BEETHOVEN 200 YEARS AGO TODAY: Monday, June 21, 1824

Beethoven makes his shopping trip into the City with housekeeper Barbara Holzmann today. While she runs errands and shops, and likely after he has visited the shoemaker and done other tasks, he enjoys the newspapers in a coffee shop. Thinking of his apartment for the fall, he makes note of a five-room apartment with kitchen available on the first floor [second floor American] in the Judengasse that sounds interesting, for 360 florins C.M. for the year.

He also copies down an advertisement for a young man to be of service, thinking of a replacement for Schindler. Unfortunately, he accidentally combines two different advertisements, picking up part of an ad for a young man who gives lessons on the piano and provides secretarial services, mixing it with another ad for a young man who also wants to be a piano teacher and speaks German, Bohemian and French.

Both of the advertisements he copies have addresses at the Old Meat Market. Intelligenzblatt Nr.140, p.999.

Conversation Book 72, 10r.

There will be no entry for tomorrow, but we will resume on June 23. There are no conversation book entries for June 22 and 23, which begin again on June 24.

Today, young Franz Liszt has his public concert in London at the Argyll Rooms, then at the corner of Oxford and Argyll Streets. The concert is well attended, and among the crowd is Beethoven’s former pupil Ferdinand Ries. There is double curiosity both to see the young prodigy and to hear the revolutionary Erard piano that he plays. The principal work is Piano Concerto Nr.3 in B minor, op.89, by Johann Nepomuk Hummel, with Sir George Smart conducting the orchestra. Smart asked the audience for a theme upon which “Master Liszt could work.” According to the June 23 Morning Post, a lady called out “Zitti, zitti,” from Rossini’s Barber of Seville. Liszt immediately composes a fugue on this melody. Walker, Franz Liszt: The Virtuoso Years at 103.