BEETHOVEN 200 YEARS AGO TODAY: Friday, July 22, 1825 (approximately)

Beethoven starts a shopping list:

• Slippers.
• Boots: more comfortable. [Beethoven had tried to get the shoemaker to stretch out his new boots, without success.]
• Spar’s boot polish.

He is interrupted by Brother Johann and Johann’s brother-in-law, baker Leopold Obermayer, who have come to call on Ludwig in Baden. Johann mentions that on his street there is a fine apartment, if Ludwig hasn’t found one for the fall yet. [Theodore Albrecht suggests that Johann’s offer of living in close quarters may prompt Ludwig to take the more remote apartment in the Schwarzspanierhaus.]

Ludwig brings up the book that Johann borrowed from the machinist Schlosser and never returned. Johann says he tried to return it to Schlosser four times and never found him there to give it to him. If he learns where to send it, he will give it to Karl to deliver. Johann says, “It’s lying on my chest of drawers.” [Birthe Kibsgaard points out that one of the reasons Ludwig may be so annoyed about this book is that he might have wanted to read the book longer, and all the time that Johann is delaying its return is time that Ludwig could have spent going through it more thoroughly.]

Ludwig is still not back to full health, though improved by his stay in the country. Johann suggests that he should consult with Dr. Staudenheim again. [Like Ludwig and Karl, Johann calls him “Staudenheimer.”]

Johann asks whether Ludwig has received a reply from Ferdinand Ries about the payment for the pieces played at the Lower Rhenish Music Festival in Aachen on May 22-23, 1825. [Ries wrote Ludwig on June 9, and Ludwig has already received this letter.]

Ludwig mentions that he has written to Peters and Schlesinger offering his two upcoming quartets for 80 ducats each. Johann says, “Not too fast, because I believe that you will get another 100 ducats for it. You will remember that the Parisian Jew [Moritz Schlesinger (1798-1871)] once told you in a letter that you only needed to ask.” He thinks it would be best to write to Schlesinger and tell him that another publisher has offered 100 ducats, and ask him to match it.

Ludwig asks if they would like to stay to dinner, but Johann has already informed housekeeper Barbara Holzmann that they were eating there. She has everything needed.

Johann doesn’t see a problem with Schott offering the Missa Solemnis and Ninth Symphony on subscription. They have a right to do that. Johann wrote a statement to Schott [in February] saying that Schott’s has these works as their rightful property, but he did not tell them they were the only proprietors. He probably should have inserted, “with the exception of London.” This caused trouble with Haslinger, as Ludwig had told Johann, since Steiner and his associates obtained all their works in a way that they could also be sent to London.

Johann would like to have Karl live with him in the winter, if it is alright with Ludwig. That way there would be no expense to Ludwig. [Ludwig is probably noncommittal or negative about the idea, since there is no further discussion of it.]

The housekeeper’s son Johann (c.1773-1822) is a Court gilder. He owned the building next to Obermayer for some time. He died a few years earlier of gout. Johann mentions he knows two other people named Johann Holzmann, a watchmaker near the Burgtor, and another in the Kothgasse.

Karl Carl, the Royal Bavarian Court actor, is supposed to be taking over the Theater an der Wien. [He did become director of the Theater an der Wien in 1826.] Nobody knows anything yet about the Court Theater.

Things are going badly for the Greeks currently in their battle for independence from the Turks.

They have dinner, with meat from a cow. Johann isn’t keen on it, and suggests that Ludwig should get his beef from a restaurant. Johann thinks Ludwig should have a chicken steamed with rice often. In the heat [it is probably in the mid-80s Fahrenheit in Baden] that would be easy to digest and very nourishing. In this heat, a person has no desire to eat anything, and nothing is very enjoyable. They’re not drinking any wine either.

Johann suggests trading a living domesticated deer and 12 domesticated quail for something of Ludwig’s.

Ludwig mentions that he’s interested in an apartment in the Schwarzspanierhaus. Johann asks whether it has an eastern view [since Ludwig works in the mornings, he needs eastern light.]

Johann and Obermayer drove through Mödling on the way here since Obermayer, a baker, wanted to see this year’s wheat crop.

Johann will be leaving for Gneixendorf tomorrow morning. He’ll be back within two weeks. So, they will need to leave this evening before 8 o’clock.

They depart before long, and Beethoven resumes his shopping/errand list:

• Soap powder.
• Barber’s razor.
• One fl. back from the housekeeper. [This entry is crossed off.]
• Shoes, at the shoemaker’s, ankle boots.
  Bisamberger country wine, 2 fl.; also other wine from the Bücher for 1 fl. [probably that he has copied in the conversation books.]
• Blotting sand.
• Slippers. [Repeated from above.]
• Another boot jack.

Conversation Book 91, 8v-13v.

Today’s Wiener Zeitung (N.167) at 703 contains a new name in the music advertisements. T. Weigl has a selection of piano music from abroad, including the Allegro di Bravura op.4 by Franc. List [sic.] The same advertisement includes the Third Polonaise for piano four hands, op.138, by Beethoven’s former pupil, Ferdinand Ries.

Leslie Howard here plays Liszt’s Allegro di bravura, op.4, today catalogued as S.151: