BEETHOVEN 200 YEARS AGO TODAY: Monday, December 12, 1825

Canadian music teacher Theodor Molt (1795-1856) comes to visit Beethoven today. Molt had been born in Württemberg and had studied with Carl Czerny and Ignaz Moscheles before moving to Canada in 1823. He has since been living in Quebec. “Your works have already so delighted me, and I felt it my obligation, during my journey to Vienna, to express my personal thanks, all the more because I have had such a great desire to see the worthy Beethoven.” Beethoven asks him to write his name again, and Molt complies, then departs.

Later that afternoon, Beethoven reads the newspapers in a coffeehouse and copies an advertisement for a licensed automatic piano tuning machine at Anton Simonair’s, the municipal organ builder, next to the Maria Trost church. [This page is torn out of the conversation book, possibly for use by Beethoven as he looked for Simonair’s shop later. Although the whereabouts of the page are now unknown, it was transcribed when it was sold at auction in 1930.]

Conversation Book 99, 21v-21a-r.

An interactive guide to Molt and his visit to Beethoven, created by the University of Calgary, can be found here:

https://www.thinglink.com/card/1454629934541570049

Anton Diabelli & Co. repeats its advertisement for Beethoven’s Septet op.20, as arranged for piano solo or piano four hands by Carl Czerny, in today’s Wiener Zeitung (Nr.282) at 1186.