BEETHOVEN 200 YEARS AGO TODAY: Monday, September 29, 1823 (approximately)

Sir Julius Benedict recollected his first meeting with Beethoven as occurring in Vienna about two weeks before October 5th, and his second a week later. If we take his second meeting with Beethoven as being when he was introduced to the composer, that event would place about today. However, he had seen Beethoven once before. That earlier incident probably occurred about a month earlier (though he says it was a week earlier), when Karl was still in Vienna finishing his exams and his uncle was in the City for several days taking care of business preparatory to taking Karl to Baden. There is no point in September before the 28th of that month where Beethoven went personally into Vienna; he sent Karl on every occasion there was need to deal with business in Vienna before then.

But he may well have come to Vienna today; a distrustful Beethoven could have decided to accompany Karl on one of his periodic trips, or he may have decided there were tasks he needed to take care of personally. There is also the matter of wrapping up things with his old landlord and dropping off the keys, and September 29 would be the end of the lease, as well as the start of his new lease in the Landstrasse, so this seems a likely day for their first actual meeting.

Julius Benedict recounts these first two incidents as follows. According to Benedict, at around noon on this first occasion he was at the S.A. Steiner music store on Paternostergässchen with Joseph Blahetka, whom you may recall visited Beethoven yesterday in Baden, along with Tobias Haslinger and Reinhold Schultz.

“If I am not mistaken, on the morning that I saw Beethoven for the first time, Blahetka, the father of the pianist [child prodigy Leopoldine Blahetka,] directed my attention to a stout, short man with a very red face, small piercing eyes, and bushy eyebrows, dressed in a very long overcoat which reached nearly to his ankles, who entered the shop about 12 o’clock. Blahetka asked me: ‘Who do you think that is?’ and I at once exclaimed: ‘It must be Beethoven!’ because, notwithstanding the high color of his cheeks and his general untidiness, there was in those small piercing eyes an expression which no painter could render. It was a feeling of sublimity and melancholy combined. I watched, as you can well imagine, every word that he spoke when he took out his little book and began a conversation which to me, of course, was almost incomprehensible, inasmuch as he only answered questions penciled to him by Messrs. Steiner and Haslinger.”

“I was not introduced to him on that occasion; but the second time, about a week after [again, more like a month later], Mr. Steiner presented me to the great man as a pupil of Weber. The other persons present were the old Abbé Stadler and Seyfried. Beethoven said to Steiner: ‘I rejoice to hear that you publish once more a German work. I have heard much in praise of Weber’s opera and hope it will bring both you and him a great deal of glory.’ Upon this, Steiner seized the opportunity to say: ‘Here is a pupil of Weber’s,’ when Beethoven most kindly offered me his hand, saying: ‘Pray tell M. de Weber how happy I shall be to see him at Baden, as I shall not come to Vienna before next month.’ I was so confused at having the great man speak to me that I hadn’t the courage to ask any questions or continue the conversation with him.”

Thayer/Forbes at 873. Their next meeting, Weber and Benedict’s well-documented visit to Beethoven in Baden, will occur on October 5th, and will be discussed in detail there.