BEETHOVEN 200 YEARS AGO TODAY: Saturday, November 20, 1824 (very approximately)

Sometime about now, Beethoven writes an undated letter to his patron and pupil, Archduke Rudolph, begging off of today’s lesson. “Your Imperial Highness, I sincerely regret not being able to attend upon you today, both because of the adverse weather conditions affecting my catarrh condition, and because I am also very pressed to write something that must be sent on precisely because of the opportunity.” [Sieghard Brandenburg suggests this may relate to Beethoven working on the engraver’s copies of the Ninth Symphony and the Missa Solemnis. We propose this may also relate to the Waltz that Beethoven has promised to write for Carl Friedrich Müller’s charitable collection of dances, which would be more time sensitive, and seems to be the only new work that fits the description during this period.]

“Tomorrow I will definitely visit Y.I.H. again, and as I believe, since Y.I.H. is always busy, at 5 o’clock in the afternoon I would be happy to spend a few hours with Y.I.H., should Y.I.H. approve. I would ask that you please let the messenger know immediately.”

“I hope the gloomy sky will finally brighten up and the soul and body as well.”

Brandenburg Letter 1904; Anderson Letter 997. The original is in the Vienna Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde (A 84/117). Although the letter is undated, there are some clues to narrow it down. The paper is of a kind used by Beethoven between September 1824 and early 1825. It has to occur after Beethoven moved back to Vienna from Baden in early November or thereabouts, and probably has to be after November 18. The letter written that day seems to be the first time Beethoven was available to give lessons to the Archduke. The Archduke departs for his bishopric in Ölmutz on December 16, according to the December 17 Wiener Zeitung, giving us a range of a little less than a month from mid-November to mid-December. If Beethoven is writing as we suspect about the Waltz for Müller, which he finished on November 21, according to the manuscript, then this letter may have been written a day or so before that.

The daily weather reports in the Wiener Zeitung only help a little. During the time frame in question, there were two extended periods of bad weather meeting Beethoven’s brief description, with persistent fog or dense fog and rain, none of which in Vienna’s smoke-filled air would have been good for breathing by someone dealing with catarrh. These periods run from November 19 through 23, and again from November 30 through December 7. Our suggested possible date of November 20 fits the description, being the second day of uninterrupted dense fog, and there had only been a brief clearing of the weather at all since November 15th. The 5 p.m. lesson time suggested for tomorrow also comports with a Sunday, since Rudolph as a member of the clergy would have had obligations earlier in the day. But this letter could easily date from the next day, or in the early December period as well, when the miserable weather in Vienna was even more extended in duration.