BEETHOVEN 200 YEARS AGO TODAY: Wednesday, June 14, 1820 (approximately)
Conversation Book 14, leaves 28v through 31r
Beethoven prepares another extensive shopping list for his next trip to Vienna, including his general musings and reminders, and seems to add on to it over the course of several days. I have somewhat arbitrarily broken it up for discussion over the next few days before he returns to Vienna on the 17th. Beethoven gives priority to various items on the list by his device of a circle with a vertical line and a horizontal line through it like a plus sign. In his sketches and musical manuscripts, Beethoven frequently uses this same device to indicate where a musical line is continued in another place. He also here indicates lower priority items with a minus sign in a circle. I indicate these with a + and – below.
+ He needs to get some blue paper to wrap the music books in the storeroom. What those books may be is unclear. Possibly these are the Kafka and Fischhof Sketch Miscellanies? But those are hardly “books” so much as a stack of papers.
+ Beethoven notes that in the evenings he should just eat almonds and preserved fruits. He frequently suffered from an upset stomach throughout his life; some have theorized that in his youth a doctor may have treated it with a lead compound that brought on his deafness.
While musing about the idea of a country estate, he concludes that Neudorf would not be the best choice after all. They have no vineyards there, so he notes that when the harvest is over, it’s just flat and unpleasant. Beethoven much preferred the hilly wooded country to the north and west of Vienna.
+ A cooling machine for the new housekeeper, as well as a bed quilt and a new sheet
+ Snuffers for the lamps; later he notes he can get them at the tinsmith who is devising the device to help him hear his piano. Beethoven wonders how much the charge will be for the tinsmith.
He crosses out a reminder to look at mousetraps and rat poison. Beethoven obviously had significant rodent issues at his country rental. He adds mousetraps once more in the middle and rat poison again at the end of the list (another indication the list was created over a number of days), and he may have crossed this entry out, recognizing it on review as a duplicate.
+ The coffee money must be decided. This may be a reference to the coffee allowance for the new housekeeper, if he ever finds one.
+ Beethoven notes he should keep a quilt in his apartment in Vienna so he can take it out driving in the evenings.
He reminds himself to get a haircut in the City.
+ Beethoven notes he must have a housekeeper, if for nothing else, to keep an eye on his manservant, whom he suspected of stealing. The cart driver’s wife and her gossip about petty thefts of parsley a few days ago no doubt fueled these suspicions.
On this date, in Edinburgh publisher George Thomson writes (in French) to Beethoven concerning the setting he did of the Scottish folk song WoO 158c/3 (WoO 156/21 in the new Kinsky-Halm catalogue of Beethoven’s works), “Mark Yonder Pomp.” Thomson notes that he had specifically asked for a setting for three voices in his letter of November 23, 1819. Beethoven had sent Thomson a setting of the song for solo voice in January or February of 1820. Because Haydn had already set it for solo voice many years earlier, this setting was of no use to Thomson, and he never published it. Thomson seems to have believed that arrangements for vocal trio sold better; almost all of the last sixteen settings by Beethoven for Thomson are for vocal trio. Toby Spence here performs Beethoven’s setting of Mark Yonder Pomp, WoO 158c/3:
Thomson also notes that in November he had sent Beethoven two folk song arrangements that Haydn had set previously, requesting that Beethoven add two other voices to Haydn’s setting to make a vocal trio, but that Beethoven had not done so. In fact, Beethoven had actually already sent one of those requested revisions of Haydn’s settings, Bonnie Wee Thing (words by Robert Burns) WoO 158c/4 (WoO 156/22 in the new Kinsky-Halm), but Thomson seems not to have received it yet. Thomson published the setting in 1825. Here is Beethoven’s three-voice setting of Bonnie Wee Thing, performed by Catrin Wyn Davies, Sir Thomas Allen and Ruby Philogene, with Malcolm Martineau on piano:
Finally, Thomson laments that no one will buy Beethoven’s themes with variations for flute or violin and piano on folk songs of various nationalities that he has already published, and Beethoven should feel free to sell the remaining ones (part of which ended up as op. 105 and 107) to a local music publisher. As we saw on May 24, Beethoven had already been trying to interest Simrock in publishing these sets of variations at least as far back as April. Perhaps wounded by the tone of Thomson’s letter and his failure to pay for Mark Yonder Pomp, Beethoven is not known to have responded to Thomson’s letter of complaint. Other than a revision of Bonnie Laddie, Highland Laddie in September, 1820 for A.M. Schlesinger’s publication of 25 Scottish Songs op.108, Beethoven would do no further folk song arrangements. This letter marks the sad end of a publishing relationship that dated back a decade, and had been quite profitable for Beethoven during some otherwise unproductive years as he struggled over Karl’s guardianship, though rather less profitable for Thomson, who had problems selling Beethoven’s frequently difficult arrangements.