BEETHOVEN 200 YEARS AGO TODAY: Monday, October 10, 1824 (approximately)
Conversation Book 77 begins being used probably today. This book is comprised of 23 leaves, with all pages containing writing. Like the previous book, Anton Schindler misdated it to summer or autumn of 1825. Thayer corrects this to note that the contents in part relate to the wedding celebration that occurred on November 5, 1824. [The wedding itself was actually November 4, but the celebrations lasted several days.] The book appears to in fact have been used during the middle of October, 1824.
Ludwig and Nephew Karl are in Baden, still at the Schloss Gutenbrunn. [Since today is a wash day, it is probably a weekday.] Karl fears that the laundry will get wet if it isn’t brought inside. [According to the Wiener Zeitung of October 12 (Nr.235) at p.984, it rained in Vienna the morning of October 10, but cleared up later in the day.] Half of the laundry has yet to be washed.
Karl notes that the miller’s wife [or a woman with the name Müller] in the house has very good butter.
Leopold Prinz, the chorus manager of the Kärntnertor Theater, comes to visit Beethoven in Baden. He would like to use the vocal piece Tremate, empi, tremate, op.116, which was performed to great acclaim at the May 23, 1824 Akademie benefit concert, as part of the festivities for the upcoming wedding of Archduke Franz Karl and Princess Sophie of Bavaria. He would like to get the orchestral parts right away, because there is no time for it to be copied. The festival is within the next few days. [The wedding was scheduled for October 18, though it was later delayed to November 4 due to an illness on the part of the mother of the bride, the Queen of Bavaria.]
Prinz also extends an invitation to Beethoven: “His Excellency Count Dietrichstein [the Court Theater director] extends his personal pleasure and special distinction by inviting you with a ticket to the Imperial festival.” Beethoven agrees to let them use the work. He does not have the parts with him, but they are at his apartment in the Ungargasse in Vienna. Beethoven agrees to write and arrange for the work to be located and delivered to Prinz.
Probably while Prinz waits, Beethoven dictates to Karl a letter to his friend Tobias Haslinger, a partner at the Steiner music firm in Vienna. “Dear Haslinger! His Excellency Count Dietrichstein wishes to have the score of the terzet that was performed at my second Akademie concert in the Redoutensaal, for a court festival that is to take place in the next few days. I would give it to him with pleasure, but as I have it in Vienna, it will first need to be extracted from the mass of musical scores there. I will send the bearer to you and I hope that you will not refuse him. Carl is probably coming to Vienna this week and will also come to you. Your friend, Beethoven.”
Brandenburg Letter 1896;; Anderson Letter 1318. This letter is held by the Leipzig University Library (Kestner I c II, 18).
Gratified, Prinz says he will go immediately to Vienna to make the report. Ludwig asks where he works. “I’m employed at the Court Theater.” Karl clarifies that Prinz is the chorus manager at the Kärntnertor Theater. Prinz departs to deliver the letter to Haslinger so he can retrieve the score and parts from Beethoven’s old apartment in the Ungargasse.
Karl mentions that when he was in Vienna recently, he went to the new apartment in the Johannesgasse along with the old woman [housekeeper Barbara Holzmann.] The building superintendent’s wife said that the Emperor himself had ordered no one could drive through the new archway in front of the Burgtor gate before the King of Bavaria. That King is to come to Vienna and officially open the road as part of the wedding festivities. But a fiacre driver wanted the notoriety of having driven through it before the King of Bavaria, and he succeeded in doing so. [The editors note that the new archway had already been finished by September 17, and the occasion of the opening was to be at noon on the day of the forthcoming wedding, October 18, since the father of the bride was the King of Bavaria. The effect that this delay in opening the gate had on access to the City was probably a major nuisance in the neighborhood, and likely generated many complaints.]
They discuss the theater in Baden, which is in bad financial straits. The proprietors wanted to make some money, but the Baden public would not have gone for another play; they consider the plays put on there to be “miserable scribbling.”
Friedrich August Kanne [editor of the Wiener musikalischer Zeitung] had written the music to an opera by Adolf Bäuerle [editor of the Allgemeine Theater-Zeitung]. Bäuerle received 1200 florins for the libretto, and Kanne got only 200 florins for the music. [The opera was Lindane, which has been the subject of previous discussions. This opera may have been what the local theater was putting on instead of plays.]
Ludwig and Karl decide to do some sightseeing today, and head to the village of Heiligenkreuz in the Vienna Woods, about six miles northwest of Baden, probably on foot.
Karl mentions that a bricklayer or mason in Heiligenkreuz said, “I don’t need the Emperor, and the Emperor doesn’t need me.”
They arrive in the village at about dinnertime. They have noodle soup, cucumber salad, and chicken at an inn or tavern.
From there, they go to Heiligenkreuz Abbey, one of the oldest in Austria, and take a guided tour. Karl passes on to Uncle Ludwig some of the history of the monastery, which even then was nearly 650 years old. Supposedly the abbey at one time had one of the many supposed fragments of the True Cross, which gave it its name. The Turks came in the second Siege of Vienna in 1683 and massacred many people. At the time of the Beethovens’ visit, there were 55 brothers in the order here.
They look at the pyramid-shaped fountain, which is made of lead. The building of the Abbey began in 1134. Karl notes that makes it far older than the tower of St. Stephan’s cathedral in Vienna [completed in 1433.] As they tour the kitchen, it is observed that the dog gets whatever is left on the butcher’s table. The dog is three years old.
In the library, Karl and Ludwig may look at a medieval book of Judith. Karl quotes a poem about Judith, which is preserved in the Vorauer Handschrift at the monastery of Vorau:
O Judith, you must leave this sylvan glade,
And eternal pain enchains your heart,
For vanished are the blessed hours
That you felt at the side of your dear capricious one.
[How Karl happened to know these lines is unclear; perhaps the Heiligenkreuz Abbey’s library also had a copy of that manuscript.]
They tour the treasury and then the dining room, where everyone eats at one table. They are having chicken today. That appears to complete the tour.
Ludwig and Karl return to the apartment in Baden after their day of sightseeing. Perhaps on their way back, Ludwig brings up Paul Pulay, who had been a teacher of Greek and Latin at Blöchlinger’s Institute when Karl was a student there. Karl observes that Pulay suffered from insomnia, so he would often wake Karl up in order to have someone to talk to.
Conversation Book 77, 1r-5v.