BEETHOVEN 200 YEARS AGO TODAY: Tuesday, August 1, 1826

Beethoven makes a note to speak to Vincenz Guldener von Lobes (1763-1827), a member of the faculty of medicine at the University of Vienna. Beethoven had consulted Guldener now and then since at least 1820.

Nephew Karl joins his uncle briefly this afternoon. He does some financial computations for the household, trying to account for an additional 30 kreutzers, which have been the previous topic of conversation.

Uncle Ludwig wants to write to Prince Galitzin about the payment for the third quartet, op.130, which is now long overdue. Karl tells his uncle that he should give him the general concept for the letter to Galitzin, and then Karl will write it at home this evening. Karl helps his uncle go through his mail.

Uncle Ludwig asks about the conversation Karl had with Tobias Haslinger yesterday. Karl responds, “I went to Haslinger myself and said that I would show you this title [page for the piano reduction of the Terzet Tremate, empi tremate, op.116], but did not think you would be happy with it.” Uncle Ludwig says that it needs to have the name of the arranger, since otherwise people would think he had done the arrangement of the piece. Karl answers, “He said that it did not matter who made the piano reductions, if only the name of the composer was there.” In any event, the title page needs to be changed completely, because it says “per il Cembalo” [rather than clearly indicating that it is an arrangement of the orchestral original; the title page as published says “Estratto per il cembalo.”] Uncle Ludwig questions whether he could just add something to indicate that it is a reduction, but Karl insists Haslinger needs to change it.

Karl suggests that he write to the banker Stieglitz, telling him that Prince Galitzin owes Uncle Ludwig the amount of 125 ducats for the quartets, and has not given a satisfactory answer in spite of repeated requests, and that the money did not come. “That is why you write to them, because you can understand from the business connection between the prince and them that they will be able to do something for you in this matter, etc.”

The housekeeper claims that one of the vegetables [possibly asparagus] is woody and therefore not easy to cook.

Uncle Ludwig has questions about how the letter will be written. Karl assures him, “I will write the letter according to the correct form. It is commercial [which Karl has been studying at the Polytechnic Institute] therefore it will not be difficult to deal with.”

Uncle Ludwig would like venison; Karl tells him that the housekeeper will arrange for some to come tomorrow. [Once again, Karl’s answers are brief and businesslike. However, he gives his uncle no indication that he is planning to commit suicide, nor does he mention his reconnaissance trip to Baden yesterday.]

Conversation Book 116, 19v-21v.

Probably after Karl leaves, Beethoven writes a letter to Wilhelm Ehlers in Mannheim, director of the Ducal Court Theater there and professor of singing. Ehlers had apparently written to Beethoven a letter that does not survive, requesting permission to adapt Beethoven’s music for The Ruins of Athens in its latest version for an opera on the biblical story of Samson. “My dear Ehlers! Overwhelmed with work — comes my reply, but late — I agree with everything you are proposing with regard to The Ruins of Athens, only you should not forget to restore the truth, which suffered greatly through the Meissner adaptation [Beethoven means Carl Meisl], which of course is only to be found in Kotzebue’s original text. — Can you do something so that you can deal better with the Berliners? I approve of all this, only they should see that it’s all genuine, for there was another overture to The Ruins of Athens, in G minor, for the Meissner adaptation [op.113]; and yet another for the Josephstadt version of the Meissner adaptation, which Schott in Mainz engraved [Consecration of the House, op.124]. So it depends on the sense in which the latest arrangement is meant; if they need the latter, that is in C major. I would instruct Schott to provide it, as soon as I have your letter, because the Kapellmeister of the Königsberg Theater [Carl Wilhelm Henning] has arranged a shameful piano reduction of the Overture in C. It can be assumed that he also wronged the score. He probably believed that he was in Königsberg and thus could apply Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason to it.”

“I gladly leave to you the benefit that you may derive from your efforts with this work; I will accept nothing from you but a small gift as a memento. I will write to Schott that they also send you the Opferlied in a solo version, since the original and true concept of it was only discovered later. — If you would only give me news of this matter soon it would please me.”

“I warmly embrace you, your friend Beethoven.”

Brandenburg Letter 2178; Anderson Letter 1496. The location of the original is unknown; the text is derived from the facsimile published in Beethoven by Fritz Volbach (Mainz, 1905), Supplement Nr.2. Ehlers would submit his version of Samson to Schott’s for publication in 1827. The Opferlied had been written for Ehlers originally, in a version for three voices.

The August, 1826 issue of The Harmonicon (Nr.XLIV) in its Foreign Musical Report column, at 171 indicates that in Vienna over the last season, there was one Mass by Beethoven performed, with two by Cherubini, six by Haydn, and five by Mozart, among others.

The musical supplement to this issue of The Harmonicon includes an “Air from Prometheus for Piano-forte,” which is the Pastorale, Nr.10, from the ballet The Creatures of Prometheus, op.43.