BEETHOVEN 200 YEARS AGO TODAY: Wednesday, August 16, 1826

Beethoven makes a note in the conversation book, and unusually, dates it with today’s date:

Wednesday, August 16 + new ear trumpet

This comment suggests that despite the popular impression, even at this late date he still had some residual hearing that allowed him to use an ear trumpet to hear a little bit.

Conversation Book 118, 16v.

Frederic Chopin gives a second benefit concert at Bad Reinerz for the support of the orphaned children of a patient who died at the spa there. The concert provides sufficient funds to care for the children. Alan Walker, Fryderyk Chopin, at 100.

1788 Portrait of Thomas Jefferson by John Trumbull

Today’s Wiener Zeitung (Nr.186) includes on the front page the news from America that former Presidents Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died on the anniversary of the 1776 Declaration of Independence. This notice would have been of interest to Beethoven, who as James F. Green has written, may well have met Jefferson in 1788 when he, acting as envoy for the new nation to Europe, visited the Elector’s palace in Bonn while Beethoven was one of the most notable musicians to the court there. Jefferson was interested in music, so it would seem natural for him to have met with prominent members of the court musical establishment, including Beethoven. Bonner Beethoven-Studien 4 (2005).

Sometime roughly about now, Schott’s in Mainz publishes the Ninth Symphony in score and in parts. Thayer/Forbes at 982.