BEETHOVEN 200 YEARS AGO TODAY: Tuesday, May 23, 1826

Unpaid assistant Karl Holz comes to visit Beethoven with news that piano maker Conrad Graf intends to come tomorrow morning. He asks whether Beethoven will stay at home to meet him. He would have come earlier, but he had too much to do.

Beethoven is annoyed with Holz’s friend, publisher Mathias Artaria. Holz tries to indicate it was just a misunderstanding. Artaria didn’t think that Beethoven was in a rush tp know whether Artaria wanted to publish the new quartet [op.131], since the letter to him was only about the Fugue; everything else was postscript so he didn’t think that the question about the new quartet was urgent. “Perhaps Karl did not say anything about it. He said that he is very far from feeling such petty envy about it as Tobias [Haslinger]. However, he is very sorry.” In any event, Beethoven has now offered the quartet to Schott’s. That is probably easier, Holz agrees, and next time, Artaria will know where he stands, and it won’t do any harm to their business relationship. He still has to deal with the inventory of copper engravings from the bankrupt Fries banking house. Artaria would have preferred to give his answer to Beethoven personally.

Artaria is writing to John Thomas Payne in London this week; if Beethoven wants to send a letter to him, Artaria will enclose it. [Payne’s wife, Sarah Burney Payne, had recently sent Beethoven a four-volume set of her grandfather Charles Burney’s Musical History as a gift.] Perhaps Beethoven can dictate the letter to Nephew Karl when he is here on Thursday. [Thursday, May 25, is the Feast of Corpus Christi, a holiday in Austria.] A grumpy Beethoven asks why he can’t just write Payne whenever he wants? Sending it with Artaria’s business mail will get it there sooner, that’s all, Holz replies.

Holz mentions that he heard Nanette Schechner last night in the first of two performances of Joseph Weigl’s Die Schweizerfamilie. Beethoven asks how old she is. 20 years old, Holz says; they say she is already engaged. [Holz is close; Schechner was born in 1804, making her 22, though possibly she pared a few years off her age for theatrical purposes. She is presently engaged to singer Ludwig Cramolini, though that will be broken off next year, and in 1831 she will marry painter Carl Waagen instead.] Beethoven asks about her singing voice. Holz replies, “Clear intonation, absolutely correct and clear declamation.”

Conversation Book 111, 1r-3r.

Publisher Maurice Schlesinger writes to Beethoven today from Paris, according to a note written on Beethoven’s letter to him dated April 22. Unfortunately, the letter is lost and the contents of the letter are unknown. Brandenburg Letter 2156.