BEETHOVEN 200 YEARS AGO TODAY: Saturday, January 14, 1826

Prince Nikolai Galitzin writes to Beethoven in French from St. Petersburg today. “Dear and dignified Monsieur van Beethoven, I am very sorry for not having yet acknowledged to you receipt of the Overtures that you were kind enough to send me. [These were the Name Day Overture, op.115, and Consecration of the House, op.124, which Beethoven had sent in July of 1825.] I was waiting for the quartet to arrive, so that I could include all my thanks at once. Since then, I have been very ill, and then I was obliged to make a journey to the heart of Russia. All these circumstances and the changes that have occurred here have prevented me from replying to you until now. I have just read in the Leipzig Musical Gazette that the new A minor Quartet [op.132] has been performed in Vienna [Galitzin refers to the AMZ account of the public premiere of that Quartet on November 6, 1825], and I am so eager to hear this new masterpiece that I beg you to send it to me without further delay by mail, as you did the previous one. I will have M. Stieglitz take the equivalent of 75 ducats to be given to you by M. Fries; 50 for the quartet and 25 for the Overture, which is magnificent and which I thank you very much for dedicating to me. The Leipzig newspaper speaks in such flattering terms of your new quartet that I am extremely eager to hear it. Please send it to me as soon as possible, as I will soon be leaving for Moscow for the coronation [of the new Czar, Nicholas I, which will be delayed and take place on September 3, 1826], and then I will send you my address.” [Beethoven already mailed one copy of the op.132 quartet to Galitzin, but it seems to have gotten lost in transit and will be re-sent in February, 1826.]

“I wish you a happy and prosperous New Year. Your devoted friend, Prince Nicolas Galitzin.”

Brandenburg Letter 2106; Albrecht Letter 425. The location of the original is unknown; the text is derived from TDR V, p.567. When Thayer copied it, the letter was then in the possession of Caroline van Beethoven, Nephew Karl’s widow.

A “Sausage Ball” is held at Franz von Schober’s home in Vienna. His good friend Franz Schubert plays waltzes on the pianoforte to entertain the guests there. A Sausage Ball (Würstelball) is a dance where sausages are served to the men by ladies. The sausages were strung in pairs and eaten hot. In Vienna, these sausages were called Frankfurters. In Frankfurt, however, they were called Vienna Sausages. Otto Deutsch, The Schubert Reader at 504.