BEETHOVEN 200 YEARS AGO TODAY: Monday, January 17, 1825
Brother Johann stops by Steiner’s music shop and talks to Tobias Haslinger, who shows him the letter from Johann Reinhold Schultz, written in December from London, asking whether he might have the publishing rights to Consecration of the House. Johann will be interested in selling this Overture to a new market, one not really in competition with Schott’s in Mainz. Schultz would very much like to have the overture.
Johann fills Ludwig in, and adds that “Steiner and Haslinger send their regards with greatest reverence. They are now very crestfallen and deeply regret that they do not have the Mass and the Symphony [the Missa Solemnis and Ninth Symphony]. Haslinger would have gladly taken them, but Steiner…” Haslinger told him this in Ludwig’s presence yesterday. Johann told Haslinger that the works, including the Overture are his, and he will write to Schultz about it.
Nephew Karl is also at the apartment. The housekeeper is going to go out shopping, but Ludwig didn’t give her enough money; she thinks she will need 5 florins because there is a great deal to buy. Johann observes that Ludwig should give her the money to go shopping before breakfast; that way she will get good items. [Theodore Albrecht notes that Johann Pezzl described the daily food markets of Vienna as being most active between 8 and 10 a.m.] Johann suggests that she can come shopping with him, and she would be happy to go along, but can’t now because she has a pastry on the fire and she can’t leave it.
Beethoven makes a shopping list for himself:
- Boots. Shoemaker.
- Eating table.
- Sugar. Coffee.
Knowing Ludwig’s fondness for Luigi Cherubini’s music, Johann mentions that in the Leipzig Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, there is an advertisement for a subscription to Cherubini’s Mass in D minor, to be published in Paris. Intelligenzblatt supplement to AMZ Nr.7, August 1824, at 29. [The Mass had been composed in 1811.]
Johann also mentions that Schuppanzigh will come to dinner tomorrow, if it’s all right with Ludwig. [Karl writes this on behalf of Johann.]
As mid-day dinner time approaches, Karl asks whether the roast or pastry should come first. Ludwig would like the pastry. Karl thinks the housekeeper should not be treated so strictly. He’ll speak to her quite seriously (nothing can be done about Brother Johann, who just flatters her and empowers her in everything.) Maybe Karl can get her back on the right track.
They talk about some kind of ointment, probably one that Ludwig is using for some ailment. [Theodore Albrecht suggests that it may be a corn on Beethoven’s foot.] In Johann’s opinion, [Karl satirically calls him here “the Doctor of Pharmaceuticals“] it has a drying power.
The food comes, and Karl tells Ludwig to eat quickly, because it will get cold. The veal roast is quite large, six pounds. Ludwig asks why there is so much, and Karl answers that the housekeeper couldn’t get a smaller one. Ludwig says they can have the leftovers for dinner, and Karl agrees: the poultry can be left till tomorrow, if it will stay fresh. Johann notes that Schuppanzigh also loves roast veal [suggesting that they can serve him the leftovers tomorrow if the poultry won’t keep].
The housekeeper complains that the machine they use to light the stove isn’t working properly and does so with a very serious expression. Johann laughs, and Karl explains to Ludwig that she always looks so serious, whether from fear or as an affectation. The housekeeper cracks up and laughs at Johann talking about an ignition machine using other principles, but that has not yet been invented. His idea uses a dry kind of incendiary material.
Johann asks whether Linke is supposed to come to dinner with Schuppanzigh as well, so they can settle the question of whose concert will get the premiere of the new quartet, op.127. Ludwig says he wants to talk to Schuppanzigh alone.
Johann says he has read the revised text for the proposed oratorio Der Sieg des Kreuzes. He doesn’t like it very much and asks Ludwig’s opinion. Ludwig also has not improved his opinion of the libretto. [Ludwig has not yet finally decided to reject the text, but he is certainly not enthused about it.]
Karl observes that the pastry was served on the salad platter today. [The proper dish apparently was a casualty of the recent spate of broken dishes.]
Johann will send a washerwoman to the apartment to take care of the laundry, since the housekeeper is likely to have a hard time finding one just now.
Former housekeeper Barbara Holzmann is now living in the Bürgerspital, the home for the aged poor in Vienna, “with her ghosts and memories.” She cannot forget her husband, even though she only lived with him for 11 months.
Likewise, Johann misses his estate in Gneixendorf; even though he has all the comforts of the city here, his life is not as good as it is there, even though he must listen to complaints all day long. He doesn’t have to wear a wig when he’s there, either.
Johann says he will go to see Prince Paul Esterházy, the Austrian Ambassador to London tomorrow, and ask whether there are any couriers going to London that could take his letter to Schultz. But Johann isn’t going to involve Haslinger in the matter, and he won’t say anything to him. Johann then leaves.
Ludwig apparently is unable to go to the coffee house today [likely because of the ailment that the ointment is being used for] and deputizes Nephew Karl to go read the newspapers and report back the latest news for him. Karl does so, and advises that the most important item in the newspaper, the Wiener Zeitung, is that the French minister of the Interior, Count Joseph de Villèle (1773-1854) has proposed to compensate the emigrants with 30 million francs, coming from a presumed capital of 1 billion, at 3 percent.
Also, instead of refurbishing the Kärntnertor Theater in Vienna, the plan is to build a new theater on the square of the Riding School. [The plans are for a grandiose theater with six floors and 148 loges, but it does not end up being built and the Kärntnertor does not get replaced until 1868.]
Conversation Book 81, 17v-22v.
The London Philharmonic Society takes up Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony for its first rehearsal today. Some members of the musical press are also in attendance to hear the first notes of this work the Society commissioned several years ago. This rehearsal is held in anticipation that Beethoven himself may come for the performance, for the Society invited him to come, with a promised payment of 300 guineas to cover his expenses.
The Harmonicon of March 1825, No.XXVII at 47-48 reports about the rehearsal, “Previously to the re-commencement of these concerts [on February 21, 1825], the Philharmonic Society had three private meetings in the months of January and February, for the purpose of trying, with the full orchestra, new compositions, and deciding on their fitness for public performance. Amongst these were, a symphony by Mr. Cipriani Potter, an overture by Mr. Goss, Weber’s overtures to Precious and Euryanthe, and a Grand Symphony recently composed for the society, by Beethoven. All of these we shall have to notice when they are regularly before the public. But much curiosity has been excited by the latter composition, from the pen of so great a master, we shall anticipate in part our regular criticism on it, by observing, that it manifests many brilliant traits of Beethoven’s vast genius; that it embodies enough of original matter, of beautiful effects and skillful contrivances, to form an admirable symphony of ordinary duration: but that unfortunately, the author has spun it out to so unusual a length, that he has ‘drawn out the tread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument,’ and what would have been delightful had it been contained within moderate limits, he has rendered wearying by expansion, and diluted his subjects till they became weak and vapid. When we add that the time which it is calculated this composition will take in performing, cannot be much less than an hour and twenty minutes, our readers, though they have not heard it, may almost judge for themselves of its inadequacy to fix the attention of any audience, or to produce such an effect as the admirers of Beethoven must earnestly wish.