BEETHOVEN 200 YEARS AGO TODAY: Sunday, January 8, 1826
Nephew Karl and unpaid assistant Karl Holz meet at Beethoven’s apartment, probably in the late morning or early afternoon. Nephew Karl mentions that Johann only comes to take care of payment of debts. He uses Ludwig’s oven, and that way he saves wear and tear on his own. His brother-in-law, baker Leopold Obermayer, is indebted to him for 5 or 6 thousand florins; as a result Johann is not charged any rent for his apartment. Johann bought the building in Linz on condition that he be allowed to use the apartment in it for life. Last year, he said he would move his apothecary in Linz to the other side of the Danube, where there is currently no apothecary. He also talked about letting a young physician use an apartment on the condition that he send all the sick people to Johann. He comes to Ludwig’s in the evening to eat himself full. “He must not have eaten much at midday, because he always had an appetite like a wolf.”
Karl brings up Friedrich Wähner (1786-1839), a Protestant preacher and eccentric critic. The police had expelled him from the City. Karl would like to know what happened to him, after being sent away on foot and with his knapsack on his back, through the City gates. He told his friends that he will go to meet his fortune on foot. [Wähner will return to Vienna in 1835.]
Holz suggests that since they are smoking long Turkish pipes, they should make a turban for Tobias Haslinger; he would look very comical that way.
Reports came yesterday [January 7] that a terrible revolution arose in Russia amongst the military, who had sworn an oath to the youngest brother of Alexander I, Constantine, rather than the new czar, Nicholas I. [Approximately 1,000 liberals were killed as the czar’s troops fired on them during the abortive Decembrist Revolution on December 26, 1825.] Nephew Karl cynically says, “No person will be happier than Herr Nicolaus.” Holz declares he would not want to trade places with the Emperor of the Barbarians.
The proofreading of op.130 is already finished now; Holz took the last movement of it to his sister Anna (born 1802), and she consumed it with devotion after he told her it was by Beethoven.
Holz suggests that they should meet with poet Ignaz Castelli sometime.
He thinks that Beethoven’s collected works ought to be published. “I see it all too well. I also do not comprehend how, so to speak, you can ruminate over a single page.” Beethoven asks him why he thinks that. “It hinders the flow of new ideas.”
Karl says that the transition in the theme in the beginning of the first quartet [op.127] pleases Brother Johann so much. Karl asks whether Uncle Ludwig has read Grillparzer’s Melusine. He would gladly copy it out for Ludwig. Uncle Ludwig has read it; Grillparzer wanted him to write an opera upon it, and he found many lovely things in it. Holz observes, “fort bien! [Very well!] Genius is like a kaleidoscope; one may turn it 1,000 times, so that he sees something new 1,000 times, without it being used up.
Holz goes to the Schuppanzigh Quartet concert where he plays second violin; as usual, Nephew Karl probably attends the concert. At this performance, Beethoven’s first quartet, op.18/1 in F major is heard, as well as an unidentified Haydn quartet in E-flat, and Mozart’s clarinet quintet in A, K.581, featuring Joseph Friedlowsky (1777-1859), whom Beethoven knew well and liked. Leipzig Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung Nr.7, February 15, 1826 at 118.
Holz returns to Beethoven’s apartment after the concert; Nephew Karl goes to his rooms to prepare for his classes tomorrow morning. Holz reports that Schuppanzigh played well today, and that the Mozart clarinet quintet was also on the program. “For a long time, Mylord [Schuppanzigh] made Piringer anxious about the new Quartet [op.130.] He is always playing us off each other at the rehearsals, and never knows where we made mistakes.” Ignaz Mosel was also at the concert today.
Beethoven suggests that they have some supper, but Holz declines, being still full from mid-day dinner.
They discuss Napoleon Bonaparte, and Holz opines, “Bonaparte was a great man, and such a protector of the Arts will not come again soon. He discovered what can elevate the Minds of Man. His son [Franz Joseph Karl, Duke of Reichstadt] is intelligent.
Holz reports that in North America there was a monstrous forest fire once again. [He probably means the Miramichi fire in New Brunswick, which destroyed much of the northern part of the province in October 1825, and is one of the largest forest fires ever recorded in North America, covering nearly 4 million acres. Holz had mentioned this fire on January 3 as well, when the known scope of this fire was far smaller, only about 123 square miles, or 78,720 acres.]
Holz expresses his contempt for the Greeks. “It is incomprehensible how a people, that once was so superb, could now sink so low. Theft was worse than murder to them in bygone days.”
Holz says it is too bad about poet and playwright Theodor Körner (1781-1813). [He had applied to be a volunteer soldier and was killed in skirmish with Napoleon’s troops.] “That is the lot of the beautiful people on the Earth. Castelli had the same idea already. For this purpose, he wanted to write a poem that a common invalid should acquire and declaim.”
Beethoven asks whether pianist Dorothea von Ertmann (1781-1849) is in Vienna. Holz tells him she is now in Hungary. Holz mentions that she often played at Count Nikolaus Zmeskall’s soirées. “One doesn’t hear and see anything more from Zmeskall….His quartet that he began 20 years ago is still not finished.” [Zmeskall had been one of Beethoven’s longest-term friends in Vienna.]
Conversation Book 101, 41v-48v. This concludes Conversation Book 101. Conversation Book 102 picks up again in eight days, suggesting that a book is missing in between.