BEETHOVEN 200 YEARS AGO TODAY: Monday, October 25, 1824 (approximately)

According to several letters written by Beethoven in mid-November, he falls ill sometime before he moves back from Baden to Vienna, and remains quite ill there for an extended period of time. Such a serious but unspecified illness may help explain the unusually large gap of surviving letters of over a month, between October 10 and November 16, 1824. Beethoven frequently used fibs about the state of his health as a convenient excuse for various delays, but in this instance he seems to have been telling the truth. This illness may also have contributed to the delay in his move back to Vienna.