BEETHOVEN 200 YEARS AGO TODAY: Thursday, July 14, 1825 (approximately)

The string quartet op.132, which has been percolating for over a year, is now progressing quickly. By about now, the first four movements are complete, and the final movements are well along if not nearly finished. In the next week or so, Beethoven will start arranging for movements of the quartet to be copied.

Beethoven still, however, has not decided on the proper wording of the headings for the third movement Heiliger Dankgesang, and will continue to try out different phrasings for those headings over the rest of the month.

Beethoven now is making his housekeeper and other servants maintain financial records of monies received and account for all of their expenditures. Beethoven then carefully reviews them, makes corrections as necessary, and then once he was satisfied as to the examination, crosses them out. The Bonn Beethovenhaus has one of these leaves covering July 14, 15 and 16, 1825 (BH 55), which can be seen here:

https://www.beethoven.de/de/media/view/6504007547748352/scan/0

The entries for July 14 are in the upper right of the sheet as presented by the Beethovenhaus; those for July 15 in the lower right, while July 16 is on the reverse side, lower left. On this same sheet are the entries for August 5-7. The fact the similar leaf held by the Ira F. Brilliant Center at San Jose State University covers July 12-13 and August 8-9, seen in our July 12 entry, indicates that these leaves were once folded over in the form of a little booklet, and this leaf was enclosed by the San Jose leaf.