BEETHOVEN 200 YEARS AGO TODAY: Tuesday, April 18, 1826

Unpaid assistant Karl Holz visits Beethoven briefly today at mid-day dinner time to relate the conversation he had with Ignaz Dembscher at the quartet rehearsal last night. Dembscher told Holz that he wants to hear Beethoven’s new quartet [op.130] at his house. “This was the best opportunity for me to tell him that he will never get another one.” Dembscher had refused to attend the premiere of that quartet when the Schuppanzigh Quartet (with Holz on second violin) gave it. It got back to Beethoven that Dembscher had said he could have a better performance with better artists at a private concert. Beethoven took this as a personal slight, and refused to let Dembscher or Mayseder borrow the parts at no cost as he had done previously for the op.127 quartet.

“He [Dembscher] was very embarrassed and stuttered at once: Yes—I did not know—when Beethoven gave it—I did not think.— He felt very ashamed in front of the entire company, because I talked very loudly, as if I did not care. When I left, he asked me to make it possible for him to win your approval again; I told him the first step would be to pay Mylord [Schuppanzigh] 50 florins, as if he had attended the quartet.” Beethoven approves of Holz’s tactics, and will hold Dembscher to the payment of the 50 florins.

Beethoven asks about whether Holz visited the Musik-Verein library to inquire about ancient Hebrew music. Holz will have to try again tomorrow; when he stopped there today, the Secretary of the Verein library had just left.

The housekeeper interrupts to ask whether Beethoven wants the schnitzel for dinner to be fried.

Holz continues, “Mayseder was quite happy that you do not give it [the op.130 quartet] to Dembscher. He said that was quite reasonable; he asks, if you will entrust it in his hands, then he would play it at [Joseph] Merk’s: he says it will not do without rehearsals, and he is too interested in the [Grosse] Fugue as to not wish to play it himself.” Beethoven asks where Mayseder would play it; Holz responds, “In Merk’s apartment, which is very spacious.”

Beethoven asks about how the engraving of the score of the quartet is coming with Mathias Artaria. “The first proof has been made already, now this needs to be put right first.” The other proofs can always be made according to your parts; it is only about weeding out the biggest mistakes first.” Beethoven asks about the number of pages, always a concern for keeping the price for customers down. The first movement is 8 sheets.

Someone unidentified, possibly Ignaz Schuppanzigh, has cancelled his planned benefit concert, because he cannot find a singer or other artists who will support him.

Conversation Book 108, 47v-49r.