BEETHOVEN 200 YEARS AGO TODAY: Monday, June 5, 1826

The housekeeper, Elise Seidl, has to run out for an errand and tells Beethoven she will be back soon.

Beethoven goes to a coffee house and reads today’s newspapers. He makes a note of an advertisement for “pique bedding in the English style.”

Conversation Book 110, 55v.

On the back of torn-out leaf BH 53 pp.11-12, Beethoven makes note of a number of different apartments available in the country, advertised in today’s Wiener Zeitung (Nr.126) at 862. These included apartments with 2, 3, and 4 rooms in Theresianbad in Meidling, Hetzendorf, Raduan, and one in the Rear Briel near Mödling. Beethoven may have torn this page out himself to look into these apartments, though he does not end up moving to the country at all this summer.

At the sixth Royal Academic Concert held in London today, Beethoven’s Septet op.20 is performed by an outstanding ensemble, which included a number of the great virtuosos of the day: Christoph Gottfried Kiesewetter on violin; Joseph A. Moralt on viola; Robert Lindley, cello; Domenico Dragonetti, double bass; Thomas L. Willman on clarinet; Giovanni Puzzi on horn; and John Mackintosh playing the bassoon. The Harmonicon for August, 1826 (Nr.XLIII) at 152 observed, “The beautiful septett by Beethoven was, as a whole, charmingly performed; though the violin indulged in a few of those frisks—the result of great animal spirits, we surmise—that are rather inimical to such solid, lovely music.”

Beethoven’s Septet op.20 is here performed by members of the Concertgebouw Orchestra, November 9, 2020:

Carl Maria von Weber dies in London early this morning at the home of Sir George Smart. Weber had been in London for the premiere of his new opera Oberon. Weber had been warned by his physician not to make the trip. Suffering from tuberculosis, and in declining health in May, he nevertheless continued to conduct. The report in The Harmonicon of July, 1826 (Nr.XLIII) at 146-149 follows: “On Monday, the 5th of June, at seven o’clock in the morning, the Baron von Weber was found in a lifeless state in his bed, at the house of Sir George Smart [who had visited Beethoven several times in September of 1825], in Great Portland-street, where he had resided ever since his arrival in London. The disorder which has thus deprived the world of a genius who has contributed so much to the innocent pleasure, and therefore to the benefit of mankind, was a pulmonary consumption, which, to the common observer, had not assumed an immediately alarming form until the preceding Friday, when it compelled him to keep his room; but his spirits were not much depressed, his appetite was good, and he manifested no sense whatever of his approaching danger. The only change remarked in him within a few days of his decease, was an increasing anxiety to return to his native country, and to his family. His friends, of course, studied to divert his attention from a hope which they foresaw could never be realized; but all direct opposition only tended to create in him great uneasiness, and his mind became cheerful in proportion as he conceived that the various obstacles which presented themselves were capable of being surmounted. A countryman, M. Furstenau, who paid him constant attention, left him at eleven o’clock the night before his death, apparently in good spirits, and shewing no symptoms of immediate danger.”

“With the laudable intention of satisfying all doubts, whether here or abroad, as to the cause of M. von Weber’s death, an inspection of the body took place, the result of which was the following certificate:—

‘On opening the body of C.M. von Weber, we found an ulcer on the left side of the larynx, the lungs almost universally diseased, filled with tubercle, of which many were in a state of suppuration, with two vomicae [pus-filled abscesses] — one about the size of a common egg, the other smaller, which was a quite sufficient cause of his death.'”

The intended performance of Der Freischütz at Covent Garden this evening for Weber’s benefit is cancelled.