BEETHOVEN 200 YEARS AGO TODAY: Thursday, August 26, 1824

Beethoven is back in Baden and writes to his longtime friend Frau Nannette Streicher, who is also in Baden. “I received your invitation with pleasure and will accept it. I cannot be a burden to you today or tomorrow, as I must go to Vienna despite the bad weather. Your patent piano probably doesn’t need my appraisal at all, but for my own sake I have long wanted to become acquainted with it. In a few days I will ask when you are home and give myself the pleasure of visiting you.” In a postscript, Beethoven adds that he has received the letter to Elise Müller. [He may have meant from Elise Müller, who had visited him several times in 1822 with her father.]

Brandenburg Letter 1866; Anderson Letter 807. The location of the original is unknown; the text is from Kalischer’s transcription (Nr.651), from the same source as TDR IV, p.490 (Nr.15), but editor Sieghard Brandenburg considered Kalischer to be more precise. The letter has no year stated, but from the context of the conversation books for early September, and the fact both Beethoven and Streicher were in Baden at this time, it seems highly likely that it dates from 1824, and not 1817 as most other editions of the letters have conjectured.

Nannette Streicher came from a family of piano makers, and married one as well. Their son Johann Baptist Streicher had been issued a patent on July 16, 1823 for a grand piano, whose hammers hit the strings from above in order to achieve a stronger sound. This was based on the English model. He was issued a second patent on January 14, 1824 for an upright patent pianoforte that permitted octave doubling and shifting through means of a pedal. Both of these instruments will be demonstrated to Beethoven in about a week.