BEETHOVEN 200 YEARS AGO TODAY: Sunday, February 13, 1825
Brother Johann visits Ludwig today. Apparently Johann was ill with some stomach upset, since he says he didn’t step outside at all yesterday, because he still didn’t trust himself. Or the fierce wind might still be raging that had frightened him so several days earlier. The Wiener Zeitung does indicates the winds are still strong today, a fact confirmed later by one of Beethoven’s visitors.
The flutist Georg Bayer (1773-1833) at the Theater an der Wien came to visit Johann yesterday. He will come again to see Ludwig with a deputation very soon. They want to commission an opera from Ludwig, and will pay whatever he desires. Ludwig asks Johann to deal with them, and he says he will do that himself tomorrow.
Nephew Karl tells Uncle Ludwig that a housekeeper is here; she was sent by the old housekeeper, Barbara Holzmann, several days ago. Karl has written down her address. Ludwig doesn’t want to deal with the servant situation now. Karl presses him, and he asks again who it is. “The one who was here several days ago.” Ludwig wonders whether the current housekeeper intends to stay. Karl says, “One would ask quite frankly: is she staying or not?”
Ludwig shows Johann the ad he copied yesterday for the apartment with stable and carriages. Johann says he will look into it; he still has yesterday’s Wiener Zeitung at home.
Johann mentions that whenever his wife Therese visits Count Lichnowksy’s wife, who she has been friends with for a long time, Lichnowsky always asks what Ludwig is doing.
The housekeeper situation is still up in the air. Ludwig gave the current one notice, so if she wants to go, her 14 days are up on Tuesday February 15. Ludwig asks how the new housekeeper knows Holzmann. It turns out she actually doesn’t know her at all, and Holzmann didn’t send her. Someone might also come from one of the ads they have placed in the Zeitung. They ask the current housekeeper to put her plans into writing for them, and she says she will do so.
A wine seller comes to the door offering wine. Ludwig for some reason has difficulty understanding what Johann and Karl are writing, because they have to write down who it is three times.
Later in the afternoon, copyist Ferdinand Wolanek comes to the apartment. He would like to get paid for his copying [probably of the Ninth Symphony for Ries, given the number of pages he describes.] His fee is 15 kreuzers per bifolim [i.e., four pages]. He copied both the full score and the parts of the first movement, which comes to 80 bifolia [or 320 pages, so approximately 20 florins at 15 kreutzers per bifolium.]
Probably about 3:30 p.m., Wiener Zeitung editor Joseph Bernard stops by Beethoven’s apartment on the way to the Schuppanzigh Quartet concert today at the Musikverein. He says the wind is raging outside. They discuss the poem that won the prize for the Emperor’s birthday. Bernard is dismissive: “The prize-winning poem is strictly mediocre and more a speech than a poem.” Every journal submitted a poem in the contest. The Wanderer submitted two. Beethoven appears to express some annoyance at this unannounced visitor, and Bernard takes his leave. “I just wanted to see how you are, and now will go.”
Johann and Karl also attend the Schuppanzigh Quartet concert. The exact works performed are not known, but Johann mentions afterwards that as usual there was one piece by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. “The Haydn pleased; the Mozart even more so, because it must have been one of his most beautiful. Yours pleased so much that the Menuet, after stormy applause, was repeated by universal demand; everything proceeded with the greatest delight and joy. During the repeat, Schuppanzigh sweated a great deal where he had much to do.” [Johann has previously commented that Schuppanzigh often gets drenched in sweat by the end of a concert.]
Karl pipes in that Linke, the cellist, played very well in Uncle Ludwig’s quartet and was applauded for it. Ludwig comments that it’s nice to have his pieces played every now and then. Karl protests that “Almost all concerts begin with an Overture of yours.” [This is an exaggeration, but the Overtures, especially to Prometheus and Fidelio, do, as regular readers know, appear onstage with some regularity.] Ludwig doesn’t want to have to go to these concerts. Karl tells him he never has to go along.
They go to a nearby restaurant for evening supper. The dish tonight is Styrian capon. The tab for the three of them is 3 and 1/2 florins.
The Schuppanzigh Quartet concerts continue to be the topic of discussion. They will be increasingly well attended, as Beethoven’s new quartets begin to appear. Ludwig asks whether they always do just Haydn, Mozart and himself. Johann answers that since they did the Spohr Octet [Double Quartet], they have not done anything other than by the three of them. Ludwig comments that the Viennese did not understand an unidentified one of his works. Karl agrees that only now do they understand it better.
Karl shuffles through the newspapers, and finds an article saying that the story about traveling menagerie owner Van Aken being decapitated by one of his lions was untrue. He could not do his act as usual; he wanted to lie down with the lion, but the Police forbade it.
In the Augsburg newspapers, Karl sees an article about the flooding in St. Petersburg. The Neva River is to be walled in so that no flooding can take place in the future. [The city had flooded badly in mid-November of last year. As editor Theodore Albrecht notes, Vienna itself was still subject to flooding from the unregulated flow of the Danube, so this was not just a foreign report of idle interest.]
Conversation Book 84, 36r-40v.