BEETHOVEN 200 YEARS AGO TODAY: Wednesday, February 22, 1826
Beethoven makes a brief shopping list this morning:
- Bandages.
- Wax stick.
- Wax candles.
Beethoven writes a short undated note to unpaid assistant Karl Holz, probably today: “It’s past 10 o’clock, and nobody has shown up. [Beethoven was again expecting the housekeeper candidate Holz sent to him.]—Now I’m going to the bath—what tomorrow will bring, I don’t yet know.”
“I feel very ill inside—this afternoon you will find out more perhaps, and you can tell me what you learn at the Magistrate. I beg you by all means to expedite this matter.—”
“Yours most urgently, Beethoven.”
Brandenburg Letter 2121. Beethoven is still anxious to convert the interest-bearing securities for the benefit of Karl that are held at the Magistrate’s office to another investment that makes more money, despite Holz’s assurances that they cannot be sold. The original letter is held in Mainz as part of the Schott publishing company archive.
Beethoven takes his bath, then returns to the apartment. Holz comes later in the day, either at dinnertime or after work. The potential housekeeper was not able to come because she is still in service and can’t get away easily. She was at Holz’s place again today. She will come to see Beethoven on Tuesday [February 28], if she can’t do it earlier. She may have told Holz she tried to see Beethoven earlier, but was turned away by the servants.
Holz asks whether the tailor has been there. Apparently he was, as one of the housekeepers seems to inform Holz that he said he will get the flannel tomorrow from Beethoven. But he needs to know that the flannel has already been moistened.
Steiner says he will send everything that they’re publishing once they’re finished. [These are four works that Steiner has had for a decade or more but never published: The March and Chorus from The Ruins of Athens, op.114; the Trio Tremate, empi tremate, op.116; the Overture and incidental music to King Stephen, op.117; and the Elegischer Gesang, op.118.]
Holz mentions the prank he pulled on Brother Johann Sunday. “Your Herr Brother wanted to go to Demscher’s yesterday, without having been invited. On Sunday, he asked me to go with him, because he didn’t want to go alone. I gave him a rendezvous point for a place where I normally don’t go; maybe he is still sitting there. Such cockiness, to inflict himself in this way. In such places, he acts as if he came in your name and dispenses grace, and makes promises in your name. You see that I have not exaggerated. And it’s a tough nut to crack.”
Holz talks about the journal published in Berlin by Moritz Saphir (1795-1858), the Berliner Schnellpost. It has so many subscribers that he had to do a second printing of the sixth issue since it started. “It has very witty essays. The Mercur has already attacked him, since sapphires are mined in Austria and Hungary, the Mercur said that this precious stone would soon be grasped at the cost of the state.” [This paragraph contains a number of pieces of wordplay that Beethoven probably enjoyed even in his ill condition; Holz likely is trying to cheer him up.]
Saphir has written about Beethoven’s friend soprano Henriette Sontag, who sang at the premiere of the Ninth Symphony and charmed him, “She always sings mezza voce, i.e., with half her voice; therefore, one must hear her twice in order to fully enjoy her once, and even then, one has only heard her half and half.”
Beethoven bemoans his illness and the fact Dr. Braunhofer’s cure doesn’t seem to be doing anything for him. Holz says that when the weather becomes more pleasant, then he would not need a doctor anyway.
Beethoven says something uncomplimentary about Berlin [probably still rankling about the theater there attempting to commandeer the rights to The Consecration of the House, op.124]. Holz says that they have a good opera there. That reminds him, when will the libretto to Grillparzer’s Melusine be sent to them? Beethoven probably tells him that it needs to be copied, or is in the process of being copied. [Nephew Karl had discussed making the copy on fine paper himself when Beethoven saw him last Friday.]
Conversation Book 104, 39v-42r.
Cappi & Co. advertises at page 198 of today’s Wiener Zeitung (Nr.43) the funeral march on the death of a hero (without disclosing the source, from Beethoven’s piano sonata op.26 in A-flat) for 45 kreutzers. The funeral march from the sonata op.26 is here played by Glenn Gould: