BEETHOVEN 200 YEARS AGO TODAY: Saturday, November 19, 1825

Nephew Karl comes to visit Beethoven this afternoon. He thought that cellist Joseph Linke would have visited Uncle Ludwig by now, but he has not. Karl offers the excuse that Linke has been very preoccupied with the quartet op.132.

The idea of a possible Akademie benefit concert using the Ninth Symphony and Missa Solemnis comes up again. Ludwig suggests that they might use the small Redoutensaal. Karl asks whether the rental fee is very high for that. [The small Redoutensaal can only hold a small fraction of what the large one does, and it was rejected earlier because there is not room for both orchestra and chorus.]

Karl expects that the Schuppanzigh Quartet concert tomorrow afternoon will be very full again. Uncle Ludwig’s new op.132 quartet is to be played again, as are String Quartet in D op.7/1 by Andreas Romberg (1767-1821) and Mozart’s Quintet in C minor K.406.

This concludes Conversation Book 98. The next book does not begin until December 4, a period of two weeks. There is almost certainly a missing conversation book or two covering that time. A few stray pages that appear to belong to one of those missing books are held by the Beethovenhaus, and they will be discussed on the days that they appear to apply to. Chances seem good that the missing conversation book was dismembered and various leaves were handed out as souvenirs, possibly by Schindler.