BEETHOVEN 200 YEARS AGO TODAY: Wednesday, May 24, 1826

Beethoven reads today’s and yesterday’s newspapers, probably at a coffee house, and jots down several advertisements of interest, among them an advertisement for Spar’s shoe wax factory, a coffee and tea steaming machine, Men’s silk hats for 9 florins W.W., and pique bedding according to measure, at low prices. He also makes note that in the Krautgässel they are selling the same kind of chamber pot that he uses. These advertisements were scattered amongst the Intelligenzblatt supplements for the Wiener Zeitung of May 23 and 24.

Beethoven, considering whether and where he will summer in the country, makes a note of the spa town Ischl, which offered a brine bath. The German editors suggest that Archduke Rudolph had spent time there the previous summer, which may have given Beethoven the idea. Also, at the beginning of April, 1826, Anton Strauss had published a book entitled Ischl and its Brine Baths, which contained a “brief picturesque description of the journey from Vienna to Ischl and its surroundings,” as well as “Many years of medical observations on the local brine, vapor, and inhalation baths.” Beethoven wrote after the name Ischl, “c’est le meilleur” [It’s the best.]

Conversation Book 110, 38v-40v.