BEETHOVEN 200 YEARS AGO TODAY: Tuesday, June 6, 1820 (approximately)

Conversation Book 14, leaf 6r

Transportation from rural Mödling to Vienna was not the most reliable and certainly not scheduled.

Beethoven speaks to an unidentified woman in Mödling; she is from context the wife of a Mödling cart driver. Beethoven is attempting to arrange a ride back to Vienna for his next shopping and business trip. Since he was last in Vienna on Wednesday, May 31 (and before that on the 24th), a weekly trip would put him back there again on June 7. But it was not to be. His usual ride is with a butcher, and the butcher cannot go to Vienna every day. The woman’s husband is presently in Ödenburg (today the Hungarian town of Sopron, about 60 km southeast of Mödling) buying oxen, but he will be back tomorrow, and Beethoven can talk to him then. She notes that the husband can go to Vienna by Friday, June 9. Beethoven has little choice but to put off his trip for several days.