BEETHOVEN 200 YEARS AGO TODAY: Friday, July 7, 1820

Conversation Book 15, Inside front cover through 1v

Front cover of Conversation Book 15, Staatsbibliothek Berlin.

Front cover of Conversation Book 15, Staatsbibliothek Berlin.

Beethoven begins a new conversation book, number 15. At a coffee house in Mödling, Beethoven reads yesterday’s Wiener Zeitung (Vienna Newspaper), and finds an ad for a Greek-German school dictionary (Gotha, 1820), surely for Karl’s use.

Musing again about his country home fantasy, he concludes once more that Mödling is not rural enough for him. Not only is it a small city, but the people in it are “also such terrible human rabble.” Beethoven does not explain the basis of this characterization further. He doesn’t seem to credit that he got back his umbrella and money sack through honesty of some of this rabble. So much for “All men are brothers.”