BEETHOVEN 200 YEARS AGO TODAY: Thursday, January 5, 1826

Beethoven writes up an errand list this morning:

• Buttons +
• Black string.
• Gloves.
  [The following are written with a blunt pencil:]
• Gloves. [repeated]
• The authentic license.
• Night candles.
• Coffee +

Nephew Karl comes to visit, probably between noon and 2 p.m. They are dealing with linens and Karl makes a number of financial calculations. They need one ell for each cloth. The servant cannot be trusted with measuring anything, as Karl has to measure everything again afterwards. Uncle Ludwig can have the linens picked up. then Karl can do the measuring tomorrow. It will make the separation easier for Karl if Ludwig takes a hemp string along to the linen merchant and ask him to arrange it according to the yardstick. Again, there will need to be one ell for each cloth. The servant can be sent to pick up the linens as soon as Uncle Ludwig wants.

There is some discussion of noodles or frittaten that are cut thinly and added to soup; in Vienna they are called Eingetrapfen.

Karl talked to Frau Schlemmer, who is continuing her late husband’s copying business. She thinks that these things cost very little. [It is unclear what Karl is referencing, but she may be complaining that her late husband did not charge enough for his work.]

There is some discussion of Dr. Johann Baptist Malfatti (1775-1859) [who will attend Beethoven in his last illness.] He is the new Russian czar’s brother-in-law; they have two sisters as wives. The wife of the czar is a Pole, and the biological sister of Frau Malfatti. [Karl is mistaken as to the identity of the czar; he’s describing the czar’s younger brother Constantine, not the new Czar Nicholas I.]

The carpenter comes to Beethoven’s apartment. Karl suggests that he fasten the door on the chest.

Karl thinks that if his uncle begins to deal with Mathias Artaria, as Holz has suggested, that will open new sources of commissions; likewise Prince Galitzin in Russia. Holz is supposed to come at 5 p.m. today. The housekeeper bought a small chicken for dinner, at a cost of 30 kreutzers.

Karl goes to his afternoon classes. Holz comes, presumably at 5 p.m. or so, after his work day concludes. He needs to be in the City at 6 p.m., so he cannot stay long. He told Artaria that he can have the quartet op.130. “Must I give it to Artaria on Monday [January 9]? I made the condition that he allow no one to play it before it is published. I told him [that the quartet is to be performed] by Schuppanzigh.” Artaria wants it to be published by Easter.

Holz will come tomorrow [January 6, Epiphany, which is a holiday so he will not have work] and bring with him part of the copy for Galitzin to proofread; then Beethoven can tell him what other conditions he wants to impose on Artaria.

Beethoven continues his errand list after Holz departs:

• N.B. The shoemaker took another half-pair of boot-spreaders with him.
• Holz: In the morning, immediately to the Police.
• Ribbon silk.
• Tailor.

Conversation Book 101, 31r-35v.

Today in Berlin, in the first of the subscription concerts led by composer and violinist Karl Möser (1774-1851), “the excellent quartets by Mozart, Beethoven and Haydn were superbly performed by Messrs. Möser, Ries, Lenz and Kraus. Leipzig Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung (Nr.6) of February 8, 1826 at 104.

Franz Liszt begins a tour of the French provinces today, accompanied by his father, Adam Liszt. Franz gives the first of four performances at the Grand Theatre in Bordeaux.