BEETHOVEN 200 YEARS AGO TODAY: Tuesday, June 29, 1824 (approximately)

Beethoven works on a shopping and errand list either today or tomorrow, or both. From the context, he appears to be in his apartment in Vienna, rather than in Penzing.

+Suspenders.
+Sugar.
+Karl – Bedroom slippers.
+Drinking glasses.
+Tailor [it is again unclear whether Beethoven means his own tailor, or Joseph Hörr, the tailor who is his landlord out in the country.]
[Beethoven writes +Suspenders again, then crosses it out, seeing that he already has it on the list.]
+Paper. Bookbinder paper.
+Tobacco and something to clean out the pipe.
Karl – Shoe trees.
+Apartment. [Presumably to arrange an apartment for the fall.]
+Pencil.
Receipt from Archduke and Kinsky. [For Beethoven’s periodic pension payments from his sponsors.]
+Candles.
+Stylus.
+Long loaf of bread in the Landstrasse.

Conversation Book 72, 24r-24v. The next dateable conversation book entry comes from Thursday, July 1, so there will be no update tomorrow.

Young Franz Liszt continues to take London by storm. He performs tonight at the New Theatre Royal in Drury Lane. The poster for the event modestly claims, “For this Night only, the incomparable MASTER LISZT, Has in the most flattering manner consented to display his inimitable powers on the NEW PATENT GRAND PIANO FORTE, invented by Sebastian Erard.” Walker, Franz Liszt: The Young Virtuoso at 103-105. The evening was packed with an opera, multiple plays, and over a dozen and a half songs by various artists as well as a Romance with Variations on a new patent double flageolet, so Liszt cannot have played very long.

Erard’s new patent grand piano that was touring with Liszt was a massive eight-octave instrument. By comparison, Beethoven’s beloved Broadwood was only six octaves, and his Graf piano was six and one-half. Even a standard modern piano has but seven and one-quarter octaves, so the Erard was in an entirely different league from what had been heard before, and Liszt made full virtuosic use of it.