BEETHOVEN 200 YEARS AGO TODAY: Friday, April 30, 1824

In the late morning, unpaid assistant Anton Schindler visits Beethoven. Once again, the score for the Consecration of the House Overture, having just been found, has disappeared. The score is needed for the soon-upcoming Akademie concert. Schindler gives encouragement that Beethoven will surely find it. Perhaps it is hidden again amongst the papers.

Nephew Karl notes that the washerwoman did the wash by 10 o’clock, then departs.

Schindler continues that Beethoven just should give the choral director things for the singers to do. The choral rehearsal for the Symphony can take place tomorrow at the earliest, because they have to study the Mass until then. Dirzka told Schindler that they began working with the chorus yesterday, and he is satisfied with how the choristers are doing.

He also notes that he and Karl have worked out a package of servants including an older woman and a maid to help solve Beethoven’s problems with the help.

Schindler is always full of theater gossip, and today is no exception. At the Theater an der Wien, where Beethoven was at one point going to have his concert, they are now engaging singers to have an opera.

Anton Haizinger (1796-1865) will need to sing the tenor part for the Akademie concert, because Joseph Barth, who was the backup tenor, now is leaving for Bohemia in a few days. They both wanted to do it. Haitzinger will need to study diligently, because he is less secure than the first choice, Franz Jäger. But Schindler says his voice is just as sonorous as Jäger’s. Beethoven is irritated that they had already arranged to send the tenor part to Barth. Schindler as usual makes excuses and says that he only found out yesterday from Barth that he was departing. He’s traveling with Prince von Schwarzenberg.

Schindler thinks that it is a good idea to have the rehearsal on Sunday morning, since the dilettantes won’t be tied up in their business affairs. Beethoven asks how long they can practice. From 9 until 2 in the afternoon, Schindler responds. The singers won’t come until 11 o’clock. Beethoven predicts disaster, but Schindler is confident it will go better than he believes.

Schindler needs to meet with the second-hand fiddle dealer Franz Rzehaczek, as he will be at Schuppanzigh’s rehearsal for his concert tomorrow morning. [Schindler is joking in his description here. Rzehaczek, who was also Schuppanzigh’s brother-in-law, worked at the Bohemian Court Chancellery, and was a member of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde. Rzehaczek’s strings collection, some of which are being loaned to Schuppanzigh for his concert tomorrow, included violins made by Stradivari, Amati and Jacob Stainer. Second-hand fiddles, indeed.] Schindler tells Beethoven he should immediately write the letter to Rzehaczek requesting a loan of instruments for the Akademie, so it can be delivered at the rehearsal.

Beethoven complies, and writes a short note to Rzehaczek for Schindler to deliver for him. “Schuppanzig [sic] promises me that you will be so kind as to provide some instruments for my Akademie. Encouraged by this, I ask you to do so and hope this request is not out of line.” He signs it, “Your most devoted servant, Beethoven”

Brandenburg Letter 1820; Anderson Letter 1284. The original is held by the Berlin Staatsbibliothek, Mus. ep. autogr. Beethoven 4.

After Schindler leaves, Joseph Bernard, editor of the Wiener Zeitung pays a call. The dreaded Chief of Police, Count Sedlnitzky, is being difficult. He refused to let men and women sing in the last Akademie, and he summoned Kärntnertor Theater manager Louis Antoine Duport. Bernard suggests that Beethoven should change his plans and ask for the Redoutensaal instead of the Kärntnertor. He thinks of Duport as a scoundrel, and Bernard wrote him a long letter in which he harangued him in the bitterest way. He also thinks Beethoven should register a complaint with Sedlnitzky about Duport, and that would make everything proceed immediately. [Beethoven wisely does not follow this rather rash advice.]

Later this afternoon, both Karl and Schindler have returned to Beethoven’s apartment. Karl is interested in how the current housekeeper makes brown soup. He notes tomorrow is the first of May, and asks whether Schindler will be eating with them tomorrow. [Karl and Schindler seem to not be getting along well at the moment.]

Karl mentions Brother Johann has expressed the opinion that when he visited Duport about the Redoutensaal at the very beginning [probably March 9 or 10], Duport gave his consent without any further ado. But as it turns out that was not true, as indicated above. [Karl apparently mistakes Bernard’s writing for Schindler’s.] Johann had spoken to Duport, but what Duport actually said was he wanted to think it over and would tell him his answer in a few days. Johann then got threatening and said if Duport did not consent, he would take it to higher officials. That offended Duport, who said, “Then do it.” Then it went to Prince Trauttmannsdorf, the Imperial High Steward, and since Duport assumed Johann was Ludwig’s only authorized representative, he resolved that he would not be forced into it, which caused all the trouble with the needed approvals over the last month. [It remains unclear why Karl failed to tell his Uncle this important information before now.]

At this point, finally understanding that Johann had messed everything up with his actions, and why Duport had been so difficult about agreeing to grant Beethoven use of the large Redoutensaal at the end of March, Beethoven probably writes a letter to Duport formally requesting to use the Kärntnertor Theater for his Akademie, possibly as early as Tuesday, May 4, a scant 4 days away, and for the use of the Grosser Redoutensaal for the second Akademie, soon after that. At least two rehearsals will be required. Beethoven probably also mentioned the agreement to use the orchestra, chorus and soloists for the 400 florin payment. The letter does not survive, but is known from later references to it in the conversation books. Given comments conveyed through Schindler tomorrow, Beethoven’s tone in this letter is probably rather offensive, rather than businesslike or conciliatory.

Karl tells his uncle they need to be on the lookout for a maid as the housekeeper still hasn’t found one. Uncle Ludwig suggests they get a country girl. Karl says that won’t work, as in the country the girls are busy with work in the fields and none can get away. He will visit the old woman, former housekeeper Barbara Holzmann. Perhaps that will be the best, though she will also be older now, and her age was already a subject of conversation when she was working there. [Editor Theodore Albrecht notes that at this time Holzmann was probably living at the charitable home for the aged and poor of St. Marx.]

Karl is not going out today, but he has learned that a country girl is coming tomorrow to apply for the maid position after all. Uncle Ludwig warns Karl that he needs to keep his eye on his examinations and do well on them.

Conversation Book 64, 1r-5v.

Publisher S.A. Steiner today sends a short letter to Beethoven’s attorney, Johann Baptist Bach. In the letter, he acknowledges the receipt of the second installment of 600 florins C.M. [1500 W.W.] that Beethoven owed him, including interest, and returns with it the promissory notes associated with them. There were four of them: one for 1,300 florins W.W. dated May 4, 1816; one for 750 florins W.W.; a third for 300 florins borrowed to pay the interest due on Karl’s mother Johanna’s debts; and a final one for 70 florins W.W. Beethoven had arranged for payment of this longstanding debt out of the funds received from the London Philharmonic Society for the Ninth Symphony, in expectation that he would be making a substantial sum from the upcoming Akademie concerts. Steiner mentions that he is leaving for Leipzig tomorrow evening.

Brandenburg Letter 1821. The original is held by the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde (A 84/40b).

Beethoven writes a short note sometime around now to his friend Tobias Haslinger, along with two letters that he asks to be delivered. One of these is to Adolf Bäuerle, whose apartment address Beethoven does not know, and the other to Stainer v. Felsburg, whom Beethoven believes to be the author of the Petition that has caused so much difficulty. His letter can be delivered to the bank where he works. Beethoven says he will see Haslinger later this afternoon. In a postscript, Beethoven thanks Haslinger for receiving this.

Brandenburg Letter 1826; Anderson Letter 1342. The original is held by the Library of Congress (ML96.W56B441 Nr.15). The enclosures have been separated from the letter and are lost. These almost certainly relate to the letters to Bäuerle and Stainer von Felsburg discussed yesterday, so this note may have been written then, today or in the next couple days. Or Beethoven may have taken Schindler’s advice and waited to send them until after the Akademie concerts in May.

In its review of the concerts in Vienna for the month of April, contained in the Leipzig Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung of May 20, 1824, Nr.21, at 346, there is discussion of the confusion surrounding the upcoming Akademie concert as follows:

“Miscellaneous. People have been talking about Beethoven’s concert for a long time, in which he is supposed to perform his new Mass and a newly completed symphony, the finale of which is accompanied by the chorus. The greatest divisions prevail over the locale; sometimes people talk about the Theater an der Wien, sometimes about the Landständischen Hall, sometimes about the University Hall, and finally again about the Kärntnertor Theater. The impetus for all this is a society of select music lovers, who in a petition encouraged him to break his long silence and to delight all his admirers by sharing his latest creations. This petition is printed in the musical newspaper [the Vienna Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung], which, edited by Kanne, has now been resurrected and is published by the local Lithographic Institute and is once again said to have received only limited support.” [Publication of the Vienna AMZ had been suspended for financial reasons during January and February of 1824. Beethoven probably did not appreciate either the implication that the Petition had caused him to have this concert, which he had been mulling for months, or the reference to the troublesome publication of the Petition in the Vienna AMZ. By now the locale of the Akademie concert has been decided as the Kärntnertor, and the date tentatively set for May 4, but that does not hold, as we will see.]