BEETHOVEN 200 YEARS AGO TODAY: Thursday, March 2, 1826

Beethoven makes his usual errand list this morning:

2 small nails on the window—locksmith.
A hole in the drawer—carpenter.
Tomorrow, also with the building superintendent—about the apartment.
Holz—send earnest money tomorrow morning [presumably for the new housekeeper, or her sister who is coming for an interview as a maid tomorrow].
The shutters in the bedroom must be patched.
The locksmith, at the top, a hinge for the chest. [Beethoven originally wrote “carpenter,” then corrected it to “locksmith.”]
Overture, can be supplied with metronome marks. [Consecration of the House]
Quartet, likewise. [Op.127. Beethoven had been stalling on providing the metronome marks for the works he had sold to Schott’s in Mainz, and only sent the metronome markings for the 9th Symphony in October of 1826.]
Ink.
[no entry]

He also makes a note about his Austrian National Bank shares: “After February 23, 1826, the Bank takes over the Shares as security and therefore, for a time under the observation of the loan on state paper continuous procedure at two thirds of their amount, as valued in the Stock Exchange.” [These are excerpts from an announcement in the February 24 Wiener Zeitung (Nr.45) at 204.

Unpaid assistant Karl Holz visits Beethoven later this afternoon. His friend Mathias Artaria is checking to see whether there is already a larger copperplate engraving of the Handel monument in Westminster Abbey in London. If there is not, then he will print one and publish it, as Beethoven had requested. [Probably when Beethoven met Artaria in February.]

They turn to Nephew Karl’s investments at the Magistrate’s Office, which Uncle Ludwig has been convinced would be more profitably turned into lots in the Rothschild Lottery. Holz thinks he can cash a portion of the investments out tomorrow, but he needs to make an appointment because he didn’t know the exact amount to be withdrawn. “Since now I can’t get away tomorrow, I have turned over the whole thing to a friend who has something to do in the Deposit Office every day. The one who says: why are you managing money for great musicians? The exchange from obligations to Rothschild lots can now be done with the greatest ease.” The lots are 250 florins C.M., so if you want 4 lots, that costs 1,000 florins C.M., without interest. Right now they are at 117 percent, so they cost 293 florins C.M. Beethoven appears to be confused, and Holz says he’ll bring all the details.

Talk turns to the proofreading of the op.130 quartet. Holz took the opportunity to play through the second violin part, and everything in it can be played well.

Beethoven asks about the plans for the housekeeper’s sister tomorrow. His sister Anna is handling everything. She also has offered to take over handling Beethoven’s laundry, if he wants to give her what he would otherwise pay the washerwoman. Holz thinks it would be better, since they know her and she would be responsible if something got lost. Holz mentions his father, who is 71, drinks nothing but coffee; his mother is 66 but she still doesn’t have a single gray hair.

Beethoven asks what the housekeeper is making for dinner. Holz reports that it’s pork cutlets with onion sauce.

Steiner’s first printing of the Terzet Tremate, empi tremate, op.116, had problems. They did not include “All’uso di concerti” [for use at concerts] on the title page. Holz says he gave Steiner the title page that Beethoven had written out, but Steiner denied he had done so to his face. But the new title page is also human [has errors], the word “original” was left out. Steiner said, “I do not fear him.” Holz thinks Steiner is doing everything possible to separate Holz and Beethoven. “He says that you behaved like that to everyone who was around you. You needed them for a while and then you threw them out. It’s not right with him when someone tells you the truth. He told me [in Steiner’s dialect] ‘I congratulate the others; I cannot give what the others pay.’ I told him you don’t need him; every day new proposals come from foreign places, and even those from Vienna are continually more profitable.”

Count Palffy, who operated the Theater an der Wien and then went bankrupt last May, left 20,000 florins W.W. in unpaid debts in Vienna.

Beethoven thinks it may be too cold to go for a walk. Holz disagrees, “It isn’t cold at all.” Holz has a great deal of hope from the fine weather. [According to the Wiener Zeitung, it is about 48 degrees Fahrenheit and sunny, with moderate wind.] Holz has been ill and now feels better; the baths have helped him.

Holz mentions Tobias Haslinger is now a board member at the Musik-Verein. Brother Johann chats and should have said nothing about it. He seems like the judge [Don Curzio] in Mozart’s Don Giovanni.

The maid or Frau Lindner, the housekeeper, returns from shopping. She bought a pike, which Holz identifies as a male pike. The liver of that fish is called a Milchner.

Beethoven asks when Holz will come to celebrate his birthday with Beethoven; Holz says “tomorrow afternoon.”

There are still problems with the bell cord for summoning the servants. The locksmith comes to work on it, and tells them that the cord should not be pulled, except straight up and down. Otherwise the bell won’t ring. [This is consistent with other talk that the bell cord should not be pulled at an angle. Of course, since Beethoven is deaf, he can’t tell whether the bell has rung or not.]

Conversation Book 105, 42v-48v.

The Musikverein holds a chamber music concert this evening at the Sign of the Red Hedgehog. The fourth item on the program is Beethoven’s Lied aus der ferne, WoO 137. Since the lied is written for a male, the vocalist is probably tenor Ludwig Tietze, and the pianist J. Puttler, probably the same pianist identified only as Pudler, who performed the piano part of the Choral Fantasy, op.80 on December 8, 1825. Both Tietze and Puttler took part in the concert according to the handbill reproduced here, courtesy of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde. This performance of the song is mentioned in passing in the overview of the 16 evening entertainments of the Musikverein held this winter (this is the 14th) in the May 10, 1826 Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung (Nr.19) at 314.

Lied aus der Ferne, WoO 137, is here performed by Matthias Goerne and Jan Lisiecki: