BEETHOVEN 200 YEARS AGO TODAY: Wednesday, May 10, 1820

Conversation Book 13, leaves 52v through 55r (the inside back cover), plus scattered entries added earlier in the book since Bernard is out of room at the end.

The movers are coming with carriages at 5:30 PM! Beethoven has to be out of his apartment by then, and everything packed! It’s probably panic time.

Just before 5:30 pm, Beethoven’s friend, journalist and critic Joseph Bernard shows up and feels chatty. Beethoven writes no responses so we don’t know whether he is irritated, or if he enjoys the distraction. Bernard did not attend the luncheon on Sunday because he has been suffering congestion and cold, and is well today for the first time in a week. Bernard mentions that local dye maker Carl Baumann is interested in supporting a collected edition of Beethoven’s works.

Bernard goes on about the projected oratorio, Sieg des Kreuzes (Victory of the Cross) that he is writing the libretto for, and which he expects Beethoven will set to music. [in the end, Bernard will not complete the text for several years, and Beethoven rejects it anyway.]

He notes that Franz Gebauer will be performing Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony (the Pastoral) in his Concert spirituel on Friday May 19.

The two carriages arrive and Beethoven makes his way to Mödling (about 14 km south of Vienna) that evening. The trip probably takes a couple hours, since the loaded carriages cannot move too quickly.

Attached is the Google Street View of the apartment in the Vienna suburb of Josephstadt that Beethoven is leaving behind, currently Auerspergstrasse 3; it is one of only three buildings where Beethoven lived in Vienna that is still essentially the same as he knew it. His apartment was on the third floor. Beethoven lived there seven months, from October 1819 to May 1820.

Google street view of the apartment building that Beethoven is leaving behind. Auerspergstrasse 3 (then known as the Fingerlingsches Haus)