälzel had
repeatedly been solicited by the most celebrated composers and
conservatories to devote his talent to an invention which should
be useful to the many, after many efforts by others had proved
defective. He undertook the solution of the problem and succeeded
in completely satisfying the first composers of Vienna with the
model which was recently exhibited, which will be followed soon
by the recognition of all others in the countries mentioned.
The model has endured the most varied tests which the composers
Salieri, Beethoven, Weigl, Gyrowetz and Hummel applied to it. Court
Chapelmaster Salieri made the first application of this chronometer
to a work of magnitude, Haydn’s “Creation,” and noted all the
tempos according to the different degrees on the score, etc. Herr
Beethoven looks upon this invention as a welcome means with which
to secure the performance of his brilliant compositions in all
places in the tempos conceived by him, which to his regret have so
often been misunderstood.
The “Allg. Mus. Zeit.” of December 1st devotes some two pages to the
instrument, from which a few words of description are enough for our
purpose:
The external parts of this chronometer ... consist of a small lever
which is set in motion by a toothed wheel, the only one in the
whole apparatus, by means of which and the resultant blows on a
little wooden anvil, the measures are divided into equal intervals
of time.
That “chronometer” was not what is now known as Mälzel’s “metronome.”
[Sidenote: CANON AND ALLEGRETTO SCHERZANDO]
It is now to be seen whether Schindler’s account of the Allegretto
Scherzando will bear examination. It is this:
In the Spring of the year 1812, Beethoven, the mechanician
Mälzel, Count von Brunswick, Stephan von Breuning and others,
sat together at a farewell meal, the first about to undertake
the visit to his brother Johann in Linz, there to work out his
Eighth Symphony and afterward to visit the Bohemian baths--Mälzel,
however, to journey to England to exploit his famous trumpet-player
automaton. The latter project had to be abandoned, however, and
indefinitely postponed. The time-machine--metronome--invented by
this mechanician, was already in such a state of forwardness that
Salieri, Beethoven, Weigl and other musical notabilities had given
a public testimonial of its utility. Beethoven, generally merry,
witty, satirical, “unbuttoned,” as he called it, at this farewell
meal improvised the following canon, which was at once sung by the
participants.
Schindler here prints the now well-known canon and adds: “Out of this
canon was developed the Allegretto Scherzando.” That Mälzel’s “ta, ta,
ta,” suggested the Allegretto, and that at a farewell meal the canon
on that subject was sung, is doubtless true; but it is by no means
certain that the canon preceded the symphony. Schindler was then a
youth of 17 years, “in the last course of the gymnasium at Olmütz,”
and consequently relates his story on the authority of another--Count
Brunswick. There may have been a slight lapse of memory on the part
of Brunswick as to date, but it is far more probable that Schindler
unconsciously adapted what he heard to his own preconceived notions.
At all events, the preceding pages show that he was in the wrong as
to the metronome, as to the proposed journeys of both Beethoven and
Mälzel, and therefore, probably, as to the date of the farewell meal.
On this last point, the lists of “Arrivals in Vienna” offer very strong
negative evidence, namely: Forray comes from Pesth-Ofen in 1809-10-11;
Countess Brunswick, 1811; but no Count Brunswick after March, 1810,
until the end of February, 1813--four months after the Eighth Symphony
is completed. At that date, we shall find reasons in plenty for the
farewell gathering--though none in the “Spring of 1812.” The canon
could not have contained the word “Metronome” until 1817; nor could the
“ta, ta, ta,” have represented the beat of a pendulum of an instrument
not yet invented; it was an imitation of the beat of the lever on the
anvil.
The Conversation Books show, in Schindler’s own hand, how he became
possessed of the canon. Beethoven, during the first years of their
acquaintance, was in the habit of meeting frequently evenings a captain
of the ~Arcierenleibgarde des Kaisers~, a certain Herr Pinterics,
well known then in musical circles, and Oliva, “in a retired room in
the Blumenstock in the Ballgässchen.” In a Conversation Book (1820)
Schindler writes:
The motif of the canon, 2d movement of the 8th symphony--I cannot
find the original--you will, I hope, have the kindness to write
it down for me. Herr Pintericks at that time sang the bass, the
Captain 2d tenor, Oliva 2d bass. [Again in 1824]: I am just in
the second movement of the 8th symphony--ta, ta, ta--the canon
on Mälzel--it was really a very jolly evening when we sang this
canon in the “Kamehl”--Mälzel, the bass. At that time I still sang
soprano. I think it was the end of 1817.[108] The time when I was
permitted to appear before Your Majesty--1816--1815--after the
performance of the Symphony in A.--I was still young at that time,
but very courageous, wasn’t I?
On the first of these occasions, therefore, the word “Chronometer” must
have been sung; on the second, as Mälzel had returned to Vienna with
the “Metronome,” that word was substituted, and of course retained
in the copy made in 1820. The necessary conclusion is this: If the
canon was written before the Symphony, it was not improvised at the
farewell meal; if it was improvised on that occasion, it was but the
reproduction of the Allegretto theme in canon-form.
Pierre Rode, who at his culmination had occupied perhaps the first
place among living violinists, being driven from Russia, made a concert
tour in Germany and came in December to Vienna. Spohr, whose judgment
of violin playing cannot be impugned, had heard him ten years before
with delight and astonishment, and now again in a public concert on
January 6. He now thought that he had retrograded; he found his playing
“cold and full of mannerisms”; he “missed the former daring in the
overcoming of difficulties,” and felt himself “particularly unsatisfied
by his ~cantabile~ playing.” “The public, too, seemed dissatisfied,”
he says, “at least he could not warm it into enthusiasm.” Still, Rode
had a great name; paid to and received from the nobles the customary
homage; and exhibited his still great talents in their saloons.
Beethoven must have still thought well of his powers, for he now took
up and completed his Sonata, Op. 96, to be played at one of Lobkowitz’s
evening concerts by him and Archduke Rudolph. From the tone of two
notes to the Archduke (printed by Köchel), the composer seems to have
been less satisfied by Rode’s performances than he had expected to be:
To-morrow morning at the earliest hour, the copyist will be able
to begin on the last movement, as I meanwhile am writing on other
works, I did not make great haste for the sake of mere punctuality
in the last movement, the more because I had, in writing it, to
consider the playing of Rode; in our finales we like rushing
and resounding passages, but these are not in Rode’s style and
this--embarrassed me a little. For the rest all is likely to go
well on Tuesday. I take the liberty of doubting if I can appear
that evening at Your Imp. Highness’s, notwithstanding my zeal
in service; but to make it good I shall come to-morrow morning,
to-morrow afternoon, to meet the wishes of my exalted pupil in all
respects.
The date of the concert was December 29th. Therefore, if the sketches
for the second, third and fourth movements of this noble sonata do not
belong to the year 1811, as argued near the close of the preceding
chapter, the entire work, except the first movement, was produced in
twelve or fifteen days at most.
[Sidenote: SPOHR’S ACCOUNT OF BEETHOVEN]
Though it may be slightly in advance of strict chronological order, it
would seem well to quote here what Spohr in his Autobiography writes
of his personal intercourse with Beethoven. It is interesting and
doubly acceptable as the only sketch of the kind belonging to just
this period; it is, moreover, trustworthy. In general, what he relates
of the composer in that work so abounds with unaccountable errors as
to necessitate the utmost caution in accepting it; it is pervaded by
a harsh and grating tone; and leaves the impression, that his memory
retained most vividly and unconsciously exaggerated whatever tended to
place Beethoven in a ridiculous light. What is here copied is, at least
comparatively, free from these objections:
After my arrival in Vienna (about December 1), I at once hunted
up Beethoven, but did not find him and therefore left my card. I
now hoped to meet him in one of the musical soirées to which I
was frequently invited, but soon learned that since his deafness
had so increased that he could no longer hear music distinctly in
all its context he had withdrawn from all musical parties and,
indeed, become very shy of society. I made another attempt to
visit him, but again in vain. At last, most unexpectedly, I met
him in the eating-place which I was in the habit of patronizing
every Wednesday with my wife. I had, by this time, already given a
concert (December 17), and twice performed my oratorio (January 21
and 24). The Vienna newspapers had reported favorably upon them.
Hence, Beethoven knew of me when I introduced myself to him and
greeted me in an extremely friendly manner. We sat down together at
a table, and Beethoven became very chatty, which greatly surprised
the table company, as he generally looked straight ahead, morose
and curt of speech. It was a difficult task to make him understand,
as one had to shout so loudly that it could be heard three rooms
distant. Afterward, Beethoven came often to this eating-house and
visited me at my lodgings, and thus we soon learned to know each
other well. Beethoven was frequently somewhat blunt, not to say
rude; but an honest eye gleamed from under his bushy eyebrows.
After my return from Gotha (end of May, 1813), I met him
occasionally at the Theater-an-der-Wien, hard behind the orchestra,
where Count Palffy had given him a free seat. After the opera
he generally accompanied me home and spent the remainder of the
evening with me. There he was pleasant toward Dorette and the
children. He very seldom spoke about music. When he did so his
judgments were very severe and so decided that it seemed as if
there could be no contradiction. He did not take the least interest
in the works of others; for this reason I did not have the courage
to show him mine. His favorite topic of conversation at the time
was severe criticism of the two theatrical managements of Prince
Lobkowitz and Count Palffy. He was sometimes over-loud in his abuse
of the latter when we were still inside the theatre, so that not
only the public but also the Count in his office might have heard
him. This embarrassed me greatly and I continually tried to turn
the conversation into something else. The rude, repelling conduct
of Beethoven at this time was due partly to his deafness, which he
not yet learned to endure with resignation, partly to the unsettled
condition of his financial affairs. He was not a good housekeeper
and had the ill-luck to be robbed by those about him. So he often
lacked necessities. In the early part of our acquaintance I once
asked him, after he had been absent from the eating-house: “You
were not ill, were you?”--“My boots were, and as I have only one
pair I had house-arrest,” was the answer.
Beethoven had other cares, troubles and anxieties in the coming
year--to which these reminiscences in strictness belong and serve
as a sort of introduction--not known to Spohr. Theirs was not the
confidential intercourse which lays bare the heart of friend to friend.
As Varnhagen last year, so Theodor Körner this and the next informs
us that Beethoven’s desire again to try his fortune on the operatic
stage was in no wise abated. On June 6th the youthful poet writes: “If
Weinlig does not intend soon to compose my Alfred, let him send it
back to me; I would then, having bettered my knowledge of the theatre
and especially of opera texts, strike out several things, inasmuch as
it is much too long, and give it to the Kärnthner Theatre, as I am
everlastingly plagued for opera texts by Beethoven, Weigl, Gyrowetz,
etc.” On February 10, 1813, he writes: “Beethoven has asked me for ‘The
Return of Ulysses.’ If Gluck were alive, that would be a subject for
his Muse.”
The ascertained compositions of 1812 were:
I. “Sinfonie. L. v. Beethoven, 1812, 13ten Mai.” A major, Op. 92.
II. “Trio in einem Satze.” B-flat. “Wien am 2ten Juni 1812. Für
seine kleine Freundin Max. Brentano zu ihrer Aufmunterung im
Clavierspielen.”
III. “Sinfonia--Linz im Monath October 1812.” F major, Op. 93.
IV. Three Equali for four trombones. “Linz den 2ten 9ber 1812.”
V. Sonata for Pianoforte and Violin. G major, Op. 96.
VI. Irish airs nearly or quite completed for Thomson, and
VII. Welsh airs probably continued.
The publications:
I. Music to “Egmont” except the overture, Op. 84. Breitkopf and
Härtel, in January.
II. ~Messa a quattro voci coll’accompagnamento dell’Orchestra,
composta da Luigi van Beethoven.~ “Drey Hymnen für vier Singstimmen
mit Begleitung des Orchesters, in Musik gesetzt und Sr. Durchlaucht
dem Herrn Fürsten von Kinsky zugeeignet von Ludw. v. Beethoven, 86.
Werk. Partitur.” Breitkopf and Härtel, in October.
FOOTNOTES:
[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
[Illustration: ~etc.~]
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.
Chapter XIII
The Year 1813--Beethoven’s Journal--Death of Prince
Kinsky--Beethoven’s Earnings--Mälzel and “Wellington’s
Victory”--The A major Symphony--The Concerts of December 8 and 12.
Short as Bettina’s stay in Vienna was, it occurred at the very crisis
of Beethoven’s unlucky marriage project; and her society served a good
purpose in distracting his thoughts; while her known relations to her
future husband prevented the growth of any such feeling on his part as
some have conjectured did really awaken. Next came the rather absurd
affair with Fräulein Malfatti; but this was so little of an earnest
nature[109] as in turn to be quite forgotten, so soon as the rejected
lover came fairly under the influence of the remarkable mental and
personal charms of Amalie von Sebald, in whom he found all that his
warmest wishes could desire. The renewal in the last summer of his
acquaintance with her completely cured him of his recent unfortunate
passions, but, there is too much reason to believe, at the cost of
plunging him into a new one, not the less powerful because utterly
hopeless, and so firmly rooted that in 1816 “it was still as on the
first day.”
The so-called journal (~Tagebuch~) of the Fischoff MS. begins thus:
Submission, absolute submission to your fate, only this can
give you the sacrifice ... to the servitude--O, hard struggle!
Turn everything which remains to be done to planning the long
journey--you must yourself find all that your most blessed wish can
offer, you must force it to your will--keep always of the same mind.
~Thou mayest no longer be a man~, not for thyself, only for others,
~for thee there is no longer happiness except in thyself, in thy
art~--O God, give me strength to conquer myself, nothing must
chain me to life. Thus everything connected with A will go to
destruction.
The date given is simply 1812; but the month of September in Teplitz
suggests itself instantly for the first two paragraphs, and the time
when Beethoven was busy with the Eighth Symphony for the other. The
next-following in the manuscript is dated:
May 13, 1813.
To forgo a great act which might have been and remain so--O, what
a difference compared with an unstudied life which often rose in
my fancy--O fearful conditions which do not suppress my feeling
for domesticity, but whose execution O God, God look down upon the
unhappy B., do not permit it to last thus much longer--
Learn to keep silent, O friend! Speech is like silver,
But to hold one’s peace at the right moment is pure gold.
It is obvious that the hated “servitude” is the instruction of the
Archduke in music, and that the new feeling which he has to defy,
and if possible conquer, lest everything go to destruction, is the
absorbing affection for Amalie Sebald which he had unconsciously
suffered to gain tyrannical sway over his mind and heart. The “great
act” of the last citation is the “long journey” of the first--of which
hereafter.[110]
[Sidenote: MISFORTUNES OF KARL VAN BEETHOVEN]
Other causes also joined to render his case now truly pitiable. The
result of his interference with his brother Johann, vexatious and
mortifying as it was, was of little moment in comparison with the
anxiety and distress caused by the condition of his brother Karl. In
1809, Karl had been advanced to the position of Deputy Liquidator with
1000 fl. salary and 160 fl. rent money; but all salaries being then
paid in bank-notes, the minor public officials, especially after the
~Finanz-Patent~, were reduced to extreme poverty. Karl van Beethoven
was already owner of the house in the Alservorstadt near the Herrnalser
Linie, which contained lodgings for some ten or twelve small families,
enclosed a court-garden with fruit trees, etc., and was valued (1816)
at 16400 fl.: so long as he remained in the Rauhensteingasse, the whole
of this house was rented, and, after deducting interest and taxes, gave
him a very desirable addition to his miserable salary. When Beethoven
writes, that he had wholly to support “an unfortunate sick brother
together with his family,” it must be therefore understood ~cum grano~;
but that he had for some time been obliged very largely to aid them in
obtaining even the necessaries of life is beyond question. Just now,
when his own pecuniary prospects were so clouded, his anxieties were
increased by Karl’s wretched state of health, which partly disabled
him for his official duties, and seems to have forced him to pay for
occasional assistance. In March, he appeared rapidly to be sinking from
consumption, and he became so hopeless of improvement in April as to
induce him--in his wellfounded distrust of the virtue and prudence of
his unhappy wife--to execute the following
DECLARATION.
Inasmuch as I am convinced of the frank and upright disposition
of my brother Ludwig van Beethoven, I desire that after my death
he undertake the guardianship of my son, Karl Beethoven, a minor.
I therefore request the honorable court to appoint my brother
mentioned to the guardianship after my death and beg my dear
brother to accept the office and to aid my son with word and deed
in all cases.[111]
Vienna, April 12, 1813.
Happily for all parties concerned, Spring “brought healing on its
wings.” Karl’s health improved; he was advanced to the position of
Cashier of the “Universal-Staats-Schulden Kasse,” with 40 fl. increase
of rent money; and now, at last, the decree was issued for the payment
of all salaries (of public officials) in silver. Twelve hundred florins
in silver, used with reasonable economy, was amply sufficient to
relieve Ludwig of this part of his troubles.
In a letter to Rudolph written in January, Beethoven said bitterly:
“neither word, nor honor, nor written agreement, seems binding.”--The
words relate to non-payments of the Kinsky and Lobkowitz subscriptions
to his annuity.
Kinsky, on the 2nd or 3rd of the preceding November, while riding at
Weldus near Prague, was--by the breaking of his saddle-girth--thrown
from his horse with such force as to crush his skull, and survived
but ten hours. In settling his affairs, the question arose whether,
under the ~Finanz-Patent~, Beethoven was entitled to more than the
subscription as computed by the scale: or, more correctly, there being
~no~ question under the law, Beethoven raised one, by claiming the
full nominal sum (1800 fl.) in notes of redemption. The curators of
the estates--as it was their sworn duty to do--refused to admit the
claim until it should be established by competent judicial authority;
and, pending the decision, withheld all payments. As to Lobkowitz, his
profuse expenditures had brought him to a suspension of payments and
had deprived him of the control of his vast estates. What has just
been said of the Kinsky subscription for Beethoven applies, therefore,
literally to his. Hence, nothing of the annuity was paid by the Kinsky
curators from November 3rd, 1812, to March 31st, 1815; nor by those
of Lobkowitz from September 1st, 1811, until after April 19th, 1815.
From the abundant correspondence called out by these differences of
opinion, as to whether law or equity should rule in the case, three
letters to the widowed Princess Kinsky may be selected as explanatory
of Beethoven’s views. In the first of these letters, dated at Vienna,
December 30th, 1812, Beethoven rehearses the story of the origin of
the annuity contract, the disarrangement of the governmental finances,
Archduke Rudolph’s prompt compliance with the request that payments be
made in notes of redemption instead of bank-notes, and thus reaches the
visit of Varnhagen von Ense to Prince Kinsky at Prague. He quotes a
letter written by Varnhagen as follows:
Yesterday I had an exhaustive talk with Prince v. Kinsky.
Accompanied by expressions of highest praise for Beethoven, he
complied at once with his request and from now on will send him
notes of redemption and will pay the arrears and the future sums
in this currency. The cashier here will receive the necessary
instructions and Beethoven can collect everything here when he
passes through, or if he prefers in Vienna as soon as the Prince
shall have returned.
Prague, July 9, 1812.[112]
[Sidenote: APPEALS TO PRINCE KINSKY’S HEIRS]
Continuing, Beethoven tells the Princess of his visit to Kinsky,
who confirmed the statements in the letter and paid 60 ducats on
account--as the equivalent of 600 florins, Vienna Standard. It was
agreed that the arrears should be paid when the Prince should come to
Vienna and instructions be given to his agents. Beethoven’s illness
kept him at Teplitz longer than he had expected. Nevertheless, through
Oliva he reminded the Prince, then in Vienna, in December of his
promises, who again confirmed them and added that he would arrange
matters at his exchequer in a few days. After the departure of the
Prince with his family he had made inquiries and learned to his
astonishment that nothing had been done in the matter. In conclusion he
expressed the conviction that the heirs of the noble Prince would act
in the spirit of magnanimity which had inspired him and pay the arrears
and give directions for the future payments in notes of redemption.
In the second letter he repeats the request, having learned first from
the Prince’s representatives that nothing could be done in the matter
until a guardian had been appointed, which office had been assumed by
Her Highness. “You will easily see,” he continues,
how painful it is to be deprived so long of money which had been
counted on, the more since I am obliged wholly to support an
unfortunate sick brother and his family and have inconsiderately
exhausted my resources, hoping by the collection of my salary to
care for my own livelihood. The complete righteousness of my claims
you may see in the fact that I faithfully reported the receipt of
the 60 ducats which the Prince of blessed memory paid me on account
in Prague, although the princely council told me that I might have
concealed the fact, as the Prince had not told him, the councillor,
or his cashier anything about it.
The third letter, dated February 12, 1813, again urges the duty of the
heirs to carry out the intentions of the Prince and formulates his
petition as follows:
Namely, I pray Your Serene Highness graciously to command that the
salary in arrears from September 1, 1811, be computed in Vienna
currency according to the scale of the day of contract, at 1088.42
florins, and paid, and to leave the question whether and to what
extent this salary be payable to me in Vienna currency open until
the affairs of the estate be brought in order and it becomes
necessary to lay the subject before the authorities so that my just
demands be realized by their approval and determination.
The payment of the 60 ducats on account of the salary which by the
Prince’s consent was to be paid in notes of redemption is again
advanced as evidence of the Prince’s intentions, as is also the plea
on the score of his necessities. The first and third letters are
written in a strange hand and merely signed by Beethoven. The petition
contained in the third was not granted.
[Sidenote: A PERIOD OF ADVERSITY]
Schindler has enlarged upon Beethoven’s inexperience and lack of skill
in matters of business, and of his propensity to waste his resources
in needless changes of lodgings; Wegeler and others inform us of his
ignorance of the value of money; Karl van Beethoven had been a great
expense to him; and five-eighths of his annuity had for some time
remained unpaid. Still, it is impossible to account satisfactorily for
the very low state of his finances at this time. He must have been
strangely imprudent in non-husbanding his resources. From March 1,
1809, to March 1, 1813, he had received from Kinsky rather more than
five semi-annual payments (the “60 ducats” included), from Lobkowitz
five and from the Archduke seven--five of them in notes of redemption;
in all, 11500 florins. In the Spring of 1810, Collard (Clementi) had
paid him £200; from Thomson he had received 150 ducats, if not in July,
1810, at least in July, 1811, and 90 ducats more in February, 1813,
and within the last years Breitkopf and Härtel had certainly paid him
several thousand florins for the many works of magnitude purchased
by them; besides all this he had borrowed at least 1100 florins from
Brentano, for two or three years only after this he notes: “I owe F. A.
B. 2300 fl., once 1100 and 60 ducats”; and we know of no time after the
beginning of 1814, when he was under the necessity of applying to that
generous friend for any sums like these. But, whatever was the cause,
and whoever was in fault, Beethoven was now, up to the time when his
brother Karl received his new appointment, learning by harsh experience
a lesson in economy--happily to his profit.
To finish this topic at once, we pass on to the summer, which the
composer spent in Baden, meeting there his friends the Streichers. Frau
Streicher afterwards related to Schindler, that she “found Beethoven in
the summer of 1813, in the most desolate state as regards his physical
and domestic needs--not only did he not have a single good coat, but
not a whole shirt,” and, adds Schindler, “I must hesitate to describe
his condition exactly as it was.” Frau Streicher, after her return to
the city, “put his wardrobe and household affairs to rights and, with
the help of her husband, saw to the provision of the necessities,”
and, what was still better, they impressed upon him the necessity of
“putting money by against the future, and Beethoven obeyed in every
particular.” A small sum received from Gratz, and the 750 fl. due
from the Archduke, September 1st, relieved him for the moment; but
before the end of the year, he was again so reduced, probably by the
necessary expenditures made on his account by the Streichers, as to
obtain a loan of 50 ducats from Mälzel.
The tone of the correspondence during the first half of this year
is far less depressed than might be expected under the adverse
circumstances just detailed, to which is to be added constant ill
health; indeed, his notes to Zmeskall are enlivened by divers gleams of
his old humor. For the better understanding of the selections here made
it is to be premised, that
(a) Brunswick arrived in Vienna, February 21; that
(b) Beethoven contributed a “newly composed Triumphal March” to
Kuffner’s tragedy “Tarpeia” for its first performance in the
Burgtheater, March 26; that
(c) One of his symphonies was the principal attraction of the
Theatrical Poor Fund Concert in the Kärnthnerthortheater, April 16; that
(d) He could justly claim the use of that theatre from Prince Lobkowitz
for a benefit concert; that
(e) Varena had again applied to him for music for another charity
concert in Gratz; that
(f) Louis Bonaparte, Ex-King of Holland, then residing in Gratz, was
the “rich third party” referred to in one of the letters; and
(g) That the pecuniary embarrassments of Lobkowitz reached their climax
this summer and recalled Beethoven from Baden to take the needful steps
to secure himself from farther loss, if possible.
On January 24th, he writes to Zmeskall:
We inform you, best Z., of this and the other thing from which you
may choose the best, and are most horribly well-disposed toward
you. We hear that you have letters from B. addressed to us and beg
you to send them. Are you at liberty to-day? If so, you will find
me in the Swan--if not, we will find each other somewhere else.
Your friend
Author
Beethoven ~Bonnensis~.
Between this letter and the next there falls a rather long letter in
French to Thomson, dated February 19, 1813, which informs us touching
the progress of the work on the British songs. Beethoven writes:
I have received your valued letters of August 5, October 30 and
December 21, and learned with pleasure that you have received
the 62 songs which I have set for you at last and that you are
satisfied with all but 9 of them which you specify and in which you
would like to have me change the ritornelles and accompaniments.
I regret that I cannot accommodate you in this. I am not in the
habit of rewriting my compositions. I have never done it, being
convinced that any partial alteration changes the character of the
entire composition. I regret that you will suffer the loss; but you
can scarcely put the blame on me, since it ought to have been your
affair to advise me more explicitly of the taste of your country
and the small skill of your players. Having now received your
instruction on these points I have composed the songs wholly anew
and, as I hope, so that they will meet your expectations.
You may believe that it was only with great reluctance that I
determined to do violence to my ideas and that I should never
have been willing to do so had I not feared that a refusal would
cause a loss to you, as in your collection you wanted to have my
compositions exclusively and that otherwise you might have had your
care and expense to produce a complete work in vain.... The last
two songs in your letter of December 21, pleased me very much. For
this reason I composed them ~con amore~, particularly the second
one. You noted it in
[Illustration]
but as this key seems too little natural and so little in harmony
with the direction ~Amoroso~ that it might better be written
~Barbaresco~, I have set it in a more appropriate key.
Further on in the letter he asks Thomson to tell him whether
~Andantino~ was to be understood as meaning faster or slower than
~Andante~, “for this term, like so many in music, is of so indefinite
a significance that ~Andantino~ sometimes approaches an ~Allegro~ and
sometimes, on the other hand, is played like ~Adagio~.”
A rather long note to Zmeskall of February 25, being about a servant,
is not worth copying. It begins: “I have, my dear Z., been almost
continuously ill since I saw you last,” and closes after the signature
with the word “~Miserabilis~.” Omitting others of similar contents we
come to this interesting letter to Varena:
[Sidenote: HELP FOR THE URSULINES AT GRATZ]
Dear Sir!
No doubt Rode was right in all that he said about me; my health is
not of the best and without fault of my own my condition otherwise
is perhaps more unfavorable than at any time in my life; but
neither this nor anything else shall dissuade me from helping the
equally innocent sufferers, the Convent ladies, so far as my modest
talents will permit. To this end, two entirely new symphonies
are at your services, an air for bass voice with chorus, several
smaller single choruses--if you need the overture to Hungary’s
Benefactor which you performed last year, it is at your service.
The overture to “The Ruins of Athens,” although in a smaller style,
is also at your service. Amongst the choruses is a chorus of
Dervishes, an attractive thing [literally: “a good signboard”] for
a mixed public.
In my opinion you would do best to choose a day on which you could
give the oratorio “Christus am Ölberg”; since then it has been
played all over; this would then fill half of the concert; for
the second half you would play a new symphony, the overture and
different choruses, as also the bass air with chorus mentioned;
thus the evening would not be without variety; but you would
better talk this over with the musical councillors in your city
and let them decide. What you say concerning remuneration for me
from a third person I think I can guess who he is; if I were in my
former condition I would flatly say: “Beethoven never takes pay
when the benefitting of humanity is concerned,” but now, placed
in a condition through my great benevolence (the cause of which
can bring me no shame) and other circumstances which are to blame,
which are caused by men without honesty or honor, I say frankly I
would not decline such an offer from a rich third party; but there
is no thought of a demand; even if there should prove to be nothing
in the talk about a third person, be convinced that I am just as
willing now to be of service to my friends, the reverend women, as
I was last year without the least reward, and as I shall always
be to suffering humanity as long as I breathe. And now farewell.
Write to me soon and I will care for all that is necessary with the
greatest zeal.
My best wishes for the convent.
Closely connected with this in subject, and no doubt in time, is the
following letter to Zmeskall:
See to the delivery of this letter to Brunswick at once to-day, so
that it may arrive as soon as possible and correctly. Pardon me the
burdens which I place upon you. I have just been asked again to
send works to Gratz in the Steirmark for a concert to be given for
the benefit of the Ursulines and their educational convent. Last
year such a concert yielded generous receipts. With this academy
and that which I gave in Karlsbad for the benefit of the sufferers
from the fire in Baden three academies have been given in one year
for, by and through me--to me everywhere a deaf ear is turned
[literally: “for me everybody wears his ears on his feet”].
Thereupon he wrote again to Varena:
Vienna, April 8, 1813.
My dear V!
I received with much pleasure your letter but again with much
displeasure the 100 florins sent by the poor cloister ladies;
meanwhile they are deposited with me to be applied to the payment
of the expenses for copying. Whatever remains will be returned to
the noble cloister women together with a view of the accounts.
For such occasions I never accept anything--I thought that the
third person to whom you referred was perhaps the ex-King of
Holland and--yes, from him who probably took from the Hollanders in
a less righteous way I would have had no hesitation in accepting
something in my present condition; now, however, I beg kindly that
nothing more be said on the subject. Write me your opinion as to
whether if I came to Gratz I could give a concert; for it is not
likely that Vienna will long remain my place of residence; perhaps
it is already too late, but your opinion on the subject will always
be welcome.
The works will be copied and as soon as possible you shall have
them--do whatever you please with the oratorio; wherever it can do
any good my purposes will best be subserved.
All things beautiful to our Ursulines, whom I am glad to be able to
serve again.
Numbers 8 and 9 of Köchel’s “Drei-und-achtzig Original-Briefe” by
Beethoven to Archduke Rudolph and his chamberlain, pray the Archduke to
intercede for him with the Rector of the University for permission to
give two concerts in the hall of the University. The result is shown in
a note to Zmeskall dated April 19:
The hall of the University, my dear Z., is--refused, I received
this information day before yesterday, but being ill yesterday
I could not come to you to talk it over, nor to-day. There will
remain nothing probably except the Kärnthnerthortheater or that
An-der-Wien, and I fancy only one A (cademy). If that will not go
we must resort to the Augarten, there of course we must give 2 A.
Think the matter over a bit, my dear, and give me your opinion.
It may be that the symphonies will be rehearsed to-morrow at the
Archduke’s, if I can go out, of which I shall let you know.
The rehearsal took place on Resurrection Day, April 18, as we learn
from the 48th letter in the Köchel Collection, which, together with the
preceding two (Nos. 46 and 47), belong in the year 1813, not in 1819,
as Köchel surmised. The following little note to Zmeskall refers to the
rehearsal:
Meanwhile I thank you, dear Z., and inform you that the
rehearsal will take place at the Archduke’s to-morrow afternoon
at 3 o’clock--but I shall give you the particulars to-morrow
morning--for the present I have announced it.
Your
Beethoven.
To Zmeskall he wrote on April 23:
Dear Z.: All will go well, the Archduke will take this Prince
Fitzly Putzly soundly by the ears--let me know if you intend to
eat at the inn to-day or when you do? Then tell me please whether
“Sentivant” is correctly spelled, as I want to write to him at the
same time for the chorus. I must yet consult with you about the day
to be chosen, moreover you must not let anything be observed about
the enlistment of the Archduke, for Prince Fitzly Putzly will not
come to the Archduke till Sunday, if this wicked debtor were to
observe anything in advance he would try to get out of it.
(On April 26): Lobkowitz will give me the theatre for a day after
May 15, it seems to me this is about as good as none at all--and I
am almost of a mind to give up all thoughts of a concert. He above
will surely not let me go utterly to ruin.
(On May 10): I beg of you, dear Z., not to let anything be heard
about what I said to you concerning Prince L., as the matter is
really going forward and without this step nothing would ever have
been certain. I have looked for you at the S. every day, but in
vain.
[Sidenote: PICTURES WITH MUSICAL ACCOMPANIMENT]
There follows another long letter to Varena:
My dear V!
There can be no harm in notifying you in advance of what I am
sending you; you may be able to use more or less of it. You will
receive 3 choruses which are not long and which you can use at
different intervals in the concert--a large scene for bass voice
with chorus; it is from the “Ruins of Athens” and occurs where the
picture of our Emperor appears in view (in Ofen, Hungary, this came
upon the stage from below). You may be able to use something of the
kind to--stimulate the multitude.
In case of need the bass voice might be changed to a contralto.
You will receive only the score of these pieces; had I known which
you would use I could have had them copied for you here; I shall
receive the scores and H. von Rettig will kindly look after them
for you; besides, you will receive a march already copied for the
instruments. Instead of a symphony you will receive two symphonies;
first, the one which you desired to have written out and duplicate;
2nd, another one, also copied, which it appears to me you have not
yet had performed in Gratz. As everything else is copied you can
have the vocal pieces copied easily and in time.
Hr. von Rettich will no doubt find some extraordinary occasion to
have everything delivered to you quickly, as everybody is willing
to help in such benevolent causes. Why can I not do more for the
good ladies!
I should have liked to send you two entirely new symphonies of
mine, but my present condition commands me unfortunately to think
of myself, and I do not know but that I may be obliged to leave
this place as a fugitive from the country, for this thank the
excellent princes who have made it impossible for me to work for
the good and the useful as is my wont. Many thanks for your wine
and thank also the worthy ladies for the sweetmeats which they sent
me.
(To the same, without date):
P.P. I inform you in haste that in case the first two of the four
horn parts are difficult for your players, you replace them with
2 violas, but solo players; the other 2 in C are easy and can be
played by 2 hornists.
For the sake of my health I am hurrying to Baden for a measure of
improvement. The cost of copying the scores was 8 fl. 24 kr., for
which I shall get a receipt. I have charged 3 fl. for my servant
to get the things together, making a total of 11 fl. 24 kr.; after
deducting this sum I shall return the rest of the 100 fl. in a few
days--it is impossible at this moment.
In case you write to me please enclose your letter to the following
address in V., namely: To Hrn. Oliva, to be delivered to the
Brothers Offenheimer in the Bauernmarkt.
In a letter to the Archduke, who was then in Baden (also written on May
27), Beethoven reports his arrival there. From Baden the correspondence
with Varena was continued, as appears from a letter of July 4, 1813, in
which Beethoven says:
Pardon this very belated answer, the reason is still the old
one, my troubles, contending for my rights, and all this goes
very slowly, since I am dealing with a princely rascal, Prince
Lobkowitz; another noble prince, one of an opposite character,
died, but he as little as I was thinking of his death and in my
affairs he left nothing in writing; this must now be fought out in
the law courts at Prague. What an occupation for an artist to whom
nothing is so dear as his art! and I was brought into all this by
H. I. H. Archduke Rudolph....
Receive my thanks for the 150 fl. from the Forest Preservation
Society,[113] commend me to the esteemed Society, but I am
humiliated by the fact; why do you (or they) place so high an
estimate on the little favor which I have shown the reverend
ladies? I hope that my troubles will soon come to an end and that I
may come into possession of my own; as soon as this happens I shall
come in the fall to Gratz and then the 150 fl. shall be dealt with,
and I shall then give a large concert for the benefit of the good
Ursulines, or some other institution which may be recommended to me
as the most needy and most useful....
We learn from the “Aufmerksame” of Gratz, that “Christus am Ölberg,”
sent there by Beethoven in the preceding year, was sung as the second
part of a concert for the poor on Palm Sunday, April 11, with applause
which did honor to the good taste of the musical public of the Styrian
capital.
In Vienna the C minor symphony opened and the new march from “Tarpeia”
closed Schuppanzigh’s concert on the 1st of May in the Augarten; but
no such enthusiasm was awakened as to induce Beethoven to risk the
trouble and expense of producing his new symphonies, and the projected
“Academies” were abandoned.
Recalled to Vienna early in July, Beethoven wrote thence to Archduke
Rudolph:
From day to day I thought that I should be able to return to Baden,
meanwhile the dissonances which are keeping me here may possibly
detain me till next week. It is a torture for me to stay in the
city in the summertime and when I reflect that I am also hindered
from attending upon Y. I. H. it tortures and repels me the more.
Meanwhile it is the Lobkowitz and Kinsky matter which keeps me
here; instead of thinking about a number of measures I must ponder
a number of walks (~Gänge~--passages) which I must make; without
this I should scarcely live to see the end of the matter. Your I.
H. has doubtless heard of Lobkowitz’s misfortunes. It is pitiable,
but to be so rich is not fortunate! It is said that Count Fries
alone paid 1900 ducats in gold to Duport[114] and took a mortgage
on the old Lobkowitz house. The details are incredible. I hear that
Rasoumowsky will come to Baden and bring his Quartet, which would
be a very handsome thing, as Y. I. H. would certainly be nicely
entertained. I know of no more delightful enjoyment in the country
than quartet music. Graciously accept, Y. I. H., my sincerest
wishes for your good health and pity me for being obliged to remain
here under such repulsive circumstances. Meanwhile I shall try to
make up twofold all that you also lose in Baden.
Beethoven soon returned to Baden, where for the present he may be left
in the enjoyment of nature, taking such pleasure as his deafness still
granted in Rasoumowsky’s quartets, and submitting with what patience he
could to his servitude with the Archduke.
[Sidenote: MÄLZEL’S MUSICAL MACHINES]
Mälzel, during the past winter, had opened his “Künstler-cabinet”
as a public exhibition. There were marbles, bronzes and paintings
and a variety of contributions, scientific or curious, from various
artists--among them a large electrical machine with apparatus for
popular experiments, but the principal attractions were his own
Mechanical Trumpeter and the new Panharmonicon. The Trumpeter executed
a French cavalry march with signals and melodies which Mälzel himself
accompanied on the pianoforte. The Panharmonicon combined the
common instruments then employed in military bands, with a powerful
bellows--the whole being inclosed in a case. The motive power was
automatic and the keys were touched by pins fixed in a revolving
cylinder, as in the common hand-organ or music-box. Compositions
of considerable extent had each its own cylinder. The first pieces
made ready were Cherubini’s “Lodoiska” Overture, Haydn’s “Military”
Symphony, the overture and a chorus from Handel’s “Timotheus”; and by
the end of January, Mälzel was at work upon an echo piece composed for
him some years before by Cherubini. In the course of the summer he
added a “few marches” composed by the popular young pianist, Moscheles,
who during their preparation much frequented the workshop.
Beethoven’s “long journey” and “great act” both refer to a proposed
journey to England with Mälzel, seriously contemplated during the first
months of this year. Brunswick’s visit to Vienna occurred just when
the project seemed ripe for execution; as it was on his authority that
Schindler reports the “farewell meal” and the singing of the canon,
this may be accepted as credible.
The condition of Karl van Beethoven’s health forced his brother to
defer the journey; and Mälzel, too, found reason to wait until the
end of the year--the idea of his really very beautiful and striking
exhibition, the “Conflagration of Moscow,” had occurred to him and
he willingly remained in Vienna to work it out. The change for the
better in Karl van Beethoven’s health and pecuniary condition, and
the completion of the “Conflagration,” left both Beethoven and Mälzel
late in autumn free for their departure. The mechanician was not only
a man of unquestionable inventive genius, but he also understood the
public; knew as by instinct how to excite and gratify curiosity without
disappointing expectation, and had the tact and skill so to arrange his
exhibitions as to dismiss his visitors grateful for an amusement for
which they had paid. He was personally both respected and popular. He
knew by experience the principal cities of the Continent, and London
well enough to foresee, that the noble compositions of Handel, Haydn
and Cherubini secured the success of his Panharmonicon there; but that
if he could add to its repertory some new, striking and popular piece,
bearing the now great name of Beethoven, he would increase both its
attractiveness and the public interest and curiosity in the composer.
Battles and sieges had for many years been favorite subjects for
descriptive music, and the grand engagements of the last fifty years
were few indeed which had not been fought over again by orchestras,
bands and all sorts of instruments. Poor Koczwara--who hanged himself
in jest at London in 1792--was the author of a “Grande Battaille”
(in D) for orchestra, and the “Battaille de Prague” for pianoforte
trio “avec tambour,” or pianoforte solo, commemorative of a victory
of Frederick II of Prussia. This, for forty years, was a showpiece
throughout Europe and even in America. Devenne composed the “Battle of
Gemappe”; Neubauer, of Martinestie; Jadin, of Austerlitz; Fuchs, of
Jena; and so on, for orchestra. The grand battle piece for two flutes,
which is generally supposed to have existed but in a joke, the point
of which is its absurdity, was really published--it was an arrangement
of Fuchs’ “Jena.” For the pianoforte solo, or with the accompaniment
of two or more instruments, the press teemed with battles. Among
them were those of Fleurus, Würzburg, Marengo, Jena (by others than
Fuchs), Wagram, the bombardment of Vienna. Steibelt produced two land
engagements and a “Combat naval”; Kauer, “Nelson’s Battle”; and so on
indefinitely.
[Sidenote: “WELLINGTON’S VICTORY, OR THE BATTLE OF VITTORIA”]
When, therefore, the news of Wellington’s magnificent victory at
Vittoria, June 21, 1813, reached Vienna, Mälzel saw instantly that
it presented the subject of a composition for his Panharmonicon than
which none could be conceived better fitted to strike the popular
taste in England. A work which should do homage to the hero, flatter
national feeling by the introduction of “Rule Britannia” and “God
save the King,” gratify the national hatred of the French, celebrate
British victory and Gallic defeat, bear the great name of Beethoven
and be illuminated by his genius--what more could be desired? He
wrought out the plan and explained it to the composer, who, for once,
consented to work out the ideas of another. In a sketchbook for this
composition, having signals for the battle on its first page, we read:
“Wellington’s Victory Vittoria, only God save the King, but a great
victory overture for Wellington”; and in the so-called “Tagebuch”: “I
must show the English a little what a blessing there is in God save the
King”; perhaps, also, another remark just after this was occasioned
by his experience on this work: “It is certain that one writes most
beautifully when one writes for the public, also that one writes
rapidly.” There is nothing in this at all contradictory to Moscheles’s
positive and unimpeachable testimony on the origin of the work. In a
note to his English edition of Schindler’s book he writes:
I witnessed the origin and progress of this work, and remember
that not only did Mälzel decidedly induce Beethoven to write it,
but even laid before him the whole design of it; himself wrote
all the drum-marches and the trumpet-flourishes of the French and
English armies; gave the composer some hints, how he should herald
the English army by the tune of “Rule Britannia”; how he should
introduce “Malbrook” in a dismal strain; how he should depict the
horrors of the battle and arrange “God save the King” with effects
representing the hurrahs of a multitude. Even the unhappy idea of
converting the melody of “God save the King” into a subject of a
fugue in quick movement, emanates from Mälzel. All this I saw in
sketches and score, brought by Beethoven to Mälzel’s workshop, then
the only suitable place of reception he was provided with.
The same, in general and in most of its particulars, was related to
the author by Carl Stein, who was daily in Mälzel’s rooms--they being,
as before noted, in his father’s pianoforte manufactory--and who was
firmly of the opinion, that Mälzel was afterwards very unfairly, not to
say unjustly, treated by Beethoven in the matter of this composition.
The composer himself says: “I had already before then conceived the
idea of a battle which was not practicable on his Panharmonica,” thus
by implication fully admitting that ~this~ idea was not his own;
moreover, the copy of a part of the Panharmonicon score, in the Artaria
Collection, has on the cover, in his own hand: “On Wellington’s Victory
at Vittoria, 1813, written for Hr. Mälzel by Ludwig van Beethoven.”
This is all more or less confirmatory of Moscheles, if indeed any
confirmation be needed. It is almost too obvious for mention, that
Mälzel’s share in the work was even more than indicated above, because
whoever wrote for the Panharmonicon must be frequently instructed by
him as to its capacities and limitations, whether a Beethoven or the
young Moscheles. We may reasonably assume, that the general plan of
“Wellington’s Victory” was fixed during the composer’s occasional
visits to the city in August and September, and such alterations in
the score determined upon as the nature of the instrument demanded; so
that early in October the whole was ready for Mälzel to transfer to its
cylinder.
On Beethoven’s return to his city lodging, between the 15th and
20th of September, his notes to Zmeskall become as usual numerous,
the principal topic just now being the engagement of a new servant.
While with the assistance and under the direction of the excellent
Streichers, Beethoven got his lodgings and wardrobe into decent
order, with the aid of Zmeskall he obtained that servant spoken of by
Schindler,
who was a tailor and carried on his trade in the anteroom of the
composer. With the help of his wife he attended the master with
touching care till into the year 1816--and this regulated mode of
life did our friend much good. Would that it might have endured a
few years longer.
At this stage of the case there came also evidences of love
and admiration from Princess Lichnowsky, which are well worth
more detailed notice. The Prince was in the habit of frequently
visiting his favorite in his workshop. In accordance with a mutual
understanding no notice was to be taken of his presence, so that
the master might not be disturbed. After the morning greeting the
Prince was in the habit of looking through any piece of music that
chanced to be at hand, watching the master at his work for a while
and then leaving the room with a friendly “adieu.” Nevertheless,
these visits disturbed Beethoven, who occasionally locked the door.
Unvexed, the Prince would walk down the three flights of stairs.
As the sartorial servant sat in the anteroom, His Serene Highness
would join him and wait until the door opened and he could speak
a friendly greeting to the Prince of Music. The need was thus
satisfied. But it was not given long to the honored Mæcenas of Art
to rejoice in his favorite and his creations.
This is touching and trustworthy.
To return to “Wellington’s Victory.” Schindler, supposing the
Panharmonicon to have played it, remarked in the first edition of his
book: “The effect of the piece was so unexpected that Mälzel requested
our Beethoven to instrumentate it for orchestra.” He is mistaken as
to the reason; for Mälzel had only, in Beethoven’s words, “begun to
engrave.” In truth, he was musician enough to see from the score, how
very effective it would be if instrumentated for grand orchestra, and
sagacious enough to perceive, that the composition in that form might
prove of far greater advantage to them in London and probably be more
attractive afterwards when performed by the Panharmonicon. But there
was another consideration far more important.
Before the age of steam a journey from Vienna to London with the many
huge cases required for even a part of Mälzel’s collection, was a
very expensive undertaking. The problem now was, how to provide the
necessary funds. Beethoven’s were exhausted and his own were very
limited. To go alone and give exhibitions at the principal cities on
the way, involved little or no risk for Mälzel, as the experience of
the next year proved; but to make the journey direct, with Beethoven
for his companion, was impossible until in some manner a considerable
sum of ready money could be provided.
[Sidenote: A BENEFIT FOR WOUNDED SOLDIERS]
The only resource of the composer, except borrowing, was, of course,
the production of the two new Symphonies, one of which had been copied
for trial with small orchestra at the Archduke’s, thus diminishing
somewhat the expenses of a concert. It was five years since he had
had a benefit, and therefore one full house might be counted on with
reasonable certainty; but no concert of his had ever been repeated, and
a single full house would leave but a small margin of profit. Moreover,
his fruitless efforts in the Spring to arrange an “Akademie” were
discouraging. Unless the new Symphonies could be produced without cost
to himself, and the interest and curiosity of the public so aroused as
to insure the success of two or three subsequent concerts, no adequate
fund for the journey could be gained; but if so great a sensation could
in some manner be made as to secure this object, the fame of it would
precede and nobly herald them in London.
Beethoven was helpless; but Mälzel’s sagacity was equal to the
occasion. He knew that for the highly cultivated classes of
music-lovers, able and ready to appreciate the best, nothing better
could be desired than new Symphonies by Beethoven; but such auditors
are always limited in number; the programme must also contain something
surprising, sensational, ~ad captandum vulgus~, to catch the ear of the
multitude, and open their pockets. His Trumpeter was not enough; it
had lost its novelty; although with an orchestra instead of pianoforte
accompaniment, it would be something. Beethoven alone could, if he
would, produce what was indispensable. Time pressed, Mälzel had long
since closed his exhibition, and every day of delay was a serious
expense. The “Conflagration of Moscow,” the model of his Chronometer
and the cylinders for his Panharmonicon were all finished, except
the “Victory,” and this would soon be ready. Before the end of the
year, therefore, he could be in Munich, as his interest imperatively
demanded, provided Beethoven should not be his companion. There was
nothing to detain him in Vienna after the “Victory” was completed, but
his relations to the composer. Him he knew too well to hope from him
any work deliberately written with a view to please the multitude, had
the time allowed, which it did not.
Preparations were making in October for two grand performances on
the 11th and 14th of November, in the R. I. Winter Riding Academy,
of Handel’s “Timotheus” for the benefit of the widows and orphans of
Austrians and Bavarians who had fallen in the late campaign against
Napoleon. On this hint Mälzel formed his plan. This was, if Beethoven
would consent to instrumentate the “Victory” for orchestra--in doing
which, being freed from the limitations of the Panharmonicon, he could
give free play to his fancy--he (Mälzel) would return to him the score,
risk the sacrifice of it for its original purpose, remain in Vienna,
and make it the popular attraction of a grand charity concert for
the benefit of the Austrians and Bavarians wounded in the battle at
Hanau, trusting that it would open the way for two or more concerts
to be given for their own benefit. Under all the circumstances, it is
difficult to decide, whether to admire the more Mälzel’s good judgment,
or his courageous trust in it and in Beethoven’s genius. He disclosed
his plan and purposes to the composer, they were approved by him, and
the score was returned.
While Beethoven wrought zealously on his task, Mälzel busied himself
with the preparations for the concert. His personal popularity,
the charitable object in view, curiosity to study Beethoven’s new
productions, especially the battle-piece, secured the services of
nearly all the leading musicians, some of whom were there only in
passing or temporarily--Dragonetti, Meyerbeer, the bassoon-player
Romberg, and others. Tomaschek, who heard the “Victory” next year,
writes that he was “very painfully affected to see a Beethoven, whom
Providence had probably assigned to the highest throne in the realm of
music, among the rudest materialists. I was told, it is true, that he
himself had declared the work to be folly, and that he liked it only
because with it he had thoroughly thrashed the Viennese.” There is no
doubt that this was so; nor that they, who engaged in its performance,
viewed it as a stupendous musical joke, and engaged in it ~con amore~
as in a gigantic professional frolic.
The University Hall was granted on this occasion and the 8th of
December was fixed for the concert. Young Glöggl was in Vienna, visited
Beethoven, and was by him granted the privilege of attending the
rehearsals. “I remember,” he writes,
that in one rehearsal the violin-players refused to play a passage
in the symphony and rebuked him for writing difficulties which were
incapable of performance. But Beethoven begged the gentlemen to
take the parts home with them--if they were to practise it at home
it would surely go. The next day at the rehearsal the passage went
excellently, and the gentlemen themselves seemed to rejoice that
they had given Beethoven the pleasure.
[Sidenote: SPOHR DESCRIBES BEETHOVEN’S CONDUCTING]
Spohr, playing among the violins,
for the first time saw Beethoven conduct and was surprised in the
highest degree, although he had been told beforehand of what he now
saw with his own eyes. Beethoven had accustomed himself [he says]
to indicate expression to the orchestra by all manner of singular
bodily movements. At ~piano~ he crouched down lower and lower as he
desired the degree of softness. If a ~crescendo~ then entered he
gradually rose again and at the entrance of the ~forte~ jumped into
the air. Sometimes, too, he unconsciously shouted to strengthen the
~forte~. It was obvious that the poor man could no longer hear the
~piano~ of his music. This was strikingly illustrated in the second
portion of the first Allegro of the symphony. In one place there
are two holds, one immediately after the other, of which the second
is ~pianissimo~. This, Beethoven had probably overlooked, for he
began again to beat time before the orchestra had begun to play the
second hold. Without knowing it, therefore, he had hurried ten or
twelve measures ahead of the orchestra, when it began again and,
indeed, ~pianissimo~. Beethoven to indicate this had in his wonted
manner crouched clean under the desk. At the succeeding ~crescendo~
he again became visible, straightened himself out more and more and
jumped into the air at the point where according to his calculation
the ~forte~ ought to begin. When this did not follow his movement
he looked about in a startled way, stared at the orchestra to see
it still playing ~pianissimo~ and found his bearings only when the
long-expected ~forte~ came and was audible to him. Fortunately this
comical incident did not take place at the performance.
Mälzel’s first placards announcing the concert spoke of the
battle-piece as his property; but Beethoven objecting to this, others
were substituted in which it was said to have been composed “out of
friendship, for his visit to London.” No hint was conveyed of Mälzel’s
share in the composition. The programme was:
I. “An entirely new Symphony,” by Beethoven (the Seventh, in A
major).
II. Two Marches played by Mälzel’s Mechanical Trumpeter, with full
orchestral accompaniment--the one by Dussek, the other by Pleyel.
III. “Wellington’s Victory.”
The success of the performances was so unequivocal and splendid as
to cause their repetition on Sunday, the 12th, at noon, at the same
prices, 10 fl. and 5 fl. “The net receipts of the two performances,
after deducting the unavoidable costs, were 4006 florins, which were
reverently turned over to the ‘hohen Kriegs-Präsidio’ for the purposes
announced” (“Wiener Zeitung,” December 20). The “Wiener Zeitung,”
“Allg. Mus. Zeit.” of Leipsic, and the “Beobachter,” contained
excessively laudatory notices of the music and vivid descriptions
of its effect upon the auditors, whose “applause rose to the point
of ecstasy.” The statements of the contemporary public prints are
confirmed by the veteran Spohr, who reports that the Allegretto of the
Seventh Symphony “was demanded ~da capo~ at both concerts.”
Schindler calls this rightly “one of the most important moments in
the life of the master, at which all the hitherto divergent voices,
save those of the professional musicians, united in proclaiming him
worthy of the laurel.” “A work like the battle-symphony had to come,”
adds Schindler with good judgment, “in order that divergent opinions
might be united and the mouths of all opponents, of whatever kind, be
silenced.” Schindler also preserved a “Note of Thanks” prepared for the
“Wiener Zeitung” and signed by Beethoven, which ends with a just and
merited tribute to Mälzel:
(For the “Intelligenz-Blatt” of the “Wiener Zeitung.”)