BEETHOVEN 200 YEARS AGO TODAY: Tuesday, August 22, 1826

Unpaid assistant Karl Holz delivers to Archduke Rudolph’s offices Beethoven’s receipt for the 6-month payment of his annuity. Holz advises Beethoven he could have made the receipt as two semiannual receipts for 300 florins C.M. because he can save a florin on the stamp tax that way. [The tax is on the number of florins, regardless of the currency. The tax was 1 florin for 250 to 500 florins, and 2 florins for 500 to 2000 florins.] Beethoven asks how the Archduke is. “The cardinal is not here,” Holz tells him.

Poet Franz Grillparzer has left Vienna for Berlin [yesterday]. He will be staying there for 6 weeks. He only got permission to leave the country with great effort, due to his political problems recently. He also plans to visit Weimar to see Goethe.

Nephew Karl’s mother Johanna has been saying things about Karl. Holz tries to reassure Beethoven that she may just be saying that to frighten him.

Holz says he will speak to the porter at the university. [Holz had mentioned talking to the porter a week ago. This may relate to Karl selling his textbooks at the university to get the fund to buy pistols.]

Dr. Vivenot has also departed Vienna; he left for Paris and London the day before yesterday. Beethoven asks why he left. His plan was to study hospital facilities there.

Beethoven hopes that Karl can begin his religious instruction soon. Holz jokes that if it happens before his exams, he might get a second grade in moral behavior.

Beethoven mentions Mozart’s appointment as imperial composer. Holz acknowledged that he got 800 good florins per year from this arrangement, but Beethoven gets nothing from the court, and nothing from the emperor. Holz notes that young Mozart is in the city again [probably on his way to Salzburg to visit his mother.] Beethoven asks if he has any talent. “He has nothing but his name from his father.” Perhaps Constanze was like Karl’s mother Johanna.

Holz mentions that Martin Luther was also a musician.

Holz saw the new title page for the quartet op.130 by Mathias Artaria. He thinks it is “very beautifully engraved. But there is an error in it; it says Quatuor pour 2 violons et violoncelle; the viola was left out.”

Beethoven asks what the status is on the payment of 50 florins by Imperial War Ministry Agent Ignaz Dembscher to violinist Ignaz Schuppanzigh, as he had demanded. “I have already written to him that I cancel my musical relationship with him. He will have to look for the reason, not in Beethoven, nor in Schuppanzigh, nor in me, but only in himself.” Will this not cost Holz, Beethoven inquires. “I have nothing from him; he only accepted favors from me all the time. He does not seem to know the French proverb Il faut faire bonne mine á mauvais jeu [to put on a good face in a bad situation.] It annoys him that he was publicly exposed as a miser in front of you.”

Schuppanzigh hopes that the Rasoumovsky orchestra will be activated again. Beethoven asks why Holz thinks this might happen. “The prince expressed this wish.” A wish is not a promise, observes Beethoven. “Even worse; for he promises and does not keep his promises.”

Conversation Book 118, 21r-24v.