BEETHOVEN 200 YEARS AGO TODAY: Thursday, August 10, 1826 (approximately)

After working on the quartet op.135 and finishing the proofreading on the latest version of the op.130 quartet, Beethoven does some financial computations.

Unpaid assistant Karl Holz picks up the score of op.130 and delivers it to publisher Mathias Artaria. Later in the day, Holz comes back to see Beethoven, probably around 2 p.m. dinner time. Artaria would be pleased if Beethoven would mark the appropriate places in the Grosse Fuge finale of the quartet with rehearsal letters for the use of dilettantes when they rehearse it. Why would they need that, Beethoven asks. “If they come apart, or things go wrong, then they can repeat from the beginning of the letters.” Beethoven would like to talk to Artaria. Holz offers to send him to the Schwarzspanierhaus apartment tomorrow after dinner; or after 5 p.m., Holz can come with him.

Beethoven asks whether Holz was able to collect on the interest coupons at the Vienna Deposit Office. Unfortunately, there were problems. “Once again, they wanted me to come another day; but I said that I myself am a civil servant and cannot waste any unnecessary time on such matters; also, that I knew where to complain because of this treatment. That helped and finally they gave me the coupons.”

Beethoven is worried that there will be gossip about him and Karl and their frequent quarrels. Holz acknowledges that is not baseless, “Now all these stories will be reheated because of this unhappy incident with Karl, who has become the talk of the town. Why, yesterday a complete stranger told me all about the criminal affair of Karl’s mother.” [In 1811 Johanna van Beethoven had been sentenced to one month in police custody for embezzlement.] Beethoven wants to take some kind of action, but Holz cautions that Karl needs to be freed first. Beethoven is not alone in his unhappiness; “The whole city shares in the matter, not because of him, but because of you.” Beethoven asks whether he was too harsh with Karl; Holz answers “Too soft.”

Changing the subject, Holz mentions that yesterday [August 9] the op.130 quartet was rehearsed at Artaria’s. “Tobias [Haslinger] had also been invited. We played it twice. Artaria was so delighted, and when he heard the Fugue for the third time, he found it very comprehensible.” Do his other recent quartets also still get played, Beethoven asks. “At [conductor/violinist Ferdinand] Piringer’s, the first quartet [op.127 in E-flat] is being played frequently; but there are always 5 present; one has to set the beat.”

Beethoven seems reconciled to housekeeper Marie Stiegel, but he still needs a kitchen maid. Holz offers, “If you need a maid again, I’ll recommend you one who is very good and hard-working. She has no service yet and works with her sister for my parents. She has very good qualities.” Do you genuinely think so, Beethoven asks. “Your Herr Brother [Johann] also agreed.”

Beethoven asks how much the interest payment was on Karl’s capital. Holz tells him 27 florins 30 kreutzers C.M.

Holz offers to make a copy of an unidentified work; that will save Beethoven the trouble of proofreading. What will he copy from, Beethoven asks. “From the score.” The version published by the Bureau de Musique (Hoffmeister) in Leipzig, Holz tells him. [Hoffmeister & Kühnel, under the name “Bureau de Musique” had published dozens of Beethoven works.]

Conversation Book 117, 12v-15r.