BEETHOVEN 200 YEARS AGO TODAY: Friday, May 12, 1826

Unpaid assistant Karl Holz comes to visit Beethoven this afternoon. He went to see Alois Zettler at the Censor’s office yesterday, but he still doesn’t know anything about the copyright decree that supposedly protects Beethoven’s compositions. Head Censor Franz Sartori said that Beethoven should not worry; nothing will happen against Beethoven’s will. “However, the fortress [Steiner & Co.] will surrender in disgrace.” Holz asks Beethoven when he returned the proofs to Haslinger. Holz saw him at the coffee house in the afternoon, but he wouldn’t look at Holz. Holz jokes that they ought to have the former titles of the works, without the names, published in the 1827 Postbüchel [little pamphlets published by the post office near the end of the year with humorous poems and anecdotes.]

Beethoven is displeased with the delays from Lipscher in getting the payment from Prince Galitzin, who had previously been prompt in delivering the funds due to him. In the beginning, Holz thought it would be best to write to Galitzin, but the courier will get back to Vienna sooner than they will get an answer by mail from Russia, so they may as well wait.

Weber’s new opera Oberon was well received in London, Holz reports, but the music was considered too learned. [The premiere of the opera occurred at Covent Garden on April 12, 1826. The first reports of the reception of the opera that reach Vienna probably were in the May 1826 issue of The Harmonicon.]

Holz went to the opera at the Kärntnertor Theater the day before yesterday [May 10] and saw Der Schnee [The Snow, the German version of Daniel François Auber’s comic opera La neige (1823)]. Amateur vocalist Joseph Preisinger (1796-1865) has made progress, to Holz’s astonishment. “I have only heard such a clear diction from [Luigi] Lablache.” Beethoven asks whether Preisinger is a baritone; Holz tells him he is more a bass. Holz did not see concertmaster and former unpaid assistant Anton Schindler amongst the first violins, however. “He [Auber] writes too difficultly for such theater singers; there are intervals that the choristers will never hit.”

Publisher Mathias Artaria sends his regards to Beethoven and wishes to speak with him in a few days. Holz asks whether Beethoven would like him to come along. “He knows that you have had offers elsewhere of 80 ducats for the quartet [op.131] and of 100 ducats for the 6 lieder [probably including the lieder offered to C.F. Peters in 1822]. He will pay the same amounts; he only comes to ask you to entrust him with it.” Beethoven’s answer is not recorded, but Artaria does not publish the new quartet. Perhaps he is annoyed that Artaria has not yet published the op.130 quartet that was sold to him earlier.

Beethoven starts computing his incoming funds for the summer. Holz points out to him that the dividends on his bank shares are payable in July as well.

Conversation Book 110, 7r-9v.

Artaria today pays Anton Halm 40 florins for his arrangement of Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge for four-hands piano, according to the account books of Artaria, which state “to composer Halm for the arrangement of Beethoven’s Fugue.” Nottebohm Zweite Beethoveniana p.365.