BEETHOVEN 200 YEARS AGO TODAY: Monday, September 20, 1824 (approximately)

About today (though possibly yesterday evening), Nephew Karl returns to Vienna from Baden. He needs to talk to the Streichers about their various plans to raise money for Uncle Ludwig, and to arrange for the piano reductions of the Missa Solemnis and Ninth Symphony. Since today is a holy day, he would not have had university classes.

Karl falls ill again, however, and appears to stay with friends during another episode of stomach troubles, possibly as editor Theodore Albrecht suggests with the family of his friend Jacob Reinlein von Reinfeld [whose name he writes in the Conversation Book 75 on September 23]. Jacob’s father was a wealthy physician. Karl sometimes stayed with them; another possibility is Karl’s friend Joseph Niemetz and his mother. Because of the unaccounted-for days with no conversation book entries between September 18 and September 22, the chronology remains rather unclear and at best we can make an approximation of what happens when.

Meanwhile, Uncle Ludwig back in Baden continues work on the quartet op.127, which is going far more slowly than he had expected and than he had promised his publishers.