BEETHOVEN 200 YEARS AGO TODAY: Friday, June 4, 1824
Nephew Karl skips at least some of his classes today to try to help his uncle get ready for his move to the country. Karl is annoyed at housekeeper Barbara Holzmann, saying she goes around the kitchen all day like a drunkard; another woman told him that she is already drunk when she comes home from doing her shopping. “A cook who takes snuff and drinks is already worth nothing.” He thinks she should be used only for cooking.
Karl asks what the house number is in Penzing for the rented apartment, but Uncle Ludwig doesn’t remember offhand.
Karl tells Uncle Ludwig that even though Schindler had promised the orchestral servants [stagehands] for the Akademie they would get good pay, they have to date received nothing.
Getting exasperated at his uncle’s procrastination, Karl tells him that if Holzmann [the “old woman”] is to go to Penzing with the furnishings tomorrow, Uncle Ludwig needs to speak to her yet today. Karl will ask her to be here tomorrow with bag and baggage, if possible. Uncle Ludwig doesn’t know where to find her, but Karl expects that she is at the Old People’s Home at St. Marx’s. If she’s not there, Karl wants to visit her in the Kothgasse, where she gets her meals. She always quotes her good references.
Karl asks his uncle for the money [presumably to reserve the coach.] Uncle Ludwig daydreams about a tour of England. Karl wishes that there were one reliable person with whom his uncle could travel safely. Uncle Ludwig suggests someone [possibly violinist Ignaz Schuppanzigh?] Karl doesn’t know where that man’s money goes; he gets 40 florins every two weeks but does not pay his debts.
While Karl is shopping and tracking down Holzmann to have her come to Penzing, Uncle Ludwig finally starts making a list for the impending move to the country:
Sorrel-salt for 3 kr. for stains in the underwear.
+Mirror.
Cancel the Theater-Zeitung.
+Matches.
+Razor.
+Flour.
+Night lights. Oil.
+Small candles.
+Shoes.
+Bind the Mass. [One copy of the Missa Solemnis was likely already bound, so this is probably a second copy.]
Permission for Karl. [Possibly to house-sit Uncle Ludwig’s apartment?]
8 fl. 48 kr.
+Slippers.
+Mirror. [again]
+Razor strop.
On the Graben, to the Trattnerhof. [Beethoven has previously mentioned the Trattnerhof in connection with ordering a book, so that may be what is meant here.]
Write down the house number in Penzing.
Karl returns from his errands. He visited the Old People’s Home. The old women there get only 9 florins W.W. per month to subsist on, but they are satisfied with their situation. Holzmann is still fairly able to move around, and often goes to the Kothgasse and to visit other acquaintances. Most of them, he jokes, live on the favorite nourishment of old women: coffee. Uncle Ludwig foresees the time when Holzmann will no longer be able to be their housekeeper as she gets more infirm. Karl thinks, “Our household will now take on a more pleasant character.”
Karl and someone [likely his school friend Carl Enk] are going to go bathing.
Uncle Ludwig takes the opportunity to also make a list of scores to obtain or to take along with him to Penzing:
+[C.P.E.] Bach, Klavierschule (from Breitkopf und Härtel).
His other works.
+Mass in C [Paukenmesse] by Haydn.
+Seven Words by Haydn. [The Seven Last Words of Christ, Hob.XX.]
+Albrechtsberger, compositions.
Carl Philipp [Emanuel Bach] Passion music.
+Joh. Sebatins [sic] Bach’s five-voiced Mass “an schweiz.”
+His [Mozart’s?] Requiem.
+The Abduction from the Seraglio, score.
+A copy of my Mass.
Conversation Book 71, 16v-20r. From this list, writing a Mass for the Emperor was clearly still on Beethoven’s mind, as well as the proposed oratorio Der Sieg des Kreuzes and the opera Melusine. The reference to Bach’s “five-voiced Mass” is not a score to take along with him, but “an Schweiz” [“to Switzerland”] is instead a reminder to write to publisher Hans Georg Nägeli in Zurich to inquire about his announced publication of Bach’s B minor Mass, which has SSATB soloists, or five voices. Nägeli had attempted a publication by subscription in 1818, according to the Leipzig Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung Nr.29 July 22, 1818 at 531-532. However, unbeknownst to Beethoven the subscription failed and the Mass was not published until 1833.
Beethoven had been trying to get a copy of the score to Bach’s B minor Mass for at least 15 years. A October 15, 1810 letter to Breitkopf & Härtel (Brandenburg Letter 474, Anderson Letter 281) specifically requests a copy of the Bach Missa in which the Crucifixus is to be found with a basso ostinato, which he quotes (though in E major, rather than E minor). That is from the B minor Mass, BWV 232, so Beethoven at least aware of or had access to a fragment of it. He will not, however, get around to writing to Nägeli concerning the score of the Mass in B minor until September 1824, and that letter will be covered at that time.