BEETHOVEN 200 YEARS AGO TODAY: Saturday, July 2, 1825 (approximately)

Beethoven does some financial conversions in the current conversation book relating to repayment of his debt to publisher C.F. Peters. [Beethoven had received 360 florins C.M. from Peters as advance payment for various short works, which were rejected by Peters as unworthy of Beethoven. He subsequently sold some but not all of them to Schott in Mainz.] He is to receive 40 louis d’or due from the music festival in May where the Ninth Symphony was performed, which is equivalent to 80 ducats. Beethoven knows that 50 ducats equals 225 florins C.M.; the additional 30 ducats would come to 135 florins. That sum is 360 florins, which is sufficient to pay Peters in full. [Beethoven does not get around to actually sending Peters the funds for another six months, however.]

He also adds to his errand list for when he goes to Vienna on Monday, July 4:

• Retain the old woman [housekeeper Barbara Holzmann], pay her less, and dinner outside the house. [Beethoven is thinking he would do without a kitchen maid or cook, so Holzmann would not have to supervise anyone, resulting in a cut in her pay.]
• Corns, newly invented cutting instruments….[indicating that Beethoven was still suffering from corns, but has learned his lesson from previously cutting them off too deeply so that they did not heal properly.]

Conversation Book 90, 23v-24r.

This month’s issue of The Harmonicon, Nr.XXXI, includes several mentions of Beethoven works being performed in Leipzig. The foreign musical report on the first page (113) mentions that the subscription concerts in Leipzig featured Beethoven’s Symphony Nr.7 in A major, his Fourth Symphony in B-flat major; and his Pastoral Symphony. The overtures performed there included that to Coriolanus [the writer mistakes the Collin drama for Shakespeare’s tragedy], op.62. Vocal performances in Leipzig included Beethoven’s setting of Goethe’s Meeresstille und glückliche Fahrt, op.112.