BEETHOVEN 200 YEARS AGO TODAY: Sunday, August 29, 1824 (approximately)

Carl Czerny visits Beethoven in Baden. The exact date is not known, but there are some clues from his brief but intriguing account of the visit. As related to Otto Jahn, “In 1824 I went with Beethoven once to a coffee-house in Baden where we found many newspapers on the table. In one I read an announcement of Walter Scott’s Life of Napoleon and showed it to Beethoven. ‘Napoleon,’ he said, ‘earlier I couldn’t have tolerated him. Now I think completely otherwise.'”

Czerny is plainly mistaken on one count, since Scott’s Life of Napoleon Buonaparte, Emperor of the French, was not completed or published in English until 1827, and Beethoven was already dead by then. However, around this time period there are advertisements in the Wiener Zeitung for another book on Napoleon, which may have given rise to the discussion Czerny relates.

The ad in question is placed by book dealer J.B. Wallishausser, for the book Napoleons Feldzug in Rußland 1812 [Napoleon’s Campaign in Russia 1812], translated from the French Histoire de l’expédition de Russie by Georges, Marquis de Chambray, in two volumes, with new plans, maps and explanations by L. Blesson. This German version of Chambray’s account of Napoleon’s disastrous invasion of Russia had recently been published in Berlin by Duncker & Humboldt. Wallishauser quotes a review from the Jena General Literary Review that commends the author as being a man of great insight in the field of war, free from the enthusiasms of most French writers when they recount the deeds of their countrymen. Chambray makes good use of the correspondence of Napoleon’s chief of staff, Louis-Alexandre Berthier (1753-1815). “We often learn about Napoleon’s motives, the guiding idea behind measures that were only half-executed or not carried out at all, and what is also extremely important, the strength of the French army at every key moment, especially in the various periods of the retreat. The author also has, if not complete, fairly accurate information about the Russian army. This does not, however, exclude the wish that we may also receive a work regarding the Russians like the one presented here. The largest and most momentous military undertaking of modern times would then be clearly before us.”

Assuming Czerny is not also mistaken about the year of the visit, this rather prominent advertisement seems a very likely candidate for prompting Beethoven’s comment. The first appearance of this advertisement in the Wiener Zeitung is on Friday, August 27, 1824, but from Czerny’s description of a pile of newspapers, there was surely a mixture of old and new. The Vienna newspapers typically arrived in Baden on the next day after publication.

This advertisement is repeated in the Wiener Zeitung editions of September 1 and 2, 13 and 15, so the days shortly after those dates are other reasonable possibilities for Czerny’s visit. However, since there is no extant conversation book covering today, Czerny does not appear in Conversation Books 74 and 75, which cover the September dates, and a Sunday would be the most likely day of the week for Czerny to be able to make this trip given his busy lesson schedules, today seems a very probable candidate.

In any event, this turnaround in Beethoven’s opinion of the man who declared himself Emperor of France and invaded Vienna is noteworthy. Beethoven of course famously was so outraged by that 1804 declaration that he crossed out the dedication of the Third Symphony to Napoleon vigorously enough to tear completely through the paper. It’s a shame Czerny did not say more about Beethoven’s views on the subject.