BEETHOVEN 200 YEARS AGO TODAY: Thursday, December 16, 1824
Happy Beethoven’s Birthday! The composer turns 54 today, but so far as can be seen from the conversation books, he does nothing to celebrate the occasion. Gone are the convivial fish dinners he hosted with friends just a few years ago, possibly another indication of his increasingly profound deafness and isolation.
Ludwig makes a note in the conversation book that he needs to buy sugar. Later in the afternoon, he reads newspapers in a coffee house with Nephew Karl. They must be very near the apartment, because they can hear the maid screaming. [It is no wonder the landlady wants them gone.] Beethoven copies advertisements for stoves that can heat several rooms as well as the kitchen, and a shop in the Stock im Eisenplatz that sells cream at one or two florins per measure, in full or half bottles.
He also notes the shop Zum Todtenkopf [At the Sign of the Death’s Head] in the Bognergasse, selling razor strops and soap powder in the English style. The soap powder is 18 kreutzers W.W. per packet, while the 9 inch strops are 3 florins, 20 kreutzers W.W.
Karl is surprised that the calendar/almanac, Jurende’s Patriotic Pilgrims, isn’t for sale by now; perhaps it is shut down. [The calendar, which was due out at the end of November, will not be offered for sale in the Vienna newspapers until December 27.] Karl also observes that the maid has now gone silent.
Beethoven turns to read the Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung of December 12. Of particular note to him are some advertisements from bookshops in Berlin and Prague. The first is for Theodor Heinsius’ Teut, oder Lehrbuch der gesammten deutschen Sprachwissenschaft, 3rd expanded edition in 5 volumes [Teut, or the Textbook of German Linguistics.] The other book that catches his eye is Gemälde der phisischen Welt [Paintings of the Physical World], with entertaining representations of astronomy and geography, by Johann Gottfried Sommer, professor of the Conservatory of Music in Prague. The fifth volume of this series, History of the Earth’s Surface is just now out.
Karl is getting impatient and asks whether his uncle will be finished soon. They seem to leave shortly thereafter, since Ludwig copies no more advertisements today.
Back at the apartment, the maid, in tears, appears to be having some kind of mental breakdown. Karl says, “If she continues to cry, she will be locked in the room here, and she can cry in there. She claims she has hit her in the head with the liver!” [It is unclear from Karl’s writing whether the maid hit the housekeeper with the liver, or vice versa.] The maid slams the door so hard that the windows rattle. Uncle Ludwig cannot believe what Karl is saying, so Karl repeats, “Her head.”
The maid is ready to quit but Karl says his uncle should tell her she cannot just go whenever it occurs to her in her fury. Rather, she has to stay until they find another woman. That could be done in two days, he thinks. Uncle Ludwig thinks it better that they just get rid of her now. Karl concedes the point; if she stays, she will just gossip everywhere that she is leaving.
The maid ends up staying after all, since she is just there temporarily anyway, but it makes the search for a replacement a bit more urgent. This melodramatic scene probably contributes to the displeasure that the landlady has over her noisy tenants in the Beethoven apartment, a sentiment shared by their neighbors.
Conversation Book 78, 1r-3r.
Beethoven’s patron Archduke Rudolph departs Vienna today at noon, as reported by the December 17, 1824 Wiener Zeitung (Nr.289 at 1231, and similarly reported in the Brünner Zeitung of December 21, Nr.352 at 1451) for Olmütz, the seat of his archbishopric, for the Christmas holiday season.