BEETHOVEN 200 YEARS AGO TODAY: Friday, April 21, 1826

Today Conversation Book 109 begins being used. This is a rather thinner book of 31 leaves, and covers only a period of three days, mostly because poet Christoph Kuffner comes this evening and uses the book in a profligate manner, with one thought on a page, rather than the rather more conservative usage by Holz and Nephew Karl to avoid using the books up too quickly.

Unpaid assistant Karl Holz visits Beethoven today to let him know that Kuffner will be coming tonight.

It is more necessary than ever that Beethoven write to Steiner about the issues with the title pages of the March with Chorus op.114 and the Terzet Tremate, empi tremate, op.116, which Steiner and Haslinger want to print suggesting that the original had a piano instead of an orchestral accompaniment. Of either Steiner or Haslinger, Holz says, “He is poisonous like a cat with rabies.” Conductor Ferdinand Piringer will probably know that the Head Censor has forbidden the publication of these works. “He never distinguishes the person from the matter.” But Haslinger surely did not expect this move by Beethoven; “It was a bolt of lightning out of the blue.” Head Censor Franz Sartory knows their tricks anyway. Holz plans to go to the Steiner shop tomorrow and buy something. When they ask him, he will say, “‘I do not know anything;’ that annoys them even more.” [As it happens, the Censor was too late in acting; Haslinger has already printed and sold copies of the piano reductions of both works with the offensive title pages, multiples of which survive in various institutions according to KH2.]

Beethoven asks about the decree (which he has still never seen) that supposedly forbids his works to be engraved without his permission. Holz knows Court Councilor Michael Schosulan and the Court Secretary Alois Zettler, both employed at the police and censorship headquarters; they will give him a copy. Sartory himself was too busy to ask for a copy. Beethoven can ask him when they dine together.

Friedrich August Kanne mentioned to Holz that Beethoven is going to write Claudine von Villa Bella [a romantic comedy libretto by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Schubert had written a Singspiel on it, today catalogued as D.239, though the last two of the three acts are lost.] He says that Beethoven asked Kanne, through Schindler, to revise it. But Kanne says that he does not dare touch Goethe’s work.

Beethoven says that Louis Antoine Duport, manager of the Kärntnertor Theater, seems to think highly of former unpaid assistant Anton Schindler, who came to Beethoven with a proposition to write an opera for the Kärntnertor a few days ago. “If it is true that Duport thinks very much of him, then I know the hidden reasons.” Schindler has been inflating his own importance at Beethoven’s expense. “From Schindler’s gossip, Duport perhaps thinks that you do everything Schindler advises you to do.”

There is some discussion of household matters. The white sauce should be made with cream. Catfish is too fatty to eat in the evening. The washerwoman has spent three days on the laundry and will finish today. She will bring the laundry tomorrow while Karl is here. Holz then departs.

Kuffner comes in the evening to Beethoven’s apartment. Kuffner writes large, and puts only one or two comments on a page of the conversation book, using up the book quite quickly. He begins by discussing his plan for the oratorio Saul. David would be a tenor, and Jonathan must have a higher and softer pitch, so a countertenor would be appropriate. Or a baritone and tenor would work as well.

“I plan to write very passionate outbursts like a recitative, as the material is rich in plot. I also plan to deviate from the usual routine of the syllable measure.” He writes out for Beethoven, much as he did for Holz the other day, the meter of the first Victory Chorus. He is using Johan Heinrich Voss’s work on the measurement of time, and the relationship of syllable masses to notes. [Beethoven owned copies of Voss’s verse translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey.]

He criticizes Joseph Bernard’s libretto for Der Sieg des Kreuzes: “Bernard has missed the gradation of the plot and the position of the culminating main moment. There are too many of the old religious phrases and repetitions. The choruses are too similar. The allegorical figures leave you cold, and as personified ideas, they are only wax figures wearing clothes. Also, everything consistently revolves around the one point that the Christians and the pagans both want to create proselytes, and thus all purely human interest disappears.”

“The best thing in every subject is to read a couple of main works, which are always the sources which all subsequent authors drew from. Time is precious, particularly for self-creating geniuses who then overload themselves because of having read too much.”

Kuffner adds more criticism of Bernard, with whom he had edited the Wiener Zeitschrift from 1818-1820. “Grillparzer says, Bernard cannot look anyone in the eye properly. By the time I edited the Modezeitung [the Wiener Zeitschrift] together with Bernard, he wrote the most sarcastic personal satires. Then he went to the offended persons and told them that I had written this bilious thing. Many became hostile to me until the matter was finally clarified and the sneaky hypocrite unmasked. Bernard now [will] also be ranting and raving against me. In God’s name!”

Back to the oratorio: “To me, an oratorio seems the most sublime. I could never be fed up with writing oratorios, and I am ready to write thousands of oratorios for you alone. Bernard wrote in the old language, because he does not know the new one and has not followed the spirit of the age. We are short of oratorios and we need them so much. Händel’s oratorios, which are so splendid in architectural beauty and mighty spirit, still appeal too little to so many.”

What would he use as material? Beethoven asks. “One could re-edit all the material from Händel’s oratorios.” Or Milton’s L’Allegro and Il Pensero could form the basis for oratorios. Kuffner wrote an oratorio text, Die vier letzten Dinge for Haydn, but he never set it to music. Kuffner is still bitter: “Haydn did not have much mental culture.”

“These days, the censorship would not even allow an opera like Don Giovanni, if it were rewritten.” Kuffner is not pleased with the way things are going in Vienna. “The spirit of the times will not be stopped, and if a whole district is light I cannot say: here on the spot it must be night. It is not possible to build a Chinese wall. God spoke: Let there be light! Now they would like to command: Let there be night. There was light once—and now it can never be night all of the time. Amen!”

“One used to say: Castis omnia Casta [To the pure, all things are pure.]. Now it is: Incastis omnia Incasta. The jaundiced see everything in yellow. There will come a time when one needs thinkers. But where to take them from, then? Brains do not sprout overnight like mushrooms. The same old mistakes are being made that brought so much mischief, as if nothing had happened.”

Kuffner and Beethoven also reminisce. “Do you still remember the fisherman’s house near Nussdorf, where we sat until midnight in the full moon on the balcony, in front of us the rushing of the meadows and the high-swelling Danube? I was also your guest then.” [During the summer of 1817, Kuffner and Beethoven were staying in Heiligenstadt, and often went to Nussdorf to have a fish supper in the restaurant “zur Rose.” Shown nearby is a photo of the house at Pfarrplatz 2 where Beethoven stayed in Heiligenstadt that year. Later on, probably in July of 1817, Beethoven moved to Nussdorf.]

Back to Johann Heinrich Voss: “In his Wilhelm Meister, Goethe suggested the idea for a prose translation of Homer. One has now been made, based off Voss’ edition, and the author has earned Goethe’s praise. [There were actually several such efforts about this time, and it is unclear which one Kuffner refers to.]

Kuffner has not given up on the idea of an oratorio based on The Elements. “It should not be a musical painting, but a lively life painting of the human being, who is the child and the slave, and the master of the elements.”

“A comprehensive main idea should be the basis of every work of art. Everything that expresses a grand tendency elevating to the highest is holy.” [Beethoven probably agreed with this sentiment.]

By contrast, things are controlled by the lowbrow. “Even the physique of the farmers and maids around Vienna is miserable and hideous. The political charlatans are at home here, who—without knowing the illness—always just try to cleanse today, to make you sweat tomorrow, and if the state is not as healthy as a horse, it must perish.”

France is no better. “There is the most ridiculous contrast between court and constitution in France. When you look at the portrait of the present king of France [Charles X], you see a tabula rasa, where there was once passion, now is maybe ebony.”

Beethoven asks what else Kuffner is currently working on. Two big works: Artemidor, about the Romans. Six volumes have been released thus far. Also, The Labyrinth of History, of which the 4th volume has been released. He does not work on many small works. Beethoven is interested in these two large works and would like to read them. “I will bring you the Artemidor and the Labyrinth of History. Are you sure you want to read both?” Kuffner adds, “Many great things can still be processed from the history of Rome, but—our time is too small. And the small does not like the great.”

They still live on, Beethoven interjects. “Because death is nothing, and you only live the most beautiful moments of life. What actually lives in a human being is eternal; what perishes is worth nothing. What can make this life wonderful and great is imagination, a flower that only really blossoms in the afterlife. The soul is the salt that protects the body from decay. Schiller once claimed to have wrested power from death (through spirit). The Polish recruit dies—but he actually died from fear of dying.”

Beethoven asks who among the current poets is worth reading in England and France. Kuffner recommends Byron, though he is too atheistic. “Also, Thomas Moore is an excellent poet. His poem, The Love of the Angels, is a masterpiece based on a biblical verse: The sons of God loved the daughters of human beings. Also, the minor poems by Moore are wonderful, particularly his Irish Melodies, based on national songs. At first the melody and text were published together, then afterwards the text alone.”

“The English poets have imagination and thoughts; the French have neither. Instead of passions that act, the French tragedians only have self-dissecting metaphysics of passion. What about [Jean-Jacques] Rousseau? Beethoven asks. Kuffner responds, “Rousseau grew up on French soil, but like any great mind he belongs to no nation and to every nation, id est to the world. He was somewhat hypochondriac. Who wouldn’t be, if living in a time when no one understands him?” And Voltaire? “Voltaire had plenty of wit and spirit, but no greatness of soul, and no holiness of mind.”

“There has to be variety among human beings. It is lucky if one is good at something, and another is good at something else. Everything leads to a higher purpose.” Beethoven comments that those words [possibly referring to the censored stanzas of Schiller’s Ode to Joy] would be illegal if heard by the police. “The words are considered unacceptable; fortunately, the notes, the potentiated representatives of the words, are still free!”

Kuffner mentions that for his almanac for 1827, he has a beautiful poem on Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony, by a young poet from Innsbruck. [Eduard Badenfeld (1800-1860), from Troppau, who used the pseudonym Eduard Silesius. His poem, “Fantasy on Beethoven’s Pastoral-Symphony” did indeed appear in Kuffner’s pocket almanac for the year 1827.]

Kuffner closes with some thoughts about history: “Before Christ, there were great empires that were far superior in every way to what we are today. India, Assyria, Syria, Chaldea, etc. These empires, once magnificent, later fell. For example, who now knows the secrets of the construction of the pyramids, the mummies, the eternal lamps, etc.? Already Pliny talked about incombustible nations; Pliny always tells about the sources from which he drew. For example, the lightning rod, for which we credit Franklin, was certainly known to the Egyptians and the Etruscans.”

Kuffner takes his leave after a long and chatty evening with the composer, having used all but six leaves of the entire conversation book.

Conversation Book 109, 1r-27r.