BEETHOVEN 200 YEARS AGO TODAY: Sunday, May 16, 1824

One of Frau Schlemmer’s copyists comes to Beethoven’s apartment this morning. [The copyist likely is here to pick up the score of the Terzet Tremate, empi, tremate, op.116, since orchestral parts and solo vocalist parts will be required to be extracted, if it is to be performed at the second Akademie.] Beethoven appears to ask him whether alto Caroline Unger and soprano Henriette Sontag are still in the City (possibly to confirm that they were available to sing in the second Akademie.) The copyist says he is meeting Unger this afternoon at 3 o’clock [perhaps to deliver a part for something unrelated to Beethoven’s concert]. Sontag is still in the country [Karl mentioned earlier that she was supposed to be back in Vienna tomorrow.] In any event, all of the remaining choral parts will be brought before Friday’s rehearsal for the Akademie. The copyist mentions that he was at the Kärntnertor Theater last night. Beethoven asks again about Sontag, and the copyist said her servant could not tell him where she was.

Beethoven makes several notes to himself about the second Akademie:

Concerning more violins. [He may be rethinking Piringer’s idea of a somewhat pared-down orchestra, especially if the Akademie is to be in the rather dry Kärntnertor as opposed to the more resonant Redoutensaal.]
Concerning the Zeitung. [It is unclear whether Beethoven means the Wiener Zeitung, or a generic newspaper.]

Violinist Joseph Böhm, who is helping with the preparations for the second Akademie, comes to Beethoven’s apartment in the afternoon. Duport has a plan for the concert, but Böhm doesn’t know what it is. He suggests Beethoven go in person to see Duport, so he can see what he says.

The banker Eskeles will be in contact with Beethoven about a debt liquidation. Böhm asks whether Brother Johann is coming. Ludwig is not expecting him. Böhm comments that Johann understands nothing about music.

Former unpaid assistant Anton Schindler shows up while Böhm is still there. Böhm tells him that Duport has a plan for the concert, and Böhm is proposing Beethoven go to hear it. Schindler suggests that Beethoven “may as well at least listen to it. It will show you right away what is to be looked out for.” Beethoven asks whether Schindler knows anything about it, but he denies that Duport said anything about him as to what kind of plan he has in mind.

Böhm asks whether Beethoven knew that they are proposing to have the Missa solemnis as part of the Concerts spirituel. [That likely is news to him. In any event, that performance does not occur until March, 1827.] Böhm, irritated, mentions that on Sunday May 9, Brother Johann told him [Böhm] that he would be the cause if the second concert did not turn out well. Böhm insists that he has done nothing without Ludwig knowing about it. Beethoven makes a remark about the concert not happening within the week after the first one. Böhm, taking umbrage, asks who is the cause that it did not happen? Did Beethoven know that he could have gotten the Redoutensaal a week ago at no cost?

Beethoven denies knowing anything about this, but Schindler chimes in to remind him that he told Beethoven that option when he came from Prince Trautmannsdorf, and heard that the concert might not be allowed on a Norma Tag [Friday, May 14.] But he is giving Beethoven the Redoutensaal at midday on Sunday [May 23] without any special conditions. “You must have overlooked it, however. It will be found in your notebook.” [No such discussion from Schindler about that conversation with Trauttmansdorf is found in the surviving conversation books. Furthermore, as of yesterday afternoon the plan was for the concert to be on May 18, so something happened that is not reflected in the conversation books.]

Beethoven blames Schindler anyway. Schindler shrugs it off: “You may not think badly of me because of this, because I am no Evangelist for you. You can surely do, however as you yourself wish. Just don’t place all the troubles in the world upon my head, because I did what I could do, by God, given the whole complexity of circumstances. Also, you don’t know much of what happened in the meantime–which you also may not know, otherwise you would have had to let it all go to the Devil.”

Schindler continues, “I had to deal with people whom I did not know at all, who are insignificant and yet who, to a certain extent, were already infected. Not only insignificant singers, chamber and hall guards, etc., for we would have had no stands at the rehearsal on Thursday [May 6], because the Saal attendant claimed the stands for himself, which as I learned, really did belong to him for the most part. By complaining vigorously though, I succeeded in getting him to leave them there, without charging for them, etc. etc.”

Joseph Böhm recognizes that nothing good can come from his remaining there between these two, and he departs, saying “I must beg your pardon.” Schindler, recognizing he has said too much, considering he was on thin ice already, leaves as well.

Conversation Book 67, 36v-40r.

Regular readers of our column will be familiar with Professor Theodore Albrecht, whose ongoing series of the English language editions of the conversation books are the framework that this feature is built upon, with his kind permission and assistance. Prof. Albrecht has a new book on the premiere of the Ninth Symphony from Boydell & Brewer press, and there’s no better way to celebrate the bicentennial of this event than to read the detailed accounts that reconstruct and clarify the historic events leading up to these epochal concerts.

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