BEETHOVEN 200 YEARS AGO TODAY: Thursday, August 11, 1825

Beethoven’s friend Tobias Haslinger comes to visit him today in Baden, bearing various periodicals and musical newspapers. He inquires about how the new quartet, op.132, is coming along. There is no trace of this conversation in Conversation Book 91, suggesting once again that it was being used alongside a hypothetical second book, which is now lost.

Beethoven also writes a letter from Baden to Nephew Karl in Vienna. “Dear Son! I am in mortal terror over the quartet [op.132]. Holz took the 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th movements with him. [Beethoven is counting the short Più allegro at the end of the fourth movement as the fifth movement here.] The first bars of the 3rd movement remained here. The number of bars here is 13. I hear nothing from Holz. I wrote to him yesterday; otherwise he usually writes. What a terrible happenstance if he has lost it. He drinks heavily, between you and me. Calm me down as quickly as possible. You can find out [cellist Joseph] Linke’s address from Hasslinger [sic]. Hasslinger was here today, very friendly, he brought the notebooks [presumably more conversation books] and other things, asked very much to be allowed to publish the new quartets.”

“Don’t get involved in any nonsense [What appears to be “Schindler” is crossed out] etc. It will lead to nasty things. For God’s sake, just calm me down about the quartet. Horrible loss, the draft is written on nothing but small scraps of paper; I will never be able to write the whole thing out like this again. Your faithful father.”

Beethoven as he usually does, has an additional thought he leaves in a postscript: “I also inform you that next Sunday and Monday are two holidays, so you can arrange yourself accordingly. On this occasion, perhaps you could come back with me on Saturday evening if I were to come to Vienna, since then you will have the use of the whole morning.”

Brandenburg Letter 2029; Anderson Letter 1410. Beethoven’s description of the quartet being on small scraps of paper no doubt refers to the fragmentary continuity drafts he would have to use to reconstruct the quartet, if the autograph itself were to go missing. But Holz did not lose the score, and that autograph is now held by the Berlin Staatsbibliothek, Mus. ms. autogr. Beethoven Mendelssohn-Stiftung 11, and can be seen here:

https://digital.staatsbibliothek-berlin.de/werkansicht/?PPN=PPN749587156