BEETHOVEN 200 YEARS AGO TODAY: Saturday, June 19, 1824 (approximately)

Beethoven works again on his errand and shopping list. The repetition of the errand for the shoemaker suggests that Beethoven likely made this list over several days:

+Shoemaker, Boots.
+Tobacco.
+Buy drinking glasses.
+The knit quilt.
+Pillows.
The old woman [housekeeper Barbara Holzmann] always goes in by the postal coach.
Market day.
+Curtain.
Oil cloth. Oilskin. Varnish at Breitensee. [Breitensee was a village about a 10 minute walk north of where Beethoven was staying in Penzing.]
+Buy all the necessary items Monday [June 21], with the old woman.
+Look to see whether there is another curtain in the kitchen. [Presumably of Beethoven’s apartment in the City.]
+Seamstress, who stitches everything in a delicate manner.
+Silver coffee spoon–is it there? [Presumably a reminder to check for this spoon back at the City apartment as well.]
Matches — are they on the floor? [Ditto.]
+Measure shutters in the City.
+Curtain from the student. [This may refer to Nephew Karl’s friend Carl Enk, who was living in Uncle Ludwig’s apartment while he was out in the country.]

Conversation Book 72, 3r-4r.

Ludwig also writes a letter to his brother Johann at his estate in Gneixendorf. The bagatelles [op.126] are ready, and the answer regarding the Mass has been there for a long while. He doesn’t, however, want to rely on the mercy of Jews. [This is likely a reference to the publisher Maurice Schlesinger in Paris, to whom Ludwig had offered the Missa Solemnis, but from whom he had heard no response.] The brothers have many things to discuss. In a postscript written in French, Ludwig again exhorts Johann to come soon to discuss matters. [Sieghard Brandenburg suggests that Ludwig means the response to be made to publisher B. Schott’s Sons in Mainz regarding publication of the Missa Solemnis and the Ninth Symphony.]

Brandenburg Letter 1846; Anderson Letter 1192. The original is in the Bonn Beethovenhaus, H.C. Bodmer Collection Br 11. The address in the hand of Nephew Karl, which probably is written in tomorrow when Karl visits Ludwig in Penzing. The letter can be seen here:

https://www.beethoven.de/en/media/view/4553971968507904/scan/0