BEETHOVEN 200 YEARS AGO TODAY: Saturday, July 9, 1825
Beethoven takes a private carriage into Vienna this morning along with housekeeper Barbara Holzmann, probably arriving about 10 a.m. They meet up with Karl to run errands. Holzmann gave 1 florin as the down payment to the coachman and 1 florin to Karl. Karl told her to reserve the coach for Uncle Ludwig to return to Baden. Karl has his second class from 6:30 to 7:30, so he will not be accompanying his uncle.
The carpenter Wangenheim told Karl that his employment at Schloss Gutenbrunn is ending this week, so whatever work Uncle Ludwig wants him to do, he will gladly devote himself to it. However, the administrator will not let him continue to use a room in the Schloss that he has had up till now. Therefore Frau Schnaps [Holzmann] told Wangenheim that if Beethoven would allow it, he could work in the room where the maid currently sleeps, and she can sleep next to Holzmann. There’s also a complication in that he cannot really work as a carpenter, so he has to be given the pretext of being a servant who spends the rest of his time doing carpentry work. He is already counting on being Uncle Ludwig’s personal carpenter. Uncle Ludwig asks why this charade is necessary. Karl replies, “He may not earn a living as a carpenter, because he has not yet attained the level of a Master.” He is currently working on becoming a journeyman, and if he does some pieces for Beethoven, then that will help him proceed from journeyman to Master. But he has no money to become a Master, because that requires having enough tools to be in a position to accept journeymen. But Karl doesn’t think Wangenheim should get used to the idea of daily boarding with Uncle Ludwig. Karl also asked Wangenheim’s girlfriend whether she would want to marry him if he gets the right to be a Master.
Uncle Ludwig asks Karl about his Marketing class. “Marketing includes almost everything: wine, cloth, wool, leather, sable skin, beaver skin, etc., porcelain, stoneware, etc.” Uncle Ludwig suggests that knowing how marketing works, that will help Karl discern the truth behind it. Karl agrees: “Then one will never be deceived again.” The Professor of Marketing, Franz Riepl, started off as a merchant’s servant. “I can learn as much from philosophy books as I can study it here. But I also know many who have studied it, yet remain very commonplace.”
Holzmann has reserved the coachman.
Karl suggests that his uncle should write to Leipzig publisher C.F. Peters, “It is up to you, whether you want to accept my new Quartet for the _ gulden C.M. that you have sent me [as an advance on other works several years ago.] If not, then I’ll sell it to _____, from whom I have already requested the same sum for it.”
Karl totals up his expenditures: Out of the 5 florins received, he spent 2 florins for the coach, 15 kreutzers tip, last weekend. Breakfast in Neudorf on the way back was 15 kreutzers. A haircut was 30 kreutzers. That leaves one florin for Karl, after he spends a florin on a bundle of quill pens.
Beethoven and Holzmann return to Baden around 5 p.m.
Conversation Book 90, 31r-34v.
Today’s Wiener Zeitschrift (Nr.82) at 682-683 contains a review of the second volume of Für Freunde der Tonkunst [For Friends of the Art of Music] published in Leipzig this year by Carl Knobloch. “The final part is Commentatiuncula in usum Delphini, a meaningful and imaginative commentary on a piano sonata by Beethoven, A-flat major, op.26, presented in a truly humorous tone.” This would be Rochlitz’s fanciful review of that sonata that originally appeared in the Leipzig Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung (Nr. 30) for July 23, 1823, at 473-488, and which can be read in substantial part on our webpage for that day here: