BEETHOVEN 200 YEARS AGO TODAY: Wednesday, September 8, 1824
Apartment hunting in Vienna for the fall continues with Nephew Karl. The first apartment is rather pricey, at 700 florins W.W. The building superintendent is not there, so there is no key to visit it. Of the five rooms, only one looks out onto the street. [This would probably not be suitable for Beethoven, who needed good morning light for working.] The kitchen is centrally located. Uncle Ludwig would like to see it, but Karl repeats that it cannot be seen right now.
Karl mentions that he gave all his small denominations of money to pay for the fiacre yesterday. A small boy is preaching the Gospel nearby.
They have dinner at a restaurant around 2 p.m., and dine on freshly roasted veal cutlets.
Karl takes stock of what they have looked at. It is very expensive to get an apartment within the walls of the City, and even then it is hard to find a good one. If they can’t find anything else, the Tapestry Maker’s House [where artist Stephan Decker lives, and which he had recommended] would be a possibility.
Someone unidentified is telling a tale of his own generosity, about how he gave his winnings in a billiards game to the scorekeeper.
Former unpaid assistant Anton Schindler has been in communication. Karl writes after “From Schindler” the words “6 fl.” [This may be another bill in that amount from the second Akademie concert.]
Karl makes a number of writing samples on page 31r, seen nearby.
The coachman was hired for two days and still wanted a tip on top of that. His employer gets 11 florins (5 for yesterday and 6 for today), and the driver gets 1 florin. They’ve paid 12 florins, so that would be a florin tip. They travel to Baden, probably after dark in the evening. They settle up with the carriage driver. They had negotiated a fee of 11 florins; the extra florin for today was because they were traveling at night.
Returning home to Baden, they find the maid is ill with a high fever. There is a danger of contagion here and it would be best for her to go to the Marienspital charitable hospital in Dörfel, southwest of Baden, to recover.
Karl was able to collect his pension from his father Caspar Carl’s death from the court treasury where he had been employed. He spoke to an official there who had known his father well.
It is late enough that the cook is already asleep, and there is no fire left, so they will not have much to eat. Their wine chest has a number of broken bottles, and new ones must be purchased to replace them.
Conversation Book 74, 29r-33v. This concludes Conversation Book 74. The next conversation book picks up with entries for tomorrow in Baden.
Today, Beethoven receives a letter from Archduke Rudolph, in which he agrees to subscribe to six copies of Hans Georg Nägeli’s poetry collection Liederkranze, as Beethoven had petitioned him to do in his letter of August 23, 1824. Brandenburg Letter 1871. The original is not known to exist, but its approximate date and content can be deduced from Beethoven’s letter to Nägeli of September 9, which will be addressed tomorrow.
The Wiener Theater-Zeitung of September 14 at 443, contains an account of a musical Akademie benefit concert for charity in Baden this evening. The concert opens with Ludwig v. Beethoven’s Fidelio Overture. In the first half of the concert, Beethoven’s Adelaide, op.46, was sung by Hr. Joseph Maniesky in his debut, accompanied on piano by Conradin Kreutzer. “He deserved and received encouragement.” Also on the program are vocal works performed by alto Caroline Unger and soprano Henriette Sontag, both of whom had sung at Beethoven’s musical Akademie concerts in May of this year, where the Ninth Symphony was premiered. They each have a solo aria, and then they perform together in “a difficult but also beautiful scene from [Rossini’s] ‘Bianca e Falliero‘ that developed a general admiration for the charm of their beautiful voices, their stability in time, their fluency in coloring, and masterful collaboration, making this duet one of the most brilliant pieces of the evening.” The house was packed, and Archduke Carl and His Most Serene Wife were present, “so the poor of Baden will gratefully remember this music festival.”
The concert diary for Graz in the Wiener Theater-Zeitung for December 23, 1824 (Nr.154) at page 6 mentions a concert given today by the Styrian Music Association, since the principal theater in Graz was closed for the holiday for the Feast of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary. “The production was a success in every respect; three large instrumental works were performed with great precision, namely a new overture and the last movement of the great Symphony in C minor by Beethoven, then the overture to the opera ‘Euryanthe‘….The substantial selection and execution of [the program] left both connoisseurs and laymen with the most unequivocal proof of complete satisfaction.” Which of Beethoven’s “new” overtures was performed is unstated.