BEETHOVEN 200 YEARS AGO TODAY: Saturday, May 8, 1824
Beethoven continues to bask in the afterglow of the success of last night’s Akademie concert. Even better, today he will get paid at last.
In the morning, unpaid assistant Anton Schindler comes to Beethoven’s apartment. If Nephew Karl should come home at midday, he should reserve time after his discussion group this afternoon to go to the Kärntnertor Theater box office at 5 p.m. Schindler will be there waiting for him. Since he supervised the ticket sales yesterday, the box office’s cash will be closed out in his presence, and he will receive his Uncle’s share of the profits.
Uncle Ludwig doubts that Karl can walk from the University to the theater in time, so Schindler says he will pick him up in a carriage. Schindler then inquires after Ludwig, and whether he has recovered from yesterday’s exertions. Beethoven must still feel quite good after last night. Schindler departs.
At a coffee house in the late morning, Beethoven makes some notes to himself:
- Pay the cleaning people at the Theater.
- [Attorney Johann Baptist] Bach, [House No.] 863. [This was attorney Bach’s home address, at Wollzeile 863. Beethoven likely considered seeing Bach about paying off creditors with the proceeds of the concert.]
- a large jug of seltzer water, 1 fl. 15 kr.; a small crock 54 kr. [copied from an advertisement in today’s Intelligenzblatt, Nr.104 at 737.]
- House superintendent, propter yesterday.
Beethoven returns home, where he finds Nephew Karl. He observes that soprano Henriette Sontag and alto Caroline Unger, who are usually received with the greatest applause when they appear, were hardly applauded at all when they entered, which is only natural. Uncle Ludwig asks why he thinks that so natural? Karl replies that since it was Uncle Ludwig’s Akademie, the public felt that they ought not to applaud the singers.
Karl notes that violinist Joseph Mayseder bought six seats, and Count Moritz Lichnowsky bought a ticket personally. “Yesterday morning, the people in front of the box office almost had a fight, in order to get near. The push was that great.” The Giannatasio family was also there. The cloth dealer Johann Wolfmayer also took 2 locked seats, and paid double for them.
Beethoven is thinking about how to invest the proceeds of the Akademie concerts. Bankers are offering six percent, but Uncle Ludwig, who had very little schooling, especially in math, is unsure what that means. Karl explains that 6 percent means 6 for the hundred. That is, for each hundred florins borrowed, you pay 6 florins interest. Uncle Ludwig asks whether that’s every month? Karl says that if a sum of money is invested at 6 percent, it’s understood to be annually. That’s how it is here. Ludwig asks who is paying that rate. Banker Wilhelm August Gosmar (1773-1846), Karl replies.
Schindler returns to Beethoven’s apartment in the mid-afternoon. Beethoven raises the subject of a celebratory dinner in his apartment tomorrow, May 9, with food brought from the restaurant. [The housekeeper had left on May 7, so the Beethovens were on their own for meals.] Schindler notes that Sontag is moving to Meidling, a village bordering on Schönbrunn Palace. He suggests an agreement should be made with the proprietor of the restaurant as to how much will be charged per person. If conductor Michael Umlauf is invited tomorrow, then “the Fat One” [violinist Ignaz Schuppanzigh] will come with him. “Was he such a gourmand in earlier years, or did he only become one in Russia?” The decision is eventually made to have the dinner at a restaurant in the Prater instead.
While the Akademie is still the buzz of Vienna, the second concert should be set up as soon as possible. Schindler suggests Beethoven write letters of appreciation to High Chamberlain Trautmannsdorf, and to the orchestra. One should be sent to the chorus and one to the dilettantes. But the last three should not be sent until they know for sure whether the concert can be held on Friday, May 14th. They can all be invited quickly, and they already know the works.
Beethoven, dazzled by the thoughts of profits, conjectures Akademie concerts in London or Paris. Schindler encourages him, saying he would earn 12,000-15,000 in net profit there; here in Vienna, probably not that much in groschen. But the second Akademie would not be as much work as the first one. Where it is to be held is the snag. Manager Louis Antoine Duport would like to hold it in the Redoutensaal, but his head is still completely in a whirl from the first concert. “If these scoundrels had only been the least bit accommodating, as a small sign of respect for you to our Nobility! Disgusting!” [Schindler seems to be complaining about Duport’s intrigues that made such difficulty in scheduling the first concert, which resulted in it occurring after the Emperor and his retinue had left Vienna on May 5. A leaf may be missing here.]
Karl suggests that the problems with Duport were all Brother Johann’s doing. Karl and Schindler discuss the cashier’s calculations, and that he cannot cheat Beethoven. If necesssary, that accounting could be done tomorrow. Karl skips his discussion section, staying with his Uncle and Schindler.
Karl observes that Brother Johann, in front of many people, said that after the Akademie was done, he would get rid of Schindler. Schindler himself knows this from an eyewitness. “Drive me from the house?” Schindler asks. “One is only accustomed to getting rid of bugs.” At the theater, Johann told total strangers sitting next to him, “He is my brother.” Schindler had heard the same thing from the poet Samuel Saphir (1802-1825), who was seated next to Johann, but he didn’t think anything malicious about it, until he heard how Johann behaved towards Ludwig, as if he were Johann’s property.
Schindler suggests that when Beethoven moves to Penzing, he should take along the “old woman,” Barbara Holzmann. “She has everything that she needs close by, and if she has a helper in addition, then she’ll do it as well.”
Ludwig asks Schindler who his friend was last night that visited the apartment after the concert. Schindler identifies him as Joseph Hüttenbrenner, who works in the Court Chancellery under Count Saurau. He knows Count Lichnowsky as an acquaintance from Graz. Saurau wanted to see Beethoven’s gold medal given to him by King Louis XVIII of France, but Schindler told him that Beethoven did not want it going out of his hands again. [It had been damaged by handling once already.]
Ludwig is annoyed that so much of his life is affected by the actions of such people. Schindler tells him, “So be it! But Austria cannot sit in judgment over you! Fate has designated it so! You would not have your Karl without these people, and who knows what else!.” Beethoven still doesn’t like it, and Schindler tells him that such things are easy to change, if one has the will to change them. It is not for the Kings of France or England; they are not the kings of Beethoven, but the people of England and France are for Beethoven.
Five o’clock rolls around, and Schindler and Karl head to the theater box office. Schindler tells Beethoven that he will bring round Schuppanzigh and Umlauf for the dinner, “and we’ll pick up Your Majesty here in all submissiveness.” Beethoven decides, however, that he will come along to the theater box office with them.
Unfortunately, there was very little profit for Beethoven from this first Akademie. According to a report in the Leipzig Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung Nr.27, July 1, 1824 at 442, the gross box office income was 2,200 florins W.W. The rent for the hall and payment for the musicians and singers arranged through Duport came to 1,000 florins, so they collect a net of 1,200 florins. Out of this come the copying expense of 700 florins, and additional expenses ran about 200 florins. That leaves a mere 300 florins W.W. for Beethoven, or 120 florins C.M. This shockingly poor result will no doubt influence Beethoven’s thinking on how to arrange the finances for the second Akademie.
Conductor Michael Umlauf runs into them at the theater; he was expecting to meet bass Joseph Seipelt, who sang in last night’s concert but he only just now arrives. Beethoven in all likelihood offers his personal thanks to Seipelt for stepping in on such short notice after Preisinger bowed out only days before. Karl collects the proceeds, and goes with Uncle Ludwig and Schindler to a nearby restaurant. Karl says last night he was in the Parterre, so that he could hear well, and also to hear people’s opinions. Johann stopped him, but he’ll write his comments later.
Karl mentions that the maid, a country girl, thanks Uncle Ludwig, since she has learned a little style in his service. She would like a testimonial letter, which she can not only show to prospective employers but her parents so they can see how she has behaved herself. She has been in their service exactly one month, and she was paid last on April 11. She is now owed 8 florins, 20 kreutzers. She is sad to be leaving already; her home life is not too good. She has been in Vienna two months, which is a long time for a country girl who has always lived at home. Schindler was pleased that after the Akademie, the maid had been delighted and even remembered a few melodies.
Karl has to go back to the University, and asks his uncle for his board money.
Schindler, trying to console Beethoven over the financial recompense, continues to rhapsodize about the concert. “All the people were shattered, even crushed by the greatness of your works.” He repeats the comment that Beethoven could earn 12 to 15 thousand in London or Paris with such a concert; here in Vienna he would be lucky to get 12 to 15 hundred. “After yesterday, though, you have to see all too clearly that you are wasting your reputation if you remain within these walls any longer. In short, I have no words to express myself, as I feel the injustices against you.”
Beethoven may suggest to Schindler that he will walk with Karl to the Zum wilden Mann restaurant in the Prater tomorrow and meet them there at 2 p.m.
Conversation Book 66, 20r-22v and 12v-19v. That concludes this short but important conversation book. We will resume tomorrow with Conversation Book 67, and the celebratory dinner in the Prater.
Music publisher S.A. Steiner today announces at p.452 of today’s Wiener Zeitung (Nr.106) the publication of the latest work for pianoforte from Beethoven’s former pupil, Carl Czerny: Rondeau passioné op.68, which is marked “Allegro vivace e passionato.”
Regular readers of our column will be familiar with Professor Theodore Albrecht, whose ongoing series of the English language editions of the conversation books are the framework that this feature is built upon, with his kind permission and assistance. Prof. Albrecht has a new book on the premiere of the Ninth Symphony from Boydell & Brewer press, and there’s no better way to celebrate the bicentennial of this event than to read the detailed accounts that reconstruct and clarify the historic events leading up to these epochal concerts.
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