BEETHOVEN 200 YEARS AGO TODAY: Friday, May 20, 1825 (approximately)

Beethoven is running errands in Baden and reading the Vienna newspapers in coffee shops. He makes a reminder that he needs chocolate.

Beethoven copies down once again the advertisement for pique bed quilts in the English style, from the factory shop in the Bauernmarkt.

He also copies down the following advertisement from the Wiener Zeitung Intelligenzblatt supplement:

• Bohemian red wine from the Wimmer Wine Hills, in sealed bottles. 1 fl. 15 kr. per bottle, at the Zum schwarzen Kameel [Black Camel], Bogner Gasse.

His errand/shopping list, probably in preparation for his planned trip into Vienna tomorrow to look at an apartment, continues:

• Sealing wax.
• Plaster. [Theodore Albrecht suggests this may be a plaster for the corn on his foot. It’s also possible that the burn on his hand is still bothering him.]
• Karl: Judge whether a L [Leschen] piano is as loud as my [Broadwood]. One can restore the Parisian [Érard] piano and have it made into an unleathered instrument.

Conversation Book 89, 13r-13v.