BEETHOVEN 200 YEARS AGO TODAY: Saturday, September 2, 1820

Conversation Book 16, leaves 44r through 45r

Reading yesterday’s Intelligenzblatt in a Mödling coffee house, Beethoven copies ads for three apartments, plus a house for sale. He also writes down that the book Handbuch für Vormünder [Handbook for Guardians] (Leipzig, 1804) is available at Sammer’s bookshop. This ad does not appear in the Intelligenzblatt, but Beethoven may be recollecting that he saw it elsewhere.

Visiting the Mödling post office, Beethoven finds yesterday’s now-lost letter from Archduke Rudolph complaining that he has not seen the composer since returning to Vienna from his summer palace. Beethoven quickly responds to the Archduke, explaining that he was sick since Tuesday evening. He had hoped he would be well enough by Friday to pay his respects, but that turned out not to be the case. Beethoven hopes to call upon the Archduke on Monday or very early in the morning on Tuesday.

Even though he had actually been house hunting for several days in the rain, Beethoven partially shifts the blame for his absence to the Archduke himself, writing that he got sick taking an open post chaise to visit the Archduke, “so as not to miss seeing I.K.H. [Ihro Kaiserliche Hoheit, or Your Imperial Highness]. During the day it rained and when I drove out here it was almost cold. Nature seems indeed to have taken umbrage at my foolishness or audacity and to have punished me for my stupidity–May Heaven bestow on I.K.H. everything that is good, beautiful, sacred and blessed, and grant me your gracious favor!”

[Anderson Letter 1032, Brandenburg 1409. The original is in the clutches of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna, A 84/121.]