BEETHOVEN 200 YEARS AGO TODAY: Sunday, May 29, 1825

Nephew Karl comes out to Baden today, presumably bringing with him the specially-lined music paper from Haslinger that his uncle had requested a couple days ago. The relationship between them seems much improved from the tense conversation earlier this week about Karl’s mother, who goes unmentioned here.

Uncle Ludwig copies down an advertisement from yesterday’s Wiener Zeitung by the Wallishauser book seller for a subscription to great Italian works, including Dante’s Divine Comedy, Joaquin Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered, and Ariosto’s Orlando furioso. The price is a fairly hefty 4 fl. 15 kr. C.M.

Karl tells his uncle that the best flour is not to be had here by the Schloss Gutenbrunn, but at the square in Baden proper. Karl asks whether his uncle has been to the theater here yet. [There is no indication that he has.]

Karl tries some of the wines that his uncle has laid in. One of them is sour. The red wine is the best of them all, but if you only have one wine, then that one is perforce the best. The Esterhazy Cellar has wine for 36 kr., which is probably also very good. But in Baden they probably cannot get anything better.

Uncle Ludwig complains about the meat not being fresh. Karl points out that it is still fairly early in the season and not a lot of people are there yet. Therefore there are not many animals being slaughtered and not everything can be fresh.

Karl reminds his uncle that they need to write to Brother Johann at some point.

Karl mentions that he will be taking the public coach back to the City because the light carriage isn’t running; the driver doesn’t go unless he has at least enough people to make for 6 florins in fares. The coach leaves at 4:30, and Karl needs to be on it since he has things he has to do back in the City yet today.

There is some discussion of Karl’s business studies at the Polytechnic. There is no training in music, he confirms for his Uncle. The end result should equip him to be a wholesaler [who often also acted as bankers and financial agents.] Some of the things he will be studying include architecture and hydraulics. Uncle Ludwig asks whether that will provide a secure financial future? Karl says that the benefits are always greater than if he had stayed with what he was studying at the university. But even with focus on financial matters, he doesn’t have to neglect spiritual and intellectual subjects. As a bookkeeper, he could earn 1,000 florins annually; he wouldn’t make that much if he had stayed at the University and become a professor. And that’s only the beginning salary; if one were to be a bookkeeper at Arnstein & Eskeles, for example, one could make 3,000 to 4,000 C.M. annually. [Certainly much more than Ludwig was earning with his compositions and his annuity.]

After Karl heads back to Vienna, Ludwig makes some addition of financial numbers. He also makes a short shopping and errand list:
+Rupprecht, concerning reprinting. [Johann Baptist Rupprecht (1776-1846), a poet, translator and imperial Censor. This might relate to a comment Brother Johann made earlier about a supposed Imperial decree that Beethoven’s works could not be reprinted without his permission.]

• Hymn of Thanks of a Sick Person to God upon his recovery; Feeling renewed strength and reawakened feelings. [a draft of the title to the third movement of the op.132 quartet, the Heiliger Dankgesang.]
  +Sealing wax.
  +Blotting paper.

Housekeeper Barbara Holzmann writes that the light carriage only runs to Baden and back again on Sunday afternoons, as Karl wishes.

Conversation Book 89, 25r-28r.