BEETHOVEN 200 YEARS AGO TODAY: Monday, September 12, 1825 (approximately)

Beethoven continues work on the op.130 quartet, and probably the Grosse Fuge finale for that quartet, which is consuming much of his sketch work currently.

After he completes his compositional work for the day, Beethoven struggles with some arithmetic for financial matters, never his strong suit. All of the sums are quite small, in one place listing 9 kreutzers. He also attempts adding 50 kreutzers together five times, rather than attempting multiplication, which he never understood well. He comes up with the correct total of 4 florins 10 kreutzers three times, and an incorrect total of 3 florins 40 kreutzers another, which no doubt was frustrating to him. There is no indication what these amounts represent, however.

Beethoven also makes a note that he needs official stamped paper for receiving his payment of Prince Kinsky’s portion of his stipend.

Sir George Smart is today invited by violinist Joseph Böhm to attend his quartet concert tomorrow. He also visits the large Redoutensaal, which he calls “a magnificent room, with a smaller concert-room adjoining. It is larger than any of our rooms. It is attached to the Burg Theatre and appears to be part of the Royal Palace. The rent here for a concert in the day time is only a few florins.” He then goes to the Landständischensaal, where the roof is painted in imitation of tapestry. In the evening they attend a performance of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte in the Theater an der Wien. “This is the largest theater I have seen in Vienne, it is constructed more like ours, with a Royal box, on the right, when you face the stage, covered with velvet, in which sat this evening a brother of the Emperor.”

Cox and Cox, Leaves from the Journals of Sir George Smart, pp.116-117.

At page 878 of today’s Wiener Zeitung (Nr.207), the A. Pennauer music shop in Vienna advertises the Eleventh Fantasy for piano and flute, on themes from Rossini’s Moses in Egypt, by Beethoven’s former pupil, Ferdinand Ries, his op.133/2. This work had first been published by Simrock in Bonn the previous year.

On the same page, book publisher Anton Strauss advertises the Complete Writings of Johann Georg Albrechtsberger on Generalbass, Harmony and Composition in 3 volumes, edited by Ignaz Ritter von Seyfried for self-study. Like Seyfried, Beethoven studied counterpoint under Albrechtsberger. After Beethoven’s death, Seyfried will issue a volume of Beethoven’s studies, with some of the counterpoint exercises and fugues that Beethoven wrote under Albrechtsberger’s tutelage, now catalogued as Hess 234 through 245. The advertisement even mentions that Ludwig van Beethoven, amongst others, studied under Albrechtsberger. The first volume is ready now, the second is expected in October, and the third volume should follow in December of 1825.