BEETHOVEN 200 YEARS AGO TODAY: Monday, May 16, 1825

Ludwig writes to Brother Johann today. He had to leave the bells and bell pulls in the Johannesgasse apartment, and he needs to have them retrieved. “The bell, including the bell pulls, etc. is under no circumstances to be left in the previous residence. No offer was made to these people to compensate me for anything; my ill health prevented me from sending the bell directly from the City to here, since the locksmith did not come during my stay. One could only have had it removed by one’s self, since there was no right [of the landlord] to keep it.”

“Be that as it may, I will not leave the bell there under any circumstances. I need one here and I use it for that purpose, and it would cost me twice as much to replace it here than in Vienna, since bell-pulling is one of the most expensive jobs for a locksmith.”

“In the case of emergency, just go immediately to the Imperial and Royal Police. The window in my room had been installed just as I moved in. But this can be paid for, as can the one in the kitchen [apparently these two windows had gotten broken, possibly in the course of the move] 2 florins for both. — The key will not be paid for, since we didn’t find one. The door was nailed shut or left thus when we moved in, and it remained that way until I moved out. There was only one key, since, of course, neither the person who lived there before us nor us needed one at all.–Perhaps a collection should be held, so dig into the sack. Ludwig van Beethoven.” [The new tenants on April 30 had also made mention of the door being nailed shut, and that they would prefer to keep it that way.]

Brandenburg Letter 1971; Anderson Letter 1367 (Anderson identifies this as being a letter to Schindler, which cannot be possible. The whereabouts of the letter are unknown, and the text is derived from TDR V, p.194f, based on a copy made by Thayer that was found in his estate. Nohl’s transcription is slightly different in the text. Sieghard Brandenburg thinks that Johann is probably the addressee since he was responsible for final cleanup of the Johannesgasse apartment after Ludwig left for Baden on May 7. The reference to holding a collection would not seem to be appropriate to address to Karl, and Johann, being well off, is a more likely candidate for such a joke. Thayer’s transcription shows the date as May 6, 1826, which is a day before Beethoven went to Baden, so it’s more likely that it was actually May 16th. Beethoven gets the bell on May 18th, so it cannot be after that date.

Beethoven also writes an undated letter to Nephew Karl, probably today, since it is just after Karl’s visit but likely before the letter to Karl dated May 17th. The first page of the letter seems to be missing since it starts with what sounds like a conclusion. “Finally, at least give the old woman [Barbara Holzmann] the chocolate. Ramler, if he hasn’t taken it yet, perhaps the old woman would get it. — I’m getting thinner and thinner and feel more ill than well, and no doctor, no sympathetic person is with me.”

“If you can only come out every Sunday, then do so. However, I wouldn’t stop you from doing anything else, if only I were sure that your Sunday would be spent well without me. I must learn to wean myself off everything, if only it were to give me a benefit, so that my great sacrifices will bear worthy fruits?”

“Where am I not wounded and cut up?! Your faithful father.”

Brandenburg Letter 1970; Anderson Letter 1375. The original of the letter is in the Biblioteka Jagiellonski in Krakow (Mus. ep. autogr. Beethoven 17). This letter refers to the advertisement of Karl Wilhelm Ramler’s works in a two-volume pocket edition in the May 15 Wiener Zeitung, Nr. 107 at 720, which Beethoven had noted in his conversation book yesterday. Holzmann was apparently successful in procuring a copy for Beethoven, since there was a copy found in his estate. The chocolate was part of the diet prescribed to Beethoven for his intestinal ailments. Holzmann seems to have forgotten about it, since Beethoven will write to Karl again tomorrow asking him to send some chocolate in the next postal coach because he is almost out.

Despite his complaints about being more ill than well, Beethoven today begins working once again on the quartet in A minor, op.132. The first two movements are more or less complete, so he may begin by finalizing them, or working on sketches for the later movements.

This work is carried out simultaneously in a large-format desk sketchbook, and a pocket sketchbook that he could take with him on his walks to jot down ideas that occurred to him. The desk sketchbook is the De Roda sketchbook, presently at the Bonn Beethovenhaus, NE 47, SBH 680, and can be seen here:

https://www.beethoven.de/en/media/view/5046666759503872/scan/0

The De Roda sketchbook is still in the wrapper that Artaria placed upon it when he sold it in 1874. When sold, there were 42 leaves in it; today there are only 40, but since according to Douglas Johnson the missing leaves were on the outside, they may well have been blank. Like the previous (surviving) desk sketchbook, Autograph 11/2, De Roda was assembled from different types of music paper Beethoven had at hand–in fact, 13 different types of paper, used between 1808 and 1824. Beethoven in a later letter to Karl will make reference to the fact that the quartet op.132 (which forms the bulk of this sketchbook) was jotted down on scraps of paper, and that if it were lost, he could never reconstruct the quartet the same way.

Some of the entries appear to have been made before the book was stitched together. There are scattered sketches for the finale of op.127 on 1r, and some doodling probably by Nephew Karl on page 36r. There is also some material in the hand of Ferdinand Wolanek, who was fired by Beethoven as copyist in a rage on March 26. The presence on page 1v of canon Das Schöne zu dem Guten, WoO 203, which Beethoven wrote for Rellstab earlier this month, suggests that the sketchbook may have been assembled in early May, just prior to Beethoven’s move to Baden on May 7. However, he has been too unwell to do any work until about now.

The principal contents of this desk sketchbook are the third, fourth, and fifth movements of the op.132 quartet in A minor, with some significant work on the op.130 in B-flat, which overlaps with the later movement of op.132, suggesting Beethoven was simultaneously working on both quartets. Folios 35r-40v include work on the Grosse Fuge, which is intended as the finale of op.130.

Beethoven also about now starts using the Moscow pocket sketchbook, which consists of 25 leaves. This sketchbook is held by the Glinka Museum for Musical Culture in Moscow. Because of the distinctive binding, it appears probable that this sketchbook was once owned by Felix Mendelssohn. The first 14 leaves have 16 staves; the last 11 have 10 staves, so when folded over for pocket use each page had 8 or 5 staves, respectively. The stitching has been replaced; the original stitch holes are still visible. An additional 6 leaves that once belonged to the book have been identified as existing elsewhere.

The sketches begin with the Heiliger Dankgesang of op. 132, his song of thanksgiving for recovery from his illness that has laid him up for much of the previous month. Most of the book is comprised of work on the last two movements of op.132 and the first movement of op.130, paralleling the work in the first half of the De Roda desk sketchbook. There is also a sketch for the Credo of the Missa Solemnis at page 20, indicating that Beethoven was really scrounging around for old scraps of paper to bind into this book.

Today’s Wiener Zeitung (Nr.110) at 478 includes an advertisement from Sauer & Leidesdorf of the newest published work from Franz Schubert, Six Grand Marches and Trio for piano four hands, op.40. This set of marches is now catalogued as D.819. These six marches are here performed by Christoph Eschenbach and Justus Frantz: