The cover image was produced by the transcriber using an illustration from the book, and is placed in the public domain.

THE LIFE OF LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
VOLUME II

BEETHOVEN

After Mähler's Portrait of 1804
From the copy in possession of Mrs. Jabez Fox

The Life of
Ludwig van Beethoven

By Alexander Wheelock Thayer

Edited, revised and amended from the original English manuscript and the German editions of Hermann Deiters and Hugo Riemann, concluded, and all the documents newly translated

By
Henry Edward Krehbiel

Volume II

Published by
The Beethoven Association
New York

SECOND PRINTING

Copyright, 1921.
By Henry Edward Krehbiel

From the press of G. Schirmer, Inc., New York
Printed in the U. S. A.

Contents of Volume II

Chapter I

The Year 1803—Cherubini’s Operas in Vienna—Beethoven’s Engagement at the Theater-an-der-Wien—“Christus am Ölberg” again—Bridgetower and the “Kreutzer” Sonata—-Negotiations with Thomson—New Friends—Mähler’s Portrait of Beethoven.

Kotzebue, after a year of activity in Vienna as Alxinger’s successor in the direction, under the banker Baron von Braun, of the Court Theatre, then a year of exile in Siberia (1800), whence he was recalled by that semi-maniac Paul, who was moved thereto by the delight which the little drama “Der Leibkutscher Peters III.” had given him—then a short time in Jena, where his antagonism to Goethe broke out into an open quarrel, established himself in Berlin. There he began, with Garlieb Merkel (1802), the publication of a polemical literary journal called the “Freymüthige,” Goethe, the Schlegels and their party being the objects of their polemics. Spazier’s “Zeitung für die Elegante Welt” (Leipsic) was its leading opponent, until the establishment of a new literary journal at Jena.

At the beginning of 1803, Kotzebue was again in Vienna on his way to Italy. Some citations from the “Freymüthige” of this time have an especial value, as coming, beyond a doubt, from his pen. His position in society, his knowledge from experience of theatrical affairs in Vienna, his personal acquaintance with Beethoven and the other persons mentioned, all combine to enable him to speak with authority. An article in No. 58 (April 12) on the “Amusements of the Viennese after Carnival,” gives a peep into the salon-life of the capital, and introduces to us divers matters of so much interest, as to excuse the want of novelty in certain parts.

... Amateur concerts at which unconstrained pleasure prevails are frequent. The beginning is usually made with a quartet by Haydn or Mozart; then follows, let us say, an air by Salieri or Paër, then a pianoforte piece with or without another instrument obbligato, and the concert closes as a rule with a chorus or something of the kind from a favorite opera. The most excellent pianoforte pieces that won admiration during the last carnival were a new quintet[1] by Beethoven, clever, serious, full of deep significance and character, but occasionally a little too glaring, here and there Odensprünge in the manner of this master; then a quartet by Anton Eberl, dedicated to the Empress, lighter in character, full of fine yet profound invention, originality, fire and strength, brilliant and imposing. Of all the musical compositions which have appeared of late these are certainly two of the best. Beethoven has for a short time past been engaged, at a considerable salary, by the Theater-an-der-Wien, and will soon produce at that playhouse an oratorio of his composition entitled “Christus am Ölberg.” Amongst the artists on the violin the most notable are Clement, Schuppanzigh (who gives the concerts in the Augarten in the summer) and Luigi Tomasini. Clement (Director of the orchestra an-der-Wien) is an admirable concert player; Schuppanzigh performs quartets very agreeably. Good dilettanti are Eppinger, Molitor and others. Great artists on the pianoforte are Beethofen [sic], Hummel, Madame Auernhammer and others. The famous Abbé Vogler is also here at present, and plays fugues in particular with great precision, although his rather heavy touch betrays the organist. Among the amateurs Baroness Ertmann plays with amazing precision, clearness and delicacy, and Fräulein Kurzbeck touches the keys with high intelligence and deep feeling. Mesdames von Frank and Natorp, formerly Gerardi and Sessi, are excellent singers.

A few words may be added to this picture from other sources. Salieri’s duties being now confined to the sacred music of the Imperial Chapel, Süssmayr being far gone in the consumption of which he died on Sept. 16 (of this year—1803), Conti retaining but the name of orchestral director (he too died the next year), Liechtenstein and Weigl were now the conductors of the Imperial Opera; Henneberg and Seyfried held the same position under Schikaneder, as in the old house, so now in the new.

Schuppanzigh’s summer concerts in the Augarten, and Salieri’s Widows and Orphans concerts at Christmas and in Holy Week, were still the only regular public ones. Vogler had come from Prague in December, and Paër, who had removed to Dresden at Easter, 1802, was again in Vienna to produce his cantata “Das Heilige Grab,” at the Widows and Orphans Concert. It was a period of dearth at Vienna in operatic composition. At the Court Theatre Liechtenstein had failed disastrously; Weigl had not been able to follow up the success of his “Corsär,” and several years more elapsed before he obtained a permanent name in musical annals by his “Schweizerfamilie.” Salieri’s style had become too familiar to all Vienna longer to possess the charms of freshness and novelty. In the Theater-an-der-Wien, Teyber, Henneberg, Seyfried and others composed to order and executed their work satisfactorily enough—indeed, sometimes with decided, though fleeting, success. But no new work, for some time past, composed to the order of either of these theatres, had possessed such qualities as to secure a brilliant and prolonged existence. From another source, however, a new, fresh and powerful musical sensation had been experienced during the past year at both: and in this wise:

Cherubini’s Operas in Vienna

Schikaneder produced, on the 23rd of March, a new opera which had been very favorably received at Paris, called “Lodoiska,” the music composed “by a certain Cherubini.” The applause gained by this opera induced the Court Theatre to send for the score of another opera by the same composer, and prepare it for production on the 14th of August, under the title “Die Tage der Gefahr.” Schikaneder, with his usual shrewdness, meantime was secretly rehearsing the same work, of which Seyfried in the beginning of July had made the then long journey to Munich to obtain a copy, and on the 13th—one day in advance of the rival stage—the musical public was surprised and amused to see “announced on the bill-board of the Wiener Theater the new opera ‘Graf Armand, oder Die zwei unvergessliche Tage.’” In the adaptation and performance of the work, each house had its points of superiority and of inferiority; on the whole, there was little to choose between them; the result in both was splendid. The rivalry between the two stages became very spirited. The Court Theatre selected from the new composer’s other works the “Medea,” and brought it out November 6. Schikaneder followed, December 18, with “Der Bernardsberg” (“Elise”), “sadly mutilated.” Twenty years later Beethoven attested the ineffaceable impression which Cherubini’s music had made upon him. While the music of the new master was thus attracting and delighting crowded audiences at both theatres, the wealthy and enterprising Baron Braun went to Paris and entered into negotiations with Cherubini, which resulted in his engagement to compose one or more operas for the Vienna stage. Besides this “a large number of new theatrical representations from Paris” were expected (in August, 1802) upon the Court stage. “Baron Braun, who is expected to return from Paris, is bringing the most excellent ballets and operas with him, all of which will be performed here most carefully according to the taste of the French.” Thus the “Allg. Mus. Zeitung.”

These facts bring us to the most valuable and interesting notice contained in the article from the “Freymüthige”—the earliest record of Beethoven’s engagement as composer for the Theater-an-der-Wien.

Zitterbarth, the merchant with whose money the new edifice had been built and put in successful operation, “who had no knowledge of theatrical matters outside of the spoken drama,” left the stage direction entirely in the hands of Schikaneder. In the department of opera that director had a most valuable assistant in Sebastian Meier—the second husband of Mozart’s sister-in-law, Mme. Hofer, the original Queen of Night—a man described by Castelli as a moderately gifted bass singer, but a very good actor, and of the noblest and most refined taste in vocal music, opera as well as oratorio; to whom the praise is due of having induced Schikaneder to bring out so many of the finest new French works, those of Cherubini included. It is probable, therefore, that, just now, when Baron von Braun was reported to have secured Cherubini for his theatre, and it became necessary to discover some new means of keeping up a successful competition, Meier’s advice may have had no small weight with Schikaneder. Defeat was certain unless the operas, attractive mainly from their scenery and grotesque humor, founded upon the “Thousand and One Nights” and their thousand and one imitations, and set to trivial and commonplace tunes, should give place to others of a higher order, quickened by music more serious, dignified and significant.

Whether Abbé Georg Joseph Vogler was really a great and profound musician, as C. M. von Weber, Gänsbacher and Meyerbeer held him to be, or a charlatan, was a matter much disputed in those days, as the same question in relation to certain living composers is in ours. Whatever the truth was, by his polemical writings, his extraordinary self-laudation, his high tone at the courts whither he had been called, his monster concerts, and his almost unperformable works, he had made himself an object of profound curiosity, to say the least. Moreover, his music for the drama “Hermann von Staufen, oder das Vehmgericht,” performed October 3, 1801, at the Theater-an-der-Wien (if the same as in “Hermann von Unna,” as it doubtless was), was well fitted to awaken confidence in his talents. His appearance in Vienna just now was, therefore, a piece of good fortune for Schikaneder, who immediately engaged him for his theatre.

Engaged to Compose an Opera

Whether Beethoven had talents for operatic composition, no one could yet know; but his works had already spread to Paris, London, Edinburgh, and had gained him the fame of being the greatest living instrumental composer—Father Haydn of course excepted—and this much might be accepted as certain: viz., that his name alone, like Vogler’s, would secure the theatre from pecuniary loss in the production of one work; and, perhaps—who could foretell?—he might develop powers in this new field which would raise him to the level of even Cherubini! He was personally known to Schikaneder, having played in the old theatre, and his “Prometheus” music was a success at the Court Theatre. So he, too, was engaged. The correspondent of the “Zeitung für die Elegante Welt” positively states, under date of June 29th: “Beethoven is composing an opera by Schikaneder.” There is nothing very improbable in this, though circumstances intervened which prevented the execution of such a project. Still the fact remains, that Schikaneder—that strange compound of wit and absurdity; of poetic instinct and grotesque humor; of shrewd and profitable enterprise and lavish prodigality; who lived like a prince and died like a pauper—has connected his name honorably with both Mozart and Beethoven.

These plain and obvious facts have been so misrepresented as to make it appear that this engagement of Beethoven was a grand stroke of policy conceived and executed by Baron von Braun, who, at the Theater-an-der-Wien (“newly built and to be opened in 1804”), had suddenly become aware of a genius and talent, to which, notwithstanding the “Prometheus” music, at the Imperial Opera, he had been oblivious during the preceding ten years! The date of the transaction is a sufficient confutation of this; as also of the notion that the success of the “Christus am Ölberg” led to his engagement. On the contrary, it was his engagement that enabled Beethoven to obtain the use of the Theater-an-der-Wien to produce that work in a concert to which we now come.

The “Wiener Zeitung” of Saturday, March 26 and Wednesday, March 30, 1803, contained the following

Notice

On the 5th (not the 4th) of April, Herr Ludwig van Beethoven will produce a new oratorio set to music by him, “Christus am Ölberg,” in the R. I. privil. Theater-an-der-Wien. The other pieces also to be performed will be announced on the large bill-board.

Beethoven must have felt no small confidence in the power of his name to awaken the curiosity and interest of the musical public, for he doubled the prices of the first chairs, tripled those of the reserved and demanded 12 ducats (instead of 4 florins) for each box. But it was his first public appearance as a dramatic vocal composer, and on his posters he had several days before announced with much pomp that all the works would be of his composition. The result, however, answered his expectations, “for the concert yielded him 1800 florins.”

The works actually performed were the first and second Symphonies, the Pianoforte Concerto in C minor and “Christus am Ölberg”; some others, according to Ries, were intended, but, owing to the length of the concert, which began at the early hour of six, were omitted in the performance. As no copy of the printed programme has been discovered, there is no means of deciding what these pieces were; but the “Adelaide,” the Scena et Aria “Ah, perfido!” and the trio “Tremate, empj, tremate,” suggest themselves, as vocal pieces well fitted to break the monotony of such a mass of orchestral music. It seems strange—knowing as we do Beethoven’s vast talent for improvisation—that no extempore performance is reported.

“The symphonies and concertos,” says Seyfried, “which Beethoven produced for the first time (1803 and 1808) for his benefit at the Theater-an-der-Wien, the oratorio, and the opera, I rehearsed according to his instructions with the singers, conducted all the orchestral rehearsals and personally conducted the performance.”[2]

The final general rehearsal was held in the theatre on the day of performance, Tuesday, April 5. On that morning, as was often the case when Beethoven needed assistance in his labors, young Ries was called to him early—about 5 o’clock. “I found him in bed,” says Ries, “writing on separate sheets of paper. To my question what it was he answered, ‘Trombones.’ At the concert the trombone parts were played from these sheets. Had the copyist forgotten to copy these parts? Were they an afterthought? I was too young at the time to observe the artistic interest of the incident; but probably the trombones were an afterthought, as Beethoven might as easily have had the uncopied parts as the copied.” The correspondent of the “Zeitung für die Elegante Welt” renders a probable solution of Ries’s doubt easy. He found the music to the “Christus” to be “on the whole good, and there are a few admirable passages, an air of the Seraph with trombone accompaniment in particular being of admirable effect.” Beethoven had probably found the aria “Erzittre, Erde” to fail of its intended effect, and added the trombone on the morning of the final rehearsal, to be retained or not as should prove advisable upon trial.[3] Ries continues:

Production of “The Mount of Olives”

The rehearsal began at 8 o’clock in the morning. It was a terrible rehearsal, and at half after 2 everybody was exhausted and more or less dissatisfied. Prince Karl Lichnowsky, who attended the rehearsal from the beginning, had sent for bread and butter, cold meat and wine in large baskets. He pleasantly asked all to help themselves and this was done with both hands, the result being that good nature was restored again. Then the Prince requested that the oratorio be rehearsed once more from the beginning, so that it might go well in the evening and Beethoven’s first work in this genre be worthily presented. And so the rehearsal began again.

Seyfried in the article above quoted gives a reminiscence of this concert:

At the performance of the Concerto he asked me to turn the pages for him; but—heaven help me!—that was easier said than done. I saw almost nothing but empty leaves; at the most on one page or the other a few Egyptian hieroglyphs wholly unintelligible to me scribbled down to serve as clues for him; for he played nearly all of the solo part from memory, since, as was so often the case, he had not had time to put it all on paper.[4] He gave me a secret glance whenever he was at the end of one of the invisible passages and my scarcely concealable anxiety not to miss the decisive moment amused him greatly and he laughed heartily at the jovial supper which we ate afterwards.

The impression made on reading the few contemporary notices of this concert is that the new works produced were, on the whole, coldly received. The short report (by Kotzebue?) in the “Freymüthige” said:

Even our doughty Beethofen, whose oratorio “Christus am Ölberg” was performed for the first time at surburban Theater-an-der-Wien, was not altogether fortunate, and despite the efforts of his many admirers was unable to achieve really marked approbation. True, the two symphonies and single passages in the oratorio were voted very beautiful, but the work in its entirety was too long, too artificial in structure and lacking expressiveness, especially in the vocal parts. The text, by F. X. Huber, seemed to have been as superficially written as the music. But the concert brought 1800 florins to Beethofen and he, as well as Abbé Vogler, has been engaged for the theatre. He is to write one opera, Vogler three; for this they are to receive 10 per cent. of the receipts at the first ten performances, besides free lodgings.

The writer in the “Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung” alone speaks of the “Christus” as having been received with “extraordinary approval.” Three months afterwards another correspondent flatly contradicts this: “In the interest of truth,” he writes, “I am obliged to contradict a report in the ‘Musikalische Zeitung’; Beethoven’s cantata did not please.” To this Schindler remarks: “Even the composer agreed with this to this extent—that in later years he unhesitatingly declared that it had been a mistake to treat the part of Christ in the modern vocal style. The abandonment of the work after the first performance, as well as its tardy appearance in print (about 1810), permit us to conclude that the author was not particularly satisfied with the manner in which he had solved the problem, and that he probably made material changes in the music.” The “Wiener Zeitung” of July 30, 1803, gives all the comment necessary on the “abandonment” and probable changes in the work, by announcing that “the favorable reception” of the oratorio had induced the Society of Amateur Concerts to resolve to repeat it on August 4. Moreover, Sebastian Meier’s concert of March 27, 1804, opened with the second Symphony of Beethoven and closed with “Christus am Ölberg,” being its fourth performance in one year.[5]

A few days after this public appearance we have a sight of Beethoven again in private life. Dr. Joh. Th. Helm, the famous physician and professor in Prague, then a young man just of the composer’s age (he was born December 11, 1770), accompanied Count Prichnowsky on a visit to Vienna. On the morning of the 16th of April these two gentlemen met Beethoven in the street, who, knowing the Count, invited them to Schuppanzigh’s, “where some of his pianoforte sonatas which Kleinhals had transcribed as string quartets were to be rehearsed. We met,” writes Held, in his manuscript autobiography (the citations were communicated to this work by Dr. Edmund Schebek of Prague)

a number of the best musicians gathered together, such as the violinists Krumbholz, Möser (of Berlin), the mulatto Bridgethauer, who in London had been in the service of the then Prince of Wales, also a Herr Schreiber and the 12 years’ old[6] Kraft who played second. Even then Beethoven’s muse transported me to higher regions, and the desire of all of these artists to have our musical director Wenzel Praupner in Vienna confirmed me in my opinion of the excellence of his conducting. Since then I have often met Beethoven at concerts. His piquant conceits modified the gloominess, I might say the lugubriousness, of his countenance. His criticisms were very keen, as I learned most clearly at concerts of the harpist Nadermann of Saxony and Mara, who was already getting along in years.

Bridgetower and the “Kreutzer Sonata”

The “Bridgethauer,” mentioned by Held—whose incorrect writing of the name conveys to the German its correct pronunciation—was the “American ship captain who associated much with Beethoven” mentioned by Schindler and his copyists.

George Augustus Polgreen Bridgetower—a bright mulatto then 24 years old, son of an African father and German or Polish mother, an applauded public violinist in London at the age of ten years, and long in the service, as musician, of the Prince of Wales, afterwards George IV—was never in America and knew as much probably of a ship and the science of navigation as ordinary shipmasters do of the violin and the mysteries of musical counterpoint. In 1802 he obtained leave of absence to visit his mother in Dresden and to use the waters of Teplitz and Carlsbad, which leave was prolonged that he might spend a few months in Vienna. His playing in public and private at Dresden had secured him such favorable letters of introduction as gained him a most brilliant reception in the highest musical circles of the Austrian capital, where he arrived a few days before Held met him at Schuppanzigh’s. Beethoven, to whom he was introduced by Prince Lichnowsky, readily gave him aid in a public concert. The date of the concert has not been determined precisely; it was probably on May 24th. It has an interest on account of Beethoven’s connection with it; for the day of the concert was the date of the completion and performance of the “Kreutzer” Sonata.

The famous Sonata in A minor, Op. 47, with concertante violin, dedicated to Rudolph Kreutzer in Paris [says Ries on page 82 of the “Notizen”], was originally composed by Beethoven for Bridgetower, an English artist. Here things did not go much better (Ries is referring to the tardiness of the composition of the horn sonata which Beethoven wrote for Punto), although a large part of the first Allegro was ready at an early date. Bridgetower pressed him greatly because the date of his concert had been set and he wanted to study his part. One morning Beethoven summoned me at half after 4 o’clock and said: “Copy the violin part of the first Allegro quickly.” (His ordinary copyist was otherwise engaged.) The pianoforte part was noted down only here and there in parts. Bridgetower had to play the marvellously beautiful theme and variations in F from Beethoven’s manuscript at the concert in the Augarten at 8 o’clock in the morning because there was no time to copy it. The final Allegro, however, was beautifully written, since it originally belonged to the Sonata in A major (Op. 30), which is dedicated to Czar Alexander. In its place Beethoven, thinking it too brilliant for the A major Sonata, put the variations which now form the finale.[7]

Bridgetower was thoughtful enough to leave in his copy of the Sonata a note upon that first performance of it, as follows:

Relative to Beethoven’s Op. 47.

When I accompanied him in this Sonata-Concertante at Wien, at the repetition of the first part of the Presto, I imitated the flight, at the 18th bar, of the pianoforte of this movement thus:

1^ma volta
2^da volta

He jumped up, embraced me, saying: “Noch einmal, mein lieber Bursch!” (“Once again, my dear boy!”) Then he held the open pedal during this flight, the chord of C as at the ninth bar.

Beethoven’s expression in the Andante was so chaste, which always characterized the performance of all his slow movements, that it was unanimously hailed to be repeated twice.

George Polgreen Bridgetower.

The Career of Bridgetower

Bridgetower was mentioned in a letter from Beethoven to Baron von Wetzlar, in this language, under date May 18:

Although we have never addressed each other I do not hesitate to recommend to you the bearer, Mr. Brishdower, a very capable virtuoso who has a complete command of his instrument.

Besides his concertos he plays quartets admirably. I greatly wish that you make him known to others. He has commended himself favorably to Lobkowitz and Fries and all other eminent lovers (of music).

I think it would be not at all a bad idea if you were to take him for an evening to Therese Schönfeld, where I know many friends assemble and at your house. I know that you will thank me for having made you acquainted with him.

Bridgetower, when advanced in years, talking with Mr. Thirlwall about Beethoven, told him that at the time the Sonata, Op. 47, was composed, he and the composer were constant companions, and that the first copy bore a dedication to him; but before he departed from Vienna they had a quarrel about a girl, and Beethoven then dedicated the work to Rudolph Kreutzer.[8]

Summer Lodgings at Döbling

When Beethoven removed from the house “am Peter” to the theatre building, he took his brother Karl (Kaspar) to live with him,[9] as twenty years later he gave a room to his factotum Schindler. This change of lodgings took place, according to Seyfried, before the concert of April 5—which is confirmed by the brother’s new address being contained in the “Staats-Schematismus” for 1803—that annual publication being usually ready for distribution in April.[10] At the beginning of the warm season Beethoven, as was his annual custom, appears to have passed some weeks in Baden to refresh himself and revive his energies after the irregular, exciting and fatiguing city life of the winter, before retiring to the summer lodgings, whose position he describes in a note to Ries (“Notizen,” p. 128) as “in Oberdöbling No. 4, the street to the left where you go down the mountain to Heiligenstadt.”

The Herrengasse is still “die Strasse links” at the extremity of the village, as it was then; but the multiplication of houses and the change in their numbers render it uncertain which in those days bore the number 4. At all events it had, in 1803, gardens, vineyards or green fields both in front and rear. True, it was half an hour’s walk farther than from Heiligenstadt to the scenes in which he had composed the second Symphony, the preceding summer; but, to compensate for this, it was so much nearer the city—was in the more immediate vicinity of that arm of the Danube called the “Canal”—and almost under its windows was the gorge of the Krottenbach, which separates Döbling from Heiligenstadt, and which, as it extends inland from the river, spreads into a fine vale, then very solitary and still very beautiful. This was the house, this the summer, and these the scenes, in which the composer wrought out the conceptions that during the past five years had been assuming form and consistency in his mind, to which Bernadotte may have given the original impulse, and which we know as the “Heroic Symphony.”[11]

Let us turn to Stephan von Breuning and a new friend or two. Archduke Karl, by a commission dated January 9, 1801, had been made Chief of the “Staats- und Konferenzial-Departement für das Kriegs- und Marine-Wesen,” and retained the position still, notwithstanding his assumption of the functions of Hoch- und Deutsch-Meister. He undertook to introduce a wide-reaching reform at the War Department, which demanded an increase in the number of Secretaries and scriveners. Stephan von Breuning is the second in the list of five appointed in 1804, Ignatz von Gleichenstein the fifth. It is believed, that the Archduke had discovered the fine business talents, the zeal in the discharge of duty and the perfect trustworthiness of Breuning at the Teutonic House, and that at his special invitation the young man this year exchanged the service of the Order for that of the State. There is abundant evidence, that the young Rhinelanders then in Vienna were bound to each other by more than the usual ties: most of them were fugitives from French tyranny, and liable to conscription if found in the places of their birth, though this was not the case with Breuning. There was, in addition to the ordinary feeling of nationality, a common sense of exile to unite them. Between Breuning and Gleichenstein therefore—two amiable and talented young men thus thrown into daily intercourse—an immediate and warm friendship would naturally spring up; and an introduction of the latter to Breuning’s friend Beethoven would inevitably follow, in case they had not known each other in the old Bonn days.

Association with W. J. Mähler

Another young Rhinelander, to whom Beethoven became much attached, and who returned the kindness with warm affection for him personally and a boundless admiration for his genius, became known to the composer also just at this time. Willibrord Joseph Mähler, a native of Coblentz—who died in 1860, at the age of 82 years, as pensioned Court Secretary—was a man of remarkably varied artistic talents, by which, however, since he cultivated them only as a dilettante and without confining himself to any one art, he achieved no great distinction. He wrote respectable poetry and set it to correct and not unpleasing music; sang well enough to be recorded in Boeckh’s “Merkwürdigkeiten der Haupt- und Residenz-Stadt Wien” (1823) as “amateur singer,” and painted sufficiently well to be named, on another page of Boeckh, “amateur portrait painter.” He painted that portrait of the composer, about 1804-5, which is still in possession of the Beethoven family, and a second 1814-15—(Mr. Mähler could not recall the precise date)—once owned by Prof. Karajan. Several of the portraits now in possession of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna are from his pencil; but two or three of the very best specimens of his skill have been sold to a gentleman in Boston, U.S.A.[12]

Soon after Beethoven returned from his summer lodgings to his apartment in the theatre building, Mähler, who had then recently arrived in Vienna, was taken by Breuning thither to be introduced. They found him busily at work finishing the “Heroic Symphony.” After some conversation, at the desire of Mähler to hear him play, Beethoven, instead of beginning an extempore performance, gave his visitors the finale of the new Symphony; but at its close, without a pause, he continued in free fantasia for two hours, “during all which time,” said Mr. Mähler to the present writer, “there was not a measure which was faulty, or which did not sound original.” He added, that one circumstance attracted his particular notice; viz.: “that Beethoven played with his hands so very still; wonderful as his execution was, there was no tossing of them to and fro, up and down; they seemed to glide right and left over the keys, the fingers alone doing the work.” To Mr. Mähler, as to most others who have recorded their impressions of Beethoven’s improvisations, they were the non plus ultra of the art.

There was, however, be it noted in passing, a class of good musicians, small in number and exceptional in taste, who, precisely at this time, had discovered a rival to Beethoven, in this his own special field. Thus Gänsbacher writes, as cited by Frölich in his “Biographie Voglers”:

Sonnleithner gave a musical soirée in honor of Vogler and invited Beethoven among others. Vogler improvised at the pianoforte on a theme given to him by Beethoven, 4½ measures long, first an Adagio and then fugued. Vogler then gave Beethoven a theme of three measures (the scale of C major, alla breve). Beethoven’s excellent pianoforte playing, combined with an abundance of the most beautiful thoughts, surprised me beyond measure, but could not stir up the enthusiasm in me which had been inspired by Vogler’s learned playing, which was beyond parallel in respect of its harmonic and contrapuntal treatment.

An undated note of Beethoven, to Mähler, which belongs to a somewhat later period—since its date is not ascertainable nor of much importance—may be inserted here, as an introduction to Mr. Mähler’s remarks upon the portrait to which it refers:

I beg of you to return my portrait to me as soon as you have made sufficient use of it—if you need it longer I beg of you at least to make haste—I have promised the portrait to a lady, a stranger who saw it here, that she may hang it in her room during her stay of several weeks. Who can withstand such charming importunities, as a matter of course a portion of the lovely favors which I shall thus garner will also fall to you.

To the question what picture is here referred to, Mr. Mähler replied in substance: “It was a portrait, which I painted soon after coming to Vienna, in which Beethoven is represented, at nearly full length, sitting; the left hand rests upon a lyre, the right is extended, as if, in a moment of musical enthusiasm, he was beating time; in the background is a temple of Apollo. Oh! If I could but know what became of the picture!”

“What!” was the answer, to the great satisfaction of the old gentleman, “the picture is hanging at this moment in the home of Madame van Beethoven, widow, in the Josephstadt, and I have a copy of it.”[13]

The extended right hand—though, like the rest of the picture, not very artistically executed—was evidently painted with care. It is rather broad for the length, is muscular and nervous, as the hand of a great pianist necessarily grows through much practice; but, on the whole, is neatly formed and well proportioned. Anatomically, it corresponds so perfectly with all the authentic descriptions of Beethoven’s person, that this alone proves it to have been copied from nature and not drawn after the painter’s fancy. Whoever saw a long, delicate hand with fingers exquisitely tapering, like Mendelssohn’s, joined to the short stout muscular figure of a Beethoven or a Schubert?

A few of Beethoven’s letters belonging to this period must be introduced here. The first, dated September 22, 1803, addressed to Hoffmeister, is as follows:

Herewith I declare all the works concerning which you have written to me to be your property; the list of them will be copied again and sent to you signed by me as your confessed property. I also agree to the price, 50 ducats. Does this satisfy you?

Perhaps I may be able to send you instead of the variations for violin and violoncello a set of variations for four hands on a song of mine with which you will also have to print the poem by Goethe, as I wrote these variations in an album as a souvenir and consider them better than the others; are you content?

The transcriptions are not by me, but I revised them and improved them in part, therefore do not come along with an announcement that I had arranged them, because if you do you will lie, and, I haven’t either time or patience for such work. Are you agreed?

Now farewell, I can wish you only large success, and I would willingly give you everything as a gift if it were possible for me thus to get through the world, but—consider, everything about me has an official appointment and knows what he has to live on, but, good God, where at the Imperial Court is there a place for a parvum talentum com ego?

Correspondence with George Thomson

In this year began the correspondence with Thomson. George Thomson, a Scotch gentleman (born March 4, 1757, at Limekilns, Dunfermline, died at Leith, February 18, 1851), distinguished himself by tastes and acquirements which led to his appointment, when still a young man, as “Secretary to the Board of Trustees for the Encouragement of Arts and Manufactures in Scotland”—a Board established at the time of the Union of the Kingdoms, 1707 (not the Crowns, 1603), of England and Scotland—an office from which he retired upon a full pension after a service of fifty years. He was, especially, a promoter of all good music and an earnest reviver of ancient Scotch melody. As one means of improving the public taste and at the same time of giving currency to Scotch national airs, he had published sonatas with such melodies for themes, composed for him by Pleyel in Paris, and Koželuch in Vienna—-two instrumental composers enjoying then a European reputation now difficult to appreciate. The fame of the new composer at Vienna having now reached Edinburgh, Thomson applied to him for works of a like character. Only the signature of the reply seems to be in Beethoven’s hand:

A Monsieur
George Thomson, Nr. 28 York Place
Edinburgh. North Britain
Vienna le 5. 8^bre 1803.

Monsieur!

J’ai reçu avec bien de plaisir votre lettre du 20 Juillet. Entrant volontiers dans vos propositions je dois vous declarer que je suis prêt de composer pour vous six sonates telles que vous les desirez y introduisant même les airs ecossais d’une manière laquelle la nation Ecossaise trouvera la plus favorable et le plus d’accord avec le genie de ses chansons. Quant au honoraire je crois que trois cent ducats pour six sonates ne sera pas trop, vu qu’en Allemagne on me donne autant pour pareil nombre de sonates même sans accompagnement.

Je vous previens en même tems que vous devez accelerer votre declaration, par ce qu’on me propose tant d’engagements qu’après quelque tems je ne saurois peutêtre aussitôt satisfaire à vos demandes.—Je vous prie de me pardonner, que cette reponse est si retardée ce qui n’a été causée que par mon sejour à la campagne et plusieurs occupations tres pressantes.—Aimant de preference les airs eccossais je me plairai particulierement dans la composition de vos sonates, et j’ose avancer que si nos interêts s’accorderront sur le honoraire, vous serez parfaitement contenté.

Agréez les assurances de mon estime distingué.

Louis van Beethoven.

Mr. Thomson’s endorsement of this letter is this:

50 D. 1803. Louis van Beethoven, Vienna, demands 300 ducats for composing six Sonatas for me. Replied 8th Nov. that I would give no more than 150, taking 3 of the Sonatas when ready and the other 3 in six months after; giving him leave to publish in Germany on his own account, the day after publication in London.

The sonatas were never composed. Not long afterwards, on October 22, Beethoven, enraged at efforts to reprint his works, issued the following characteristic fulmination in large type, filling an entire page of the journal:

Warning.

Herr Carl Zulehner, a reprinter at Mayence, has announced an edition of all my works for pianoforte and string instruments. I hold it to be my duty hereby publicly to inform all friends of music that I have not the slightest part in this edition. I should not have offered to make a collection of my works, a proceeding which I hold to be premature at the best, without first consulting with the publishers and caring for the correctness which is wanting in some of the individual publications. Moreover, I wish to call attention to the fact that the illicit edition in question can never be complete, inasmuch as some new works will soon appear in Paris, which Herr Zulehner, as a French subject, will not be permitted to reprint. I shall soon make full announcement of a collection of my works to be made under my supervision and after a severe revision.[14]

Meissner’s Oratorio Text Rejected

Alexander Macco, the painter, after executing a portrait of the Queen of Prussia, in 1801, which caused much discussion in the public press but secured to him a pension of 100 thalers, went from Berlin to Dresden, Prague, and, in the summer of 1802, to Vienna. Here he became a great admirer of Beethoven, both as man and artist, and claimed and enjoyed so much of his society as the state of his mind and body would allow him to grant to any stranger. Macco remained but a few months here and then returned to Prague, whence he wrote the next year offering to Beethoven for composition an oratorio text by Prof. A. G. Meissner—a name just then well known in musical circles because of the publication of the first volume of the biography of Kapellmeister Naumann. If Meissner had not removed from Prague to Fulda in 1805, and if Europe had remained at peace, perhaps Beethoven might, two or three years later, have availed himself of the offer; just now he felt bound to decline it, which he did in a letter dated November 2, 1803. In it he said:

I am sorry, too, that I could not be oftener with you in Vienna, but there are periods in human life which have to be overcome and often they are not looked upon from the right point of view, it appears that as a great artist you are not wholly unfamiliar with such, and so—I have not, as I observe, lost your good will, of which fact I am glad because I esteem you highly and wish that I might have such an artist in my profession to associate with. Meissner’s proposal is very welcome, nothing could be more desirable than to receive such a poem from him, who is so highly honored as a writer and who understands musical poetry better than any other German author, but at present it is impossible for me to write this oratorio because I am just beginning my opera which, together with the performance, may occupy me till Easter—if Meissner is not in a hurry to publish his poem I should be glad if he were to leave the composition of it to me, and if the poem is not completed I wish he would not hurry it, since before or after Easter I would come to Prague and let him hear some of my compositions, which would make him more familiar with my manner of writing, and either—inspire him further—or perhaps, make him stop altogether, etc.

Was, then, the correspondent of the “Zeitung für die Elegante Welt” right? Had Beethoven really received one of Schikaneder’s heroic texts? This much is certain: that in the words “because I am just beginning my opera,” no reference is made to the “Leonore” (“Fidelio”). They may only express his expectation of beginning such a work immediately; or they may refer to one already begun, of which a fragment has been preserved. In Rubric II of the sale catalogue of Beethoven’s manuscripts and music, No. 67, is a “vocal piece with orchestra, complete, but not entirely orchestrated.” It is an operatic trio[15]; the dramatis personæ are Porus, Volivia, Sartagones; the handwriting is that of this part of the composer’s life; and the music is the basis of the subsequent grand duet in “Fidelio,” “O namenlose Freude.” The temptation is strong to believe that Schikaneder had given Beethoven another “Alexander,” the scenes laid in India—a supplement to that with which his new theatre had been opened two years before. However this was, circumstances occurred, which prevented its completion, or indeed the composition by Beethoven of any text prepared by Schikaneder.

The compositions which may safely be dated 1803, are few in comparison with those of 1802. The works published in the course of the year were the two Pianoforte Sonatas, Op. 31, Nos. 1 and 2 (in Nägeli’s “Répertoire des Clavecinistes”); the three Violin Sonatas, Op. 30 (Industrie-Comptoir); the two sets of Variations, Op. 34 and 35 (Breitkopf and Härtel); the seven Bagatelles, Op. 33 (Industrie-Comptoir); the Romanza in G for Violin, Op. 40 (Hoffmeister and Kühnel); the arrangement for Pianoforte and Flute (or Violin) Op. 41 of the Serenade (Op. 25), which was not made by Beethoven but examined by him and “corrected in parts” (Hoffmeister and Kühnel); the two Preludes for Pianoforte, Op. 39 (Hoffmeister and Kühnel); two songs, “La Partenza” and “Ich liebe dich” (Traeg); a song, “Das Glück der Freundschaft,” Op. 88 (Löschenkerl in Vienna and Simrock in Bonn), of which Nottebohm found a sketch amongst the sketches for the “Eroica” Symphony in the book used in 1803 and which, therefore, though it may have been an early work, was probably rewritten in 1803; and the six Sacred Songs by Gellert, dedicated to Count Browne (Artaria). The two great works of the year were the “Kreutzer” Sonata for Violin and the “Sinfonia Eroica.” The title of the former, “Sonata per il Pianoforte ed un Violino obligato in uno stilo (stile) molto concertante quasi come d’un Concerto,” is found on the inner side of the last sheet of the sketchbook of 1803 described by Nottebohm. Beethoven wrote the word “brillante” after “stilo” but scratched it out. It is obvious that he wished to emphasize the difference between this Sonata and its predecessors. Simrock’s tardiness in publishing the Sonata annoyed Beethoven. He became impatient and wrote to the publisher as follows, under date of October 4, 1804:

Kreutzer and His Sonata

Dear, best Herr Simrock, I have been waiting with longing for the Sonata which I gave you—but in vain—please write me what the condition of affairs is concerning it—whether or not you accepted it from me merely as food for moths—or do you wish to obtain a special Imperial privilegium in connection with it?—well it seems to me that might have been accomplished long ago.—Where in hiding is this slow devil—who is to drive out the sonata—you are generally the quick devil, are known as Faust once was as being in league with the imp of darkness and for this reason you are loved by your comrades; but again—where in hiding is your devil—or what kind of a devil is it that sits on my sonata and with whom you have a misunderstanding?—Hurry, then, and tell me when I shall see the sonata given to the light of day—when you have told me the date I will at once send a little note to Kreutzer, which you will please be kind enough to enclose when you send a copy (as you in any event will send your copies to Paris or even, perhaps, have them printed there)—this Kreutzer is a dear, good fellow who during his stay here[16] gave me much pleasure. I prefer his unassuming manner and unaffectedness to all the Extérieur or intérieur of all the virtuosi—as the sonata is written for a thoroughly capable violinist, the dedication to him is all the more appropriate—although we correspond with each other (i. e., a letter from me once a year)—I hope he will not have learned anything about it....

As a proof of the growing appreciation of Beethoven in foreign lands it may be remarked here that in the summer of 1803 he received an Erard pianoforte as a gift from the celebrated Parisian maker. The instrument belongs to the museum at Linz and used to bear an inscription, on the authority of Beethoven’s brother Johann, that it was given to the composer by the city of Paris in 1804. The archives of the Erard firm show, however, that on the 18th of Thermidor, in the XIth year of the Republic (1803), Sébastien Erard made a present of “un piano forme clavecin” to Ludwig van Beethoven in Vienna.

Chapter II

The Year 1804—The “Sinfonia Eroica”—Beethoven and Breuning—The “Waldstein” Sonata—Sonnleithner, Treitschke and Gaveaux—“Fidelio” Begun—Beethoven’s Popularity.

During the winter 1803-04 negotiations were in progress the result of which put an end for the present to Beethoven’s operatic aspirations. Let Treitschke, a personal actor in the scenes, explain:[17]

On February 24, 1801, the first performance of “Die Zauberflöte” took place in the Royal Imperial Court Theatre beside the Kärnthnerthor. Orchestra and chorus as well as the representatives of Sarastro (Weinmüller), the Queen of Night (Mme. Rosenbaum), Pamina (Demoiselle Saal) and the Moor (Lippert) were much better than before. It remained throughout the year the only admired German opera. The loss of large receipts and the circumstance that many readings were changed, the dialogue shortened and the name of the author omitted from all mention, angered S. (Schikaneder) greatly. He did not hesitate to give free vent to his gall, and to parody some of the vulnerable passages in the performance. Thus the change of costume accompanying the metamorphosis of the old woman into Papagena seldom succeeded. Schikaneder, when he repeated the opera at his theatre, sent a couple of tailors on to the stage who slowly accomplished the disrobing, etc. These incidents would be trifles had they not been followed by such significant consequences; for from that time dated the hatred and jealousy which existed between the German operas of the two theatres, which alternately persecuted every novelty and ended in Baron von Braun, then manager of the Court Theatre, purchasing the Theater-an-der-Wien in 1804, by which act everything came under the staff of a single shepherd but never became a single flock.

Zitterbarth had, some months before, purchased of Schikaneder all his rights in the property, paying him 100,000 florins for the privilegium alone; and, therefore, being absolute master, “had permitted a dicker down to the sum of 1,060,000 florins Vienna standard.... The contract was signed on February 11th and on the 16th the Theater-an-der-Wien under the new arrangement was opened with Méhul’s opera ‘Ariodante.’”[18]

Zitterbarth had retained Schikaneder as director; but now Baron Braun dismissed him, and the Secretary of the Court Theatres, Joseph von Sonnleithner, for the present acted in that capacity.

The sale of the theatre made void the contracts with Vogler and Beethoven, except as to the first of Vogler’s three operas, “Samori” (text by Huber), which being ready was put in rehearsal and produced May 7th.

It was no time for Baron Braun, with three theatres on his hands, to make new contracts with composers, until the reins were fairly in his grasp, and the affairs of the new purchase brought into order and in condition to work smoothly; nor was there any necessity of haste; the repertory was so well supplied, that the list of new pieces for the year reached the number of forty-three, of which eighteen were operas or Singspiele. So Beethoven, who had already occupied the free lodgings in the theatre building for the year which his contract with Zitterbarth and Schikaneder granted him, was compelled to move. Stephan von Breuning even then lived in the house in which in 1827 he died. It was the large pile of building belonging to the Esterhazy estates, known as “das rothe Haus,” which stood at a right angle to the Schwarzspanier house and church, and fronted upon the open space where now stands the new Votiv-Kirche. Here also Beethoven now took apartments.[19]

It is worth noting, that this was the year—October, 1803 to October, 1804—of C. M. von Weber’s first visit to Vienna, and of his studies under Vogler. He was then but eighteen years old and “the delicate little man” made no very favorable impression upon Beethoven. But at a later period, when Weber’s noble dramatic talent became developed and known, no former prejudice prevented the great symphonist’s due appreciation and hearty acknowledgment of it.

Clementi Comes to Vienna

Among the noted strangers who came to Vienna this spring was Clementi.

“He sent word to Beethoven that he would like to see him.” “Clementi will wait a long time before Beethoven goes to him,” was the reply. Thus Czerny.

When he came (says Ries) Beethoven wanted to go to him at once, but his brother put it into his head that Clementi ought to make the first visit. Though much older Clementi would probably have done so had not gossip begun to concern itself with the matter. Thus it came about that Clementi was in Vienna a long time without knowing Beethoven except by sight. Often we dined at the same table in the Swan, Clementi with his pupil Klengel and Beethoven with me; all knew each other but no one spoke to the other, or confined himself to a greeting. The two pupils had to imitate their masters, because they feared they would otherwise lose their lessons. This would surely have been the case with me because there was no possibility of a middle-way with Beethoven. (“Notizen,” p. 101.)

The “Eroica” and Napoleon

Early in the Spring a fair copy of the “Sinfonia Eroica” had been made to be forwarded to Paris through the French embassy, as Moritz Lichnowsky informed Schindler.

In this symphony (says Ries) Beethoven had Buonaparte in his mind, but as he was when he was First Consul. Beethoven esteemed him greatly at the time and likened him to the greatest Roman consuls. I as well as several of his more intimate friends saw a copy of the score lying upon his table, with the word “Buonaparte” at the extreme top of the title-page and at the extreme bottom “Luigi van Beethoven,” but not another word. Whether, and with what the space between was to be filled out, I do not know. I was the first to bring him the intelligence that Buonaparte had proclaimed himself emperor, whereupon he flew into a rage and cried out: “Is then he, too, nothing more than an ordinary human being? Now he, too, will trample on all the rights of man and indulge only his ambition. He will exalt himself above all others, become a tyrant!” Beethoven went to the table, took hold of the title-page by the top, tore it in two and threw it on the floor. The first page was rewritten and only then did the symphony receive the title: “Sinfonia eroica.”

There can be no mistake in this; for Count Moritz Lichnowsky, who happened to be with Beethoven when Ries brought the offensive news, described the scene to Schindler years before the publication of the “Notizen,”

The Acts of the French Tribunate and Senate, which elevated the First Consul to the dignity of Emperor, are dated May 3, 4, and 17. Napoleon’s assumption of the crown occurred on the 18th and the solemn proclamation was issued on the 20th. Even in those days, news of so important an event would not have required ten days to reach Vienna. At the very latest, then, a fair copy of the “Sinfonia Eroica,” was complete early in May, 1804. That it was a copy, the two credible witnesses, Ries and Lichnowsky, attest. Beethoven’s own score—purchased at the sale in 1827, for 3 fl. 10 kr., Vienna standard (less than 3½ francs), by the Vienna composer Hr. Joseph Dessauer—could not have been the one referred to above. It is, from beginning to end, disfigured by erasures and corrections, and the title-page could never have answered to Ries’ description. It is this:

(At the top:) N. B. 1. Cues for the other instruments are to be written into the first violin part.
Sinfonia Grande
[Here two words are erased]
804 im August
del Sigr
Louis van Beethoven
Sinfonie 3 Op. 55
(At the bottom:) N. B. 2. The third horn is so written that it can be played by by [sic] a primario as well as a secundario.

A note to the funeral march, is evidently a direction to the copyist, as are the remarks on the title-page:

N. B. The notes in the bass which have stems upwards are for the violoncellos, those downward for the bass-viol.

One of the two words erased from the title was “Bonaparte”; and just under his own name Beethoven wrote with a lead pencil in large letters, nearly obliterated but still legible, “Composed on Bonaparte.”

It is confidently submitted, therefore, that all the traditions derived from Czerny, Dr. Bertolini and whomsoever, that the opening Allegro is a description of a naval battle, and that the Marcia funebre was written in commemoration of Nelson or Gen. Abercrombie,[20] are mistakes, and that Schindler is correct; and again, that the date “804 im August,” is not that of the composition of the Symphony. It is written with a different ink, darker than the rest of the title, and may have been inserted long afterwards, Beethoven’s memory playing him false. The two “violin adagios with orchestral accompaniment” offered by Kaspar van Beethoven to André in November, 1802, cannot well be anything but the two Romances, yet that in G, Op. 40, bears the date 1803. Perhaps Kaspar wrote before it was complete. But what can be said to this? It is perfectly well known that Op. 124 was performed on October 3, 1822; yet the copy sent to Stumpff in London bore this title: “Overture by Ludwig van Beethoven, composed for the opening of the Josephstadt Theatre, towards the end of September, 1823, and performed for the first time on October 3, 1824, Op. 124.” That the “804 im August” may be an error, is at all events possible, if not established as such. “Afterwards,” continues Ries, “Prince Lobkowitz bought this composition for several years’ [?] use, and it was performed several times in his palace.”

There is “an anecdote told by a person who enjoyed Beethoven’s society,”[21] in Schmidt’s “Wiener Musik-Zeitung” (1843, p. 28), according to which, as may readily be believed, this work, then so difficult, new, original, strange in its effects and of such unusual length, did not please. Some time after this humiliating failure Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia paid a visit to the same cavalier (Lobkowitz) in his countryseat.... To give him a surprise, the new and, of course, to him utterly unknown symphony, was played to the Prince, who “listened to it with tense attention which grew with every movement.” At the close he proved his admiration by requesting the favor of an immediate repetition; and, after an hour’s pause, as his stay was too limited to admit of another concert, a second. “The impression made by the music was general and its lofty contents were now recognized.”

To those who have had occasion to study the character of Louis Ferdinand as a man and a musician, and who know that at the precise time here indicated he was really upon a journey that took him near certain estates of Prince Lobkowitz, there is nothing improbable in the anecdote. If it be true, and the occurrence really took place at Raudnitz or some other “countryseat” of the Prince’s, the rehearsals and first performances of the Symphony at Vienna had occurred, weeks, perhaps months, before “804 im August.” However this be, Ries was present at the first rehearsal and incurred the danger of receiving a box on the ear from his master.

In the first Allegro occurs a wicked whim (böse Laune) of Beethoven’s for the horn; in the second part, several measures before the theme recurs in its entirety, Beethoven has the horn suggest it at a place where the two violins are still holding a second chord. To one unfamiliar with the score this must always sound as if the horn player had made a miscount and entered at the wrong place. At the first rehearsal of the symphony, which was horrible, but at which the horn player made his entry correctly, I stood beside Beethoven, and, thinking that a blunder had been made I said: “Can’t the damned hornist count?—it sounds infamously false!” I think I came pretty close to receiving a box on the ear. Beethoven did not forgive the slip for a long time. (P. 79, “Notizen.”)

It was bad economy for two young, single men, each to have and pay for a complete suite of apartments in the same house, especially for two who were connected by so many ties of friendship as Breuning and Beethoven. Either lodging contained ample room for both; and Beethoven therefore very soon gave up his and moved into the other. Breuning had his own housekeeper and cook and they also usually dined together at home. This arrangement had hardly been effected when Beethoven was seized with a severe sickness, which when conquered still left him the victim of an obstinate intermittent fever.

A Quarrel with von Breuning

Every language has its proverbs to the effect that he who serves not himself is ill served. So Beethoven discovered, when it was too late, that due notice had not been given to the agent of Esterhazy, and that he was bound for the rent of the apartments previously occupied. The question, who was in fault, came up one day at dinner in the beginning of July, and ended in a sudden quarrel in which Beethoven became so angry as to leave the table and the house and retire to Baden with the determination to sacrifice the rent here and pay for another lodging, rather than remain under the same roof with Breuning. “Breuning,” says Ries, “a hot-head like Beethoven, grew so enraged at Beethoven’s conduct because the incident occurred in the presence of his brother.” It is clear, however, that he soon became cool and instantly did his best to prevent the momentary breach from becoming permanent, by writing—as may be gathered from Beethoven’s allusions to it—a manly, sensible and friendly invitation to forgive and forget. But Beethoven, worn with illness, his nerves unstrung, made restless, unhappy, petulant by his increasing deafness, was for a time obstinate. His wrath must run its course. It found vent in the following letters to Ries, and then the paroxysm soon passed.

The first of the letters was written in the beginning of 1804,

Dear Ries: Since Breuning did not scruple by his conduct to present my character to you and the landlord as that of a miserable, beggarly, contemptible fellow I single you out first to give my answer to Breuning by word of mouth. Only to the one and first point of his letter which I answer only in order to vindicate my character in your eyes. Say to him, then, that it never occurred to me to reproach him because of the tardiness of the notice, and that, if Breuning was really to blame for it, my desire to live amicably with all the world is much too precious and dear to me that I should give pain to one of my friends for a few hundreds and more. You know yourself that altogether jocularly I accused you of being to blame that the notice did not arrive on time. I am sure that you will remember this; I had forgotten all about the matter. Now my brother began at the table and said that he believed it was Breuning’s fault; I denied it at once and said that you were to blame. It appears to me that was plain enough to show that I did not hold him to blame. Thereupon Breuning jumped up like a madman and said he would call up the landlord. This conduct in the presence of all the persons with whom I associate made me lose my self-control; I also jumped up, upset my chair, went away and did not return. This behavior induced Breuning to put me in such a light before you and the house-steward, and to write me a letter also which I have answered only with silence. I have nothing more to say to Breuning. His mode of thought and action in regard to me proves that there never ought to have been a friendly relationship between him and me and such certainly will not exist in the future. I have told you all this because your statements degraded all my habits of thinking and acting. I know that if you had known the facts you would certainly not have made them, and this satisfies me.

Now I beg of you, dear Ries! immediately on receipt of this letter go to my brother, the apothecary, and tell him that I shall leave Baden in a few days and that he must engage the lodgings in Döbling immediately you have informed him. I was near to coming to-day; I am tired of being here, it revolts me. Urge him for heaven’s sake to rent the lodgings at once because I want to get into them immediately. Tell it to him and do not show him any part of what is written on the other page; I want to show him from all possible points of view that I am not so small-minded as he and wrote to him only after this (Breuning’s) letter, although my resolution to end our friendship is and will remain firm.

Your friend
Beethoven.

Not long thereafter there followed a second letter, which Ries gives as follows:

Baden, July 14, 1804.

If you, dear Ries, are able to find better quarters I shall be glad. I want them on a large quiet square or on the ramparts.... I will take care to be at the rehearsal on Wednesday. It is not pleasant to me that it is at Schuppanzigh’s. He ought to be grateful if my humiliations make him thinner. Farewell, dear Ries! We are having bad weather here and I am not safe from people; I must flee in order to be alone.

End of a Friendship Threatened

From a third letter, dated “Baden, July 24, 1804,” Ries prints the following excerpt:

... No doubt you were surprised at the Breuning affair; believe me, dear (friend), my eruption was only the outburst consequent on many unpleasant encounters between us before. I have the talent in many cases to conceal my sensitiveness and repress it; but if I am irritated at a time when I am more susceptible than usual to anger, I burst out more violently than anybody else. Breuning certainly has excellent qualities, but he thinks he is free from all faults and his greatest ones are those which he thinks he sees in others. He has a spirit of pettiness which I have despised since childhood. My judgment almost predicted the course which affairs would take with Breuning, since our modes of thinking, acting and feeling are so different, but I thought these difficulties might also be overcome;—experience has refuted me. And now, no more friendship! I have found only two friends in the world with whom I have never had a misunderstanding, but what men! One is dead, the other still lives. Although we have not heard from each other in nearly six years I know that I occupy the first place in his heart as he does in mine. The foundation of friendship demands the greatest similarity between the hearts and souls of men. I ask no more than that you read the letter which I wrote to Breuning and his letter to me. No, he shall never again hold the place in my heart which once he occupied. He who can think a friend capable of such base thoughts and be guilty of such base conduct towards him is not worth my friendship.

The reader knows too well the character of Breuning to be prejudiced against him by all these harsh expressions written by Beethoven in a fit of choler of which he heartily repented and “brought forth fruits meet for repentance.” But, as Ries says, “these letters together with their consequences are too beautiful a testimony to Beethoven’s character to be omitted here,” the more so as they introduce, by the allusions in them, certain matters of more or less interest from the “Notizen” of Ries. Thus Ries writes:

One evening I came to Baden to continue my lessons. There I found a handsome young woman sitting on the sofa with him. Thinking that I might be intruding I wanted to go at once, but Beethoven detained me and said: “Play for the time being.” He and the lady remained seated behind me. I had already played for a long time when Beethoven suddenly called out: “Ries, play some love music”; a little later, “Something melancholy!” then, “Something passionate!” etc.

From what I heard I could come to the conclusion that in some manner he must have offended the lady and was trying to make amends by an exhibition of good humor. At last he jumped up and shouted: “Why, all those things are by me!” I had played nothing but movements from his works, connecting them with short transition-phrases, which seemed to please him. The lady soon went away and to my great amazement Beethoven did not know who she was. I learned that she had come in shortly before me in order to make Beethoven’s acquaintance. We followed her in order to discover her lodgings and later her station. We saw her from a distance (it was moonlight),[22] but suddenly she disappeared. Chatting on all manner of topics we walked for an hour and a half in the beautiful valley adjoining. On going, however, Beethoven said: “I must find out who she is and you must help me.” A long time afterward I met her in Vienna and discovered that she was the mistress of a foreign prince. I reported the intelligence to Beethoven, but never heard anything more about her either from him or anybody else.

The rehearsal at Schuppanzigh’s on “Wednesday” (18th) mentioned in the letter of July 14th, was for the benefit of Ries, who was to play in the first of the second series of the regular Augarten Thursday concerts which took place the next day (19th) or, perhaps, the 26th. Ries says on page 113 of the “Notizen”:

Beethoven had given me his beautiful Concerto in C minor (Op. 37) in manuscript so that I might make my first public appearance as his pupil with it; and I am the only one who ever appeared as such while Beethoven was alive.... Beethoven himself conducted, but he only turned the pages and never, perhaps, was a concerto more beautifully accompanied. We had two large rehearsals. I had asked Beethoven to write a cadenza for me, but he refused and told me to write one myself and he would correct it. Beethoven was satisfied with my composition and made few changes; but there was an extremely brilliant and very difficult passage in it, which, though he liked it, seemed to him too venturesome, wherefore he told me to write another in its place. A week before the concert he wanted to hear the cadenza again. I played it and floundered in the passage; he again, this time a little ill-naturedly, told me to change it. I did so, but the new passage did not satisfy me; I therefore studied the other, and zealously, but was not quite sure of it. When the cadenza was reached in the public concert Beethoven quietly sat down. I could not persuade myself to choose the easier one. When I boldly began the more difficult one, Beethoven violently jerked his chair; but the cadenza went through all right and Beethoven was so delighted that he shouted “Bravo!” loudly. This electrified the entire audience and at once gave me a standing among the artists. Afterward, while expressing his satisfaction he added: “But all the same you are willful! If you had made a slip in the passage I would never have given you another lesson.”

A little farther on in his book Ries writes (p. 115):

The pianoforte part of the C minor Concerto was never completely written out in the score; Beethoven wrote it down on separate sheets of paper expressly for me.

This confirms Seyfried, as quoted on a preceding page.

“Not on my life would I have believed that I could be so lazy as I am here. If it is followed by an outburst of industry, something worth while may be accomplished,” Beethoven wrote at the end of his letter of July 24. He was right. His brother Johann secured for him the lodging at Döbling where he passed the rest of the summer, and where the two Sonatas Op. 53 and 54, certainly “something worth while,” were composed. In one of the long walks, previously described by Ries,

in which we went so far astray that we did not get back to Döbling, where Beethoven lived, until nearly 8 o’clock, he had been all the time humming and sometimes howling, always up and down, without singing any definite notes. In answer to my question what it was he said: “A theme for the last movement of the sonata has occurred to me.” When we entered the room he ran to the pianoforte without taking off his hat. I took a seat in a corner and he soon forgot all about me. Now he stormed for at least an hour with the beautiful finale of the sonata. Finally he got up, was surprised still to see me and said: “I cannot give you a lesson to-day, I must do some more work.”

The F Minor Sonata, Op. 57

The Sonata in question was that in F minor, Op. 57. Ries had in the meantime fulfilled Beethoven’s wish for a new lodging on the ramparts, by engaging for him one on the Mölkerbastei three or four houses only from Prince Lichnowsky in the Pasqualati house—“from the fourth storey of which there was a beautiful view,” namely, over the broad Glacis, the northwestern suburb of the city and the mountains in the distance. “He moved out of this several times,” says Ries, “but always returned to it, so that, as I afterwards heard, Baron Pasqualati was good-natured enough to say: ‘The lodging will not be rented; Beethoven will come back.’” To what extent Ries was correctly informed in this we will not now conjecture. The lessons of Förster’s little boy had been interrupted so long as his teacher dwelt in the distant theatre buildings; they were now renewed, the first being particularly impressed upon his memory by a severe reproof from Beethoven for ascending the four lofty flights of stairs too rapidly, and entering out of breath: “Youngster, you will ruin your lungs if you are not more careful,” said he in substance.

The two new Sonatas were finished and were now made known to Beethoven’s intimates. In the one in C major, Op. 53, there was a long Andante. A friend of Beethoven’s said to him that the Sonata was too long, for which he was terribly taken to task by the composer. But after quiet reflection Beethoven was convinced of the correctness of the criticism. The Andante was therefore excluded and its place supplied by the interesting Introduction to the Rondo which it now has. A year after the publication of the Sonata it also appeared separately. In these particulars Ries is confirmed by Czerny, who adds: “Because of its popularity (for Beethoven played it frequently in society) he gave it the title ‘Andante favori.’ I am the more sure of this since Beethoven sent me the proof together with the manuscript for revision.” The arrangement for string quartet may have been made much later, probably by Ries (?).

This Andante (Ries continues) has left a painful memory in me. When Beethoven played it for the first time to our friend Krumpholtz and me, it delighted us greatly and we teased him until he repeated it. Passing the door of Prince Lichnowsky’s house (by the Schottenthor) on my way home I went in to tell the Prince of the new and glorious composition of Beethoven’s, and was persuaded to play it as well as I could remember it. Recalling more and more of it the Prince urged me to repeat it. In this way it happened that the Prince also learned a portion of the piece. To give Beethoven a surprise the Prince went to him the next day and said that he too had composed something which was not at all bad. In spite of Beethoven’s remark that he did not want to hear it the Prince sat down and to the amazement of the composer played a goodly portion of the Andante. Beethoven was greatly angered, and this was the reason why I never again heard Beethoven play.

Prince Louis Ferdinand, now on his way into Italy, made a short stay at Vienna, renewing his acquaintance with Beethoven; but of their intercourse few particulars are known. Ries relates (“Notizen,” p. 111), that an old countess gave a little musical entertainment “to which, naturally, Beethoven was invited. When the company sat down to supper, plates for the high nobility only were placed at the Prince’s table—none for Beethoven. He flew into a rage, made a few ugly remarks, took his hat and went away. A few days later Prince Louis gave a dinner to which some members of the first company, including the old countess, were invited. When they sat down to table the old countess was placed on one side of the Prince, Beethoven on the other, a mark of distinction which Beethoven always referred to with pleasure.”

Beethoven and Breuning Reconciled

The Pianoforte Concerto in C minor was then in the hands of the engraver; upon its publication in November, Prince Louis Ferdinand’s name appeared upon the title. Concerning the compositions of the Prince, Beethoven remarked: “Now and then there are pretty bits in them”—so said Czerny. Before this time Beethoven and Breuning “met each other by accident and a complete reconciliation took place and every inimical resolve of Beethoven’s, despite their vigorous expression in the two letters, was wholly forgotten.”—(Ries.) And not this alone; he “laid his peace offering on the altar of reconciliation.” It was the best picture of himself which exists from those years, a beautiful miniature painted upon ivory by Hornemann, still in the possession of Breuning’s heirs. With it he sent the following letter:

Let us bury behind this picture forever, my dear Steffen, all that for a time has passed between us. I know that I broke your heart. The feelings within me which you must have noticed have sufficiently punished me for that. It was not wickedness that I felt towards you; no, if that were so I should never again be worthy of your friendship; passion on your part and on mine; but mistrust of you arose in me; men came between us who are not worthy of you and me. My portrait was long ago intended for you; you know that I always intended it for somebody. To whom could I give it with so warm a heart as to you, faithful, good, noble Steffen! Forgive me if I have pained you; I suffered no less. When I no longer saw you near me I felt for the first time how dear to my heart you are and always will be.

Surely you will come to my arms again as in past days.

Nor was the reconciliation on Breuning’s part less perfect. On the 13th of November he writes to Wegeler and, to excuse his long silence, says:

He who has been my friend from youth is often largely to blame that I am compelled to neglect the absent ones. You cannot conceive, my dear Wegeler, what an indescribable, I might say, fearful effect the gradual loss of hearing has had upon him. Think of the feeling of being unhappy in one of such violent temperament; in addition reservedness, mistrust, often towards his best friends, in many things want of decision! For the greater part, with only an occasional exception when he gives free vent to his feelings on the spur of the moment, intercourse with him is a real exertion, at which one can scarcely trust to oneself. From May until the beginning of this month we lived in the same house, and at the outset I took him into my rooms. He had scarcely come before he became severely, almost dangerously ill, and this was followed by an intermittent fever. Worry and the care of him used me rather severely. Now he is completely well again. He lives on the Ramparts, I in one of the newly-built houses of Prince Esterhazy in front of the Alstercaserne, and as I am keeping house he eats with me every day.

Not a word about the quarrel! Not a word to intimate that Beethoven had not occupied his rooms with him until at the usual time for changing lodgings he had crossed the Glacis to Pasqualati’s house; not a word of complaint—nothing but deepest pity and heartiest sympathy.

In December the famous Munich oboist Ramm was in Vienna and took part with Beethoven in one of Prince Lobkowitz’s private concerts. Beethoven directed the performance of the “Sinfonia Eroica” and in the second part of the first Allegro, “where the music is pursued for so many measures in half-notes against the beat,” he, as Ries says, threw the orchestra into such confusion that a new beginning had to be made.

On the same evening he played his Quintet for Pianoforte and Wind-instruments with Ramm as oboist. In the last Allegro there are several holds before the theme is resumed. At one of these Beethoven suddenly began to improvise, took the Rondo for a theme and entertained himself and the others for a considerable time, but not the other players. They were displeased and Ramm even very angry. It was really very comical to see them, momentarily expecting the performance to be resumed, put their instruments to their mouths only to put them down again. At length Beethoven was satisfied and dropped into the Rondo. The whole company was transported with delight.

Turn we again to the Theater-an-der-Wien, for a new contract has been made with Beethoven, by which his operatic aspirations and hopes are again awakened, with a better prospect of their gratification. At the end of August Sonnleithner retired from the direction and Baron Braun took the extraordinary step of reinstating his former rival and enemy, Schikaneder—a remarkable proof of the Baron’s high opinion of his tact and skill in the difficult business of management.

When one calls to mind the extraordinary praises which have been bestowed upon Baron Braun for his supposed patronage of Beethoven, it is worth noting, as a coincidence if nothing more, that now when Schikaneder finds himself in a strait for novelty and new attractions for his stage, the project of appealing to Beethoven’s genius is revived.

Before proceeding, a word upon Sonnleithner and Treitschke may be permitted.

Sonnleithner and Treitschke

The eldest son, born 1765, of Christoph Sonnleithner, Doctor of Laws and Dean of the Juridical Faculty at Vienna, Joseph Ferdinand by name, was educated to his father’s profession, and early rose to the positions of Circuit Commissioner and Royal Imperial Court Scrivener (Kreis-Kommissär und K. K. Hof-Concipist). All the Sonnleithners, from Dr. Christoph down to the excellent and beloved representative of the family, Leopold, his grandson who died in 1878, have stood in the front ranks of musical dilettanti, as composers, singers, instrumental performers and writers on topics pertaining to the art. Joseph Ferdinand was no exception. He gave his attention particularly to musical and theatrical literature, edited the Court Theatre Calendars, 1794-5, so highly lauded by Gerber, and prepared himself by appropriate studies to carry out Forkel’s plan of a “History of Music in Examples,” which was to reach the great extent of 50 volumes, folio. To this end he spent nearly three years, 1798-1802, in an extensive tour through northern Europe making collections of rare, old music. Upon his return to Vienna, resigning this project again into the hands of Forkel, he became one of the earliest partners, if not one of the founders, of the publishing house known as the “Kunst- und Industrie-Comptoir” (Bureau d’Arts et d’Industrie), of which Schreyvogel was the recognized head. The latter had been appointed Secretary of the Court Theatre in 1802, but resigned, and, on February 14, 1804, Sonnleithner “was appointed, and on this account was most honorably retired from his former post as Court Scrivener.” On what grounds he has been called an “actor” (Schauspieler) is unknown.

One of his colleagues in the various offices of the Court Theatres was Georg Friedrich Treitschke, born in 1776, a native of Leipsic, who came to the Court Theatre in 1800 as an actor, but whose talents and fine character raised him in the course of the next two years to the position of poet and stage-manager of the German Court Opera, a post which he still and for many years continued to hold. He was therefore now (1804) in close business relations with Baron Braun and Sonnleithner; and, until some proof be adduced of lapse of memory—for his known probity forbids all suspicion of intentional or careless misrepresentation—his statements in regard to them may be accepted with perfect confidence.

Treitschke wrote thus in the “Orpheus” of 1841 (p. 258):

At the end of 1804 Baron von Braun, the new owner of the Royal Imperial priv. Theater-an-der-Wien, commissioned Ludwig van Beethoven, then in the full strength of youth, to write an opera for that playhouse. Because of his oratorio, “Christus am Ölberg,” it was believed that the master might do as much for dramatic music as he had done for instrumental. Besides his honorarium[23] he was offered free lodgings in the theatre buildings. Joseph Sonnleithner undertook to provide the text, and chose the French book, “L’Amour conjugal,” although it had already been set by Gaveaux and to Italian words as “Leonora” by Paër, but had been translated from both dramatizations into German. Beethoven had no fear of his predecessors and went to work with eager delight, so that the opera was nearly finished by the middle of 1805.[24]

Such is Treitschke’s simple and compendious statement of the facts; a statement which has been affirmed to contain “manifold errors,” yet, in truth, not a single point in it can be controverted.

In Paris, at the close of the 18th century, Shakespeare’s “being taken by the insolent foe and redemption thence” was by far the most popular subject for the stage. Doubtless so many facts stranger than fiction in recent narratives of escape from dungeon and guillotine, rendered doubly fascinating by beautiful exhibitions of disinterested affection, exalted generosity and heroic self-sacrifice, were not without their effect upon public taste. Certain it is that no other class of subjects is so numerously represented in the French drama of that precise period as this. “Les deux Journées” by J. N. Bouilly stands confessedly at its head. In Beethoven’s opinion in 1823, this and “La Vestale” were the two best texts then ever written. Two years before the “Deux Journées”—that is, on February 19th, 1798—the same poet had produced another of that class of texts, which, if less abounding in pleasing and exciting scenes, still contained one supreme moment that cannot readily find its like. This was “Léonore, ou l’Amour conjugal”; the seventeenth and last in Fétis’ list of Pierre Gaveaux’s thirty-five operas and operettas.

The French Original of “Fidelio”

Gaveaux was a singer at the Théâtre Feydeau in Paris—a man of no great musical science, but gifted with a natural talent for melody and for pleasing though not always correct instrumentation, which secured the suffrages of the Feydeau audience for nearly all the long list of his productions. These were mostly short pieces in one act, in which he wrote the principal tenor part for himself. His “Le petit Matelot” (1794), as “Der kleine Matrose,” became immediately popular throughout Germany; Rellstab at Berlin published a pianoforte arrangement of it in 1798; and it so endured the fluctuations in public taste as still to be performed at Frankfort-on-the-Main in 1846. This was followed by his “L’Amour filial,” and others, so that, in short, whatever faults the critics found in his music, he was one of those French composers, to whose productions the managers of German opera houses ever had an eye. As the “Léonore” was published in score soon after its production, the names of its authors, Bouilly and Gaveaux, as well as its success at the Théâtre Feydeau, ensured its becoming known in Germany, and, but for the use of its subject by Paër, it might perhaps have been simply translated and performed with the original music. Rewritten in Italian, it was one of the first texts put into Paër’s hands after his removal to Dresden, and was produced on the 3d of October, as the opening piece of the winter season 1804-5.

The first performance was another triumph for Paër, who, satisfied with it, departed for Vienna next day on his way to Italy. It requires no great sagacity to perceive, on the one hand, that the Directors of the Imperial Italian Opera—on whose stage at the least eleven of Paër’s works had been given, several of them originally written for it—would not fail to secure a copy of the new composition; and, on the other, that the composer would seek the fame and profit of its reproduction there.[25] Jahn in his preface to Beethoven’s “Leonore” has discussed the great inferiority of the Dresden Italian text to the original; its defects would be equally apparent to Sonnleithner; and this consideration, with perhaps later news from Dresden, would convince him that the performance of Paër’s composition at Vienna would be at best a doubtful venture.[26]

Popularity of Beethoven’s Music

At this point, when the first of the solo sonatas written for the enlarged pianoforte (Op. 53) is ready for the press; when the Pianoforte Concerto in C minor has just been published; the “Sinfonia Eroica,” with its daring novelties of ideas and construction is awaiting public performance, and the composer has entered the lists to compete with Cherubini in another form of the art—here seems to be the fitting place for a few notes upon the degree of popularity, and the extent of circulation, to which his previous compositions had already attained.

We have not written very lucidly, if it be not sufficiently clear that, at Vienna, the works of no other of the younger generation of composers had so ready and extensive a sale as Beethoven’s, notwithstanding their most attractive qualities to many, were repellent to others. That was a question of taste. But in these last weeks of 1804, a proof of their general popularity was in preparation by Schreyvogel and Rizzi, which, so far as the present writer has examined the German periodical press from 1790 to 1830, is without a parallel. It was a complete classified catalogue of the “Works of Herrn Ludwig van Beethoven,” published as an advertisement, January 30, 1805, in the “Wiener Zeitung,” announcing them as “to be had at the Kunst- und Industrie-Comptoir at Vienna in the Kohlmarkt, No. 269.”

At the end of 1796—a few sets of Variations excepted—only the first three of Beethoven’s opera had appeared. Four years afterwards the first publishing houses of Leipsic contend with those of Vienna for his manuscripts, notwithstanding the worse than contemptuous treatment of his works by the newly founded musical journal.

In January, 1801, at Breslau “the pianoforte players gladly venture upon Beethoven and spare neither time nor pains to conquer his difficulties.” In June, Beethoven has “more commissions, almost, than it was possible to fill” from the publishers—he “demands and they pay.” In 1802, Nägeli of Zürich, passing all the older composers by, applies to him for sonatas with which to introduce to the public his costly enterprise of the “Répertoire des Clavecinistes.” In 1803, although Simrock, of Bonn, had a branch house at Paris, and printed editions of his townsman’s more important works for circulation in France, Zulehner of Mayence finds the demand for them sufficient to warrant the announcement of a complete and uniform edition of the “Works for Pianoforte and String Instruments.” In May of the same year the “Correspondence des Amateurs-Musiciens” informs us that at Paris a part of the pianoforte virtuosos play only Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, and spite of the difficulties offered by their works there are “quelquefois des Amateurs qui croient les jouer”; and, soon after this, an application comes to Beethoven from distant Scotland for half a dozen sonatas, on Scotch themes.[27]

The first two Concertos for Pianoforte and Orchestra, published in 1801, are reported to have been played in public within two years at Berlin and Frankfort-on-the-Main; the third, advertised in November, 1804, was produced the next month at Berlin. The first Symphony had hardly left Hoffmeister’s press, when it was added to the repertory of the Gewandhaus Concert, at Leipsic, and during the three following years was repeatedly performed at Berlin, Breslau, Frankfort-on-the-Main, Dresden, Brunswick and Munich; the second, advertised in March, 1804, was the opening symphony of Schick and Bohrer’s (Berlin) concerts in the Autumn. The “Prometheus” overture was played in the same concerts, December 2, 1803—ten days earlier than the oldest discovered advertisement of its publication. The instant popularity of the Septet in all its forms is well known.

A public performance of the Horn Sonata, March 20, 1803, at the concert of Dulon, the blind flute player, is worth noting, because the pianist was “young Bär”—Meyerbeer.

In our day and generation, to offer so meagre a list of public productions as a proof of popularity in the case of a new author of orchestral works, would be ridiculous. In the multiplication of musical journals and the greatly extended interest taken in musical news wherever an orchestra exists equal to the performance of a symphony, there is also someone to report its doings. This is as it should be. Then, except in the larger capitals, this was rarely so. Hence the few notes above, compiled from the correspondence of the single musical journal of the time, are more than suggestive—they are proof—of many an unrecorded production of the works they name. But more noteworthy than the statistics given by the various correspondents, is this: that, whatever praises they bestow upon the concertos and symphonies of others, they rank Beethoven alone with Haydn and Mozart; and this they do, even before the publication of the third Concerto and the Second Symphony.

Beethoven, then, though almost unknown personally beyond the limits of a few Austrian cities—unaided by apostles to preach his gospel, owing nothing to journalist or pamphleteer, disdaining, in fact, all the arts by which dazzling but mediocre talent pushes itself into notoriety—had, in the short space of eight years, by simple force of his genius as manifested in his published works, placed himself at the head of all writers for the pianoforte, and in public estimation risen to the level of the two greatest of orchestral composers. The unknown student that entered Vienna in 1792, is now in 1804 a recognized member of the great triumvirate, to whose names in 1870, in spite of all the polemics of preachers of a new gospel, the world still persists in giving the place of highest honor in the roll of instrumental composers. Then, as now—now, as then—they are Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven.

The lists of the ascertained compositions and publications for the year 1804 are surprisingly short; but as no really sufficient reason for the fact can be given, none shall be attempted.[28] The former are only the two Sonatas, Op. 53 and Op. 54, and the “Andante favori”; but the final revision of the “Sinfonia Eroica” probably was made at the beginning of the year.

The publications were these:

1—Second Symphony, D major, Op. 36, dedicated to Prince Carl Lichnowsky, advertised by the Kunst- und Industrie-Comptoir, Vienna, March 10.

The arrangement of this Symphony for pianoforte, violin and violoncello, which was published by the same firm in 1806, is indirectly claimed by Ries as his work, notwithstanding the title bears the words “par l’auteur même.” Czerny confirms Ries in these terms: “The arrangement of the second Symphony as a Pianoforte Trio was made by Ries; Beethoven gave it to me for correction of certain things with which he was dissatisfied.”

2—Song with pianoforte accompaniment: “i. e.,” advertised with the preceding.

3—VII Variations on “God save the King,” for Pf., advertised with the preceding.

4—III Marches for Pf., four hands. Op. 45, dedicated to Princess Esterhazy, advertised with the preceding.

5—V Variations for Pf., on “Rule Britannia,” advertised by the same, June 20th.

6—Sonata in E-flat major, Op. 31, No. 3, published by Nägeli in his “Répertoire des Clavecinistes,” Cat. II.

Chapter III

The Year 1805—First Public Performance of the “Heroic Symphony”—The Opera “Leonore,” or “Fidelio”—A Study of the Sketchbook—The Singers and the Production.

The life of an author or composer, when absorbed in the study of a great work, falls into a routine of daily labor that presents few salient points to the biographer. Thus it was with Beethoven during the first two-thirds of the year 1805. What has been preserved of his correspondence is very little in quantity and of slight value. Ries was away with Lichnowsky in Silesia during all the warm season, and, very soon after his return, was forced to depart again from Vienna for Bonn; hence the “Notizen” fail us in perhaps the most interesting period of the young man’s four years of pupilage under Beethoven—that of the composition of “Leonore,” or “Fidelio.” The history of the year is, in the main, the history of that work; and unfortunately a very unsatisfactory one. Not to break the thread of the story hereafter, the few events of the first half of the year unconnected with it, shall first be disposed of.

Schuppanzigh had discovered and taught a boy of great genius for the violin, Joseph Mayseder by name (born October 16, 1789), who was already, in his sixteenth year, the subject of eulogistic notices in the public press. With this youth as second, Schreiber, “in the service of Prince Lobkowitz,” for the viola, and the elder Kraft, violoncellist, Schuppanzigh during the winter 1804-5 gave quartets “in a private house in the Heiligenkreuzerhof, the listeners paying five florins in advance for four performances.” Up to the end of April the quartets given were by Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Eberl, Romberg, with “occasionally larger pieces. Of the latter great pleasure was given by the beautiful Beethoven Sextet in E-flat, a composition which shines resplendent by reason of its lively melodies, unconstrained harmonies, and a wealth of new and surprising ideas.” So it is reported in the “Allg. Mus. Zeit.,” VII, 535, of the Sextet for wind-instruments, which afterwards received the opus number 71, but was composed “in 1796 at the latest,” says Nottebohm, and, not improbably in its original form, in Bonn.

It was to the discredit of Vienna, where instrumental performers of rare ability so abounded, that for several years regular public orchestral concerts, save those at the Augarten in summer, had been abandoned. Sensible of this, the bankers Würth and Fellner during the winter of 1803-4 “had gathered together on all Sunday mornings a select company (nearly all dilettanti) for concerts restricted for the greater part to pieces for full orchestra, such as symphonies (among them Beethoven’s First and Second), overtures, concertos, which they played in really admirable style.” There were also “some overtures by a certain Count Gallenberg” who “imitated, or rather copied, Mozart and Cherubini so slavishly, following them even in the details of keys and modulations so faithfully, that it was easy to tell the titles of the overtures over whose lasts his had been made with the greatest certainty.” Thus the correspondent of the “Allg. Mus. Zeit.” (VI, 467). In these concerts Clement of the Theater-an-der-Wien was director.

They were renewed the present winter, and new performances of Beethoven’s first two Symphonies, and the Concerto in C minor (Op. 37)—pianoforte part by Ries[29]—prepare the way for the production of “an entirely new symphony”—“a long composition extremely difficult of performance, in reality, a tremendously expanded, daring and wild fantasia”; wanting “nothing in the way of startling and beautiful passages, in which the energetic and talented composer must be recognized; but often it loses itself in lawlessness”; the writer “belongs to Herr van Beethoven’s sincerest admirers, but in this composition he must confess that he finds too much that is glaring and bizarre, which makes a survey too difficult; and the principle of unity is almost wholly lost sight of.” It was the “Sinfonia Eroica”—its first semi-public production. Its first really public performance was in the Theater-an-der-Wien, on Sunday evening, April 7th, where it began the second part of a concert given for his own benefit by Clement. The programme announces it thus: “A new grand symphony in D-sharp by Herrn Ludwig van Beethoven, dedicated to his Serene Highness Prince Lobkowitz. The composer has kindly consented to conduct the work.”

Public Performance of the “Eroica”

Czerny remembered, and told Jahn, that on this occasion “somebody in the gallery cried out: ‘I’ll give another kreutzer if the thing will but stop!’” This is the key-note to the strain in which the Symphony was criticized in communications to the press, that are now among the curiosities of musical literature. The correspondent of the “Freymüthige” divided the audience into three parties.

Some, says he, Beethoven’s particular friends, assert that it is just this symphony which is his masterpiece, that this is the true style for high-class music, and that if it does not please now, it is because the public is not cultured enough, artistically, to grasp all these lofty beauties; after a few thousand years have passed it will not fail of its effect. Another faction denies that the work has any artistic value and professes to see in it an untamed striving for singularity which had failed, however, to achieve in any of its parts beauty or true sublimity and power. By means of strange modulations and violent transitions, by combining the most heterogeneous elements, as for instance when a pastoral in the largest style is ripped up by the basses, by three horns, etc., a certain undesirable originality may be achieved without much trouble; but genius proclaims itself not in the unusual and the fantastic, but in the beautiful and the sublime. Beethoven himself proved the correctness of this axiom in his earlier works. The third party, a very small one, stands midway between the others—it admits that the symphony contains many beauties, but concedes that the connection is often disrupted entirely, and that the inordinate length of this longest, and perhaps most difficult of all symphonies, wearies even the cognoscenti, and is unendurable to the mere music-lover; it wishes that H. v. B. would employ his acknowledgedly great talents in giving us works like his symphonies in C and D, his ingratiating Septet in E-flat, the intellectual Quintet in D (C major?) and others of his early compositions which have placed B. forever in the ranks of the foremost instrumental composers. It fears, however, that if Beethoven continues on his present path both he and the public will be the sufferers.... The public and Herr van Beethoven, who conducted, were not satisfied with each other on this evening; the public thought the symphony too heavy, too long, and Beethoven himself too discourteous, because he did not nod his head in recognition of the applause which came from a portion of the audience.

This clear, compendious and valuable statement of the conflicting opinions of the first auditors of the “Eroica” renders farther citations superfluous; but a story—characteristic enough to be true—may be added: that Beethoven, in reply to the complaints of too great length, said, in substance: “If I write a symphony an hour long it will be found short enough!” He refused positively to make any change in the work, but deferred to public opinion so far, as, upon its publication, to affix to the title of the Symphony a note to the effect, that on account of its great length it should be played near the beginning of a concert, before the audience was become weary.

Beethoven, though choleric and violent in his anger, was placable. The theft of the Quintet in C dedicated to Count Fries, as related by Ries, and Beethoven’s warning against the pirated edition, will be remembered. Nottebohm has sufficiently established the fact that the engraved plates were not destroyed, as supposed by Ries, but afterwards again used with the composer’s consent and even his corrections. A short letter to the offending publisher (June 1) shows that his wrath was already appeased, and seems to indicate a purpose to grant him the copyright of a new quintet—a purpose which, under the pressure of his opera, and the subsequent invasion of the French, remained unexecuted.

Ignatz Pleyel, born in 1757, the twenty-fourth child of a schoolmaster at Ruppersthal, a village a few miles from Vienna, a favorite pupil of Haydn and just now the most widely known and popular living instrumental composer except his master, came from Paris this season to revisit, after many years’ absence, the scenes of his youth. He brought with him his last new quartets, “which,” writes Czerny,

were performed before a large and aristocratic society at the house of Prince Lobkowitz. At the close, Beethoven, who was also present, was requested to play something. As usual he let himself be begged for an infinitely long time and at last almost dragged by two ladies to the pianoforte. In an ill humor he grabs a second violin part of the Pleyel quartet from a music desk, throws it on the rack of the pianoforte and begins to improvise. He had never been heard to improvise more brilliantly, with more originality and splendor than on this evening! but through the entire improvisation there ran through the middle voices like a thread or cantus firmus the notes, in themselves utterly insignificant, which he found on the accidentally opened page of the quartet, upon which he built up the most daring melodies and harmonies in the most brilliant concerto style. Old Pleyel could show his amazement only by kissing his hands. After such improvisations Beethoven was wont to break out into a ringing peal of amused laughter.

Beethoven’s abandonment (if there really was one) of the rooms in the theatre in the spring of 1804, and his subsequent relinquishment of the apartments in “das Rothe Haus” to share those of Breuning, compelled his brother Kaspar to seek a lodging of his own, which he found for the present on the Hohen Markt. But the new contract, with Baron Braun, gave the composer again a right to the apartments in the theatre building, which he improved, at the same time retaining the dwelling in the Pasqualati house. The city directory for 1805 gives his address at the theatre, and there he received visitors; at the Pasqualati house he was accustomed to seclude himself for work, forbidding his servant to admit any person whatever. In the summer he retired to Hetzendorf, and wrought out his opera, sitting in the same crotched oak in the Schönbrunn Garden where, four years before, he had composed the “Christus am Ölberg.” Thus again he had three lodgings at the same time, as in the preceding summer; with this difference, that now one was no expense to him. The thousand times repeated story of Ries, that in 1804 he had four dwellings at once, is a mistake.

The Sketches for “Fidelio”

Before his migration to Hetzendorf—say about the middle of June—Beethoven had completely sketched the music of his opera. This is made sufficiently certain by one of those whimsical remarks that he was in the habit of making on the blank spaces of whatever manuscript he happened to have before him. In this case he writes: “June 2d Finale always simpler. All pianoforte music also. God knows why my pianoforte music always makes the worst impression, especially when it is badly played.” This is in the midst of sketches to the final chorus of the opera, and is written upon the upper outer corner of page 291 of the “Leonore” sketchbook which became the property of Mr. Paul Mendelssohn, of Berlin. The principal value of this manuscript lies of course in the insight which it gives the musician into the master’s methods of composition;[30] but for the biographer the volume is by no means without its value. Its striking confirmation of the previously formed opinion, that two current notions in relation to the composition of the opera are erroneous, well repays the toil of studying it through. First: A misinterpreted sentence in Jahn’s article on “Leonore, oder Fidelio,” has originated and given currency to the idea that Beethoven’s “daring enthusiasm for the welfare of men and their rights” led him to begin his sketches for the opera with the “second finale, with its hymn-like character.” But the sketchbook, if it proves anything, proves this: that Beethoven began at the beginning and took up all the principal numbers in order, as they stood in Sonnleithner’s text; that the final choruses were the last to be sketched; and that this sketchbook happens to begin in the midst of the chorus of prisoners (originally the second finale) because the previous studies are wanting.

This volume contains the first sketches of Nos. 11, 18, 15a, 17a and 18a (appendix) of Jahn’s edition; Nos. 1 and 5 occur, but not in the original studies; Nos. 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 are either entirely wanting or only come up in mere fragmentary afterthoughts, as No. 9, on page 51, where Beethoven has written at the top of the page: “in the duet between P. and R.” and just below: “dann schleich ich,” with a hint (4 bars of music unisono) for the accompaniment. Afterthoughts for the duet “Um in die Ehe”—Fidelio and Marcelline—occur also on pages 23, 344, and possibly one or two others, but not more. The studies for Fidelio’s recitative “Ach brich noch nicht” and aria “Komm Hoffnung” (No. 11), which are found near the end of the volume, seem to form a marked exception to the rule; but if these are really the first sketches, their appearance after the final scenes is explained by two remarks in Beethoven’s hand on page 344: “Duetto with Müller (Marcelline) and Fidelio aside,” and “Aria for Fidelio, another text which agrees with her.” These notes clearly indicate a change of plan in connection with the duet, and that the beautiful air, “Komm Hoffnung,” did not stand in Sonnleithner’s original text.

Patient Labor on the Opera

The other current error thoroughly exploded by the sketchbook is this, namely, that the noblest passages in the opera are a sort of spontaneous outpouring in music of feelings and sentiments awakened, or rendered intense and vivid, by the unfortunate love-affairs of the composer. Now, there is nothing from the first page to the last of this manuscript that conveys the impression of any such spontaneity. Every number, as it now stands complete in the score, was the tardy result of persevering labor—of the most painstaking study.

Where Jahn says: “I have not had an opportunity to study many of Beethoven’s sketchbooks, but I have found no instance in which one was not compelled to recognize that the material chosen was not the best, or to deplore that the material which he rejected had not been used,” he might have added, with truth, that some of the first ideas noted to passages, now among the gems of the opera, are commonplace and trivial to such a degree, that one can hardly attribute them to Beethoven. Yet, there they are in his own hand. Jahn’s compendious general description of the contents of this manuscript cannot be improved, except in a single passage, in which, probably trusting his memory a little too much, he conveys the mistaken (as we think) impression, that the aria of Marcelline is here first sketched.

The sketches [says he] are, naturally enough, of very different kinds; in part they are widely varying efforts to give musical expression to the same text, and many numbers, like the airs of Marcelline and Pizarro, the grave duet, a few striking passages, appear for the first time with motivi wholly different from those now to be found in the opera.... At other times, whole pieces are written down in a breath essentially as they have remained.

This is rather too strongly expressed, unless Jahn had in mind the arias of Rocco and Marcelline.

By the side of such passages are examples of indefatigable detail work, which cannot find a conclusion, of turning not only single motivi and melodies but the tiniest elements of them this way and that, and out of all conceivable variations to draw out the form that is best. One is amazed at this everlasting experimentation and cannot conceive how it will be possible to create an organic whole out of such musical scraps. But if one compares the completed art-work with the chaos of sketches one is overwhelmed with wonder at the creative mind which surveyed its task so clearly, grasped the foundation and the outlines of the execution so firmly and surely that with all the sketches and attempts in details the whole grows naturally from its roots and develops. And though the sketches frequently create the impression of uncertainty and groping, admiration comes again for the marvelously keen self-criticism, which, after everything has been tested with sovereign certainty, retains the best.[31]

In the notices of the “Leonore” sketchbook, made for use in this work, are copied eighteen different beginnings to Florestan’s air, “In des Lebens Frühlingstagen,” and ten to the chorus, “Wer ein holdes Weib”; others being omitted, because illegible or little more than repetitions. The studies for that wondrous outburst of joy, “O namenlose Freude,” are numerous; but the first bars of the duet are the same in all of them, having been taken by Beethoven from an “old opera.”

It certainly seems a little like cold-blooded cruelty thus ruthlessly to demolish the structure of romance which has been rising for thirty years on the sandy foundation laid by Schindler in his story of the Countess Guicciardi, and of which, through some fancied connection, the opera “Leonore” has become an imposing part. But facts are stubborn things, and here they are irreconcilable with the romance.

Inborn genius for musical composition, untiring industry, and the ambition to rival Cherubini in his own field, sufficiently explain the extraordinary merits of this work of Beethoven; want of practice and experience in operatic writing, its defects.

Beethoven’s seclusion at Hetzendorf from June to September (probably) and his labor of reducing the chaos of the sketchbook into the order and beauty of the score of “Leonore”—on which, as he told Schindler, he wrought in the bright summer days, sitting in the shades of Schönbrunn—are unbroken for us except by his first meeting with Cherubini. Some time in July—for that master arrived in Vienna after the 5th of that month, and Vogler was in Salzburg before the 28th—“Cherubini, Beethoven and Vogler were gathered together at Sonnleithner’s; everybody played, Vogler first, and without ceasing, so that the company meanwhile sat down to table. Beethoven was full of attention and respect toward Cherubini.” Such is Jahn’s note of a communication to him by Grillparzer; and Czerny told him: “B. did not give Cherubini a friendly reception in 1805, as the latter complained to Czerny later.”

At the end of the summer season Beethoven returned to town with his opera ready to be put in rehearsal. Here Ries found him. “He was really fond of me,” says he, “and gave me a comical proof of the fact in one of his fits of absentmindedness”; and Ries goes on to relate in the “Notizen”:

When I came back from Silesia, where, on Beethoven’s recommendation, I had spent a considerable time as pianoforte player for Prince Lichnowsky on his estate, I went into his room; he was about to shave and had lathered himself up to the eyes (for his fearful beard extended so far). He jumped up, embraced me cordially and, behold! he had transferred the soap from his left cheek to my right so completely that there was nothing left of it on him. Didn’t we laugh!

With all his kindness to Ries, Beethoven had neither forgotten nor forgiven the affair of the “Andante favori”:

One day when a small company including Beethoven and me breakfasted with Prince (Lichnowsky) after the concert in the Augarten (8 o’clock in the forenoon), it was proposed that we drive to Beethoven’s house and hear his opera “Leonore,” which had not yet been performed. Arrived there Beethoven demanded that I go away, and inasmuch as the most urgent appeals of all present were fruitless, I did so with tears in my eyes. The entire company noticed it and Prince Lichnowsky, following me, asked me to wait in an anteroom, because, having been the cause of the trouble, he wanted to have it settled. But the feeling of hurt to my honor would not admit of this. I heard afterward that Prince Lichnowsky had sharply rebuked Beethoven for his conduct, since only love for his works had been to blame for the incident and consequently for his anger. But the only result of these representations was that Beethoven refused to play any more for the company.

It so happened, that Ries thus lost his only opportunity ever to hear the “Leonore-Fidelio” music in its original form; but this Beethoven could not anticipate, as he could have no suspicion that they were so soon to be parted. Bonn, being now under French rule, Ries was liable to conscription, and notice came that he was among the first drawn. “He was therefore,” says the ‘Harmonicon,’ “obliged to return home immediately, for his disobedience would have exposed his father and family to the risk of ruin.” Before Ries’ departure from Vienna, Beethoven, himself unable to afford him pecuniary assistance, again proved his kindly feelings towards his pupil by giving him a letter commending him to the benevolence of Princess Liechtenstein.

“To Beethoven’s rage,” says Ries, “the letter was not delivered, but I kept the original, written on an unevenly cut quarto sheet, as a proof of Beethoven’s friendship and love for me.” Three years will elapse before we meet Ries again in Vienna—the greater part of which period he passed at Paris in such discouraging circumstances, that he thought seriously of abandoning his profession.

First Performance of “Fidelio”

At the Theater-an-der-Wien none of the new operas produced this season had long kept the stage; although two of them—Schikaneder’s “Swetard’s Zaubergürtel,” music by Fischer, and his “Vesta’s Feuer,” music by J. Weigl—were brought out “with very extraordinary splendor of decorations and costumes.” It was now Autumn and the receipts did not cover the expenses of the theatre. “From the distance,” says Treitschke,

the storm of war rolled towards Vienna and robbed the spectators of the calm essential to the enjoyment of an art-work. But just for this reason all possible efforts were made to enliven the sparsely attended spaces of the house. “Fidelio” was relied upon to do its best, and so, under far from happy auspices, the opera was produced on November 20 (1805). It was possible efficiently to cast only the female parts with Mlles. Milder and Müller; the men left all the more to be desired.

Anna Milder (born December 13, 1785), now just completing her twentieth year, was that pupil of Neukomm to whom Haydn had said half a dozen years before: “My dear child! You have a voice like a house!” Schikaneder gave her her first engagement and she began her theatrical career April 9, 1803, in the part of Juno in Süssmayr’s “Spiegel von Arkadien,” with a new grand aria composed for her by him. Beethoven had now written the part of Fidelio for her. In later years it was one of her grand performances; though, judging from the contemporary criticisms, it was now somewhat defective, simply from lack of stage experience. Louise Müller, the Marcelline, “had already (in April, 1805) developed in a few years into a tasteful and honest singer, although she did not have the help of a voice of especial volume.” She became, in the opinion of Castelli, “a most amiable actress and good singer, particularly in the comic genre.”

Demmer, “trained in Cologne,” is reported in 1799, when singing at Frankfort-on-the-Main, as having “a firm, enduring voice with a high range; he played semi-comic rôles admirably. He was best in airs in which there was little agility and more sustained declamation.” Castelli praises him; but all contemporary accounts agree that he was not equal to the part of Florestan, for which he was now selected.

Sebastian Meier, brother-in-law to Mozart (the musical reformer of this theatre), “was insignificant as a singer, but a valiant actor,” says Castelli, who knew him most intimately. Schindler has an anecdote of him as Pizarro, apparently derived from Beethoven, to the effect that he had a high opinion of his own powers; that he used to swear by Mozart and confidently undertake everything. In view of this Beethoven resolved to cure him of his weakness, and to this end wrote the passage in Pizarro’s air:

Pizarro
Bass

Bald wird sein Blut verrinnen
Bald krümmet sich der Wurm

the voice moves over a series of scales, played by all the strings, so that the singer at each note which he has to utter, hears an appogiatura of a minor second from the orchestra. The Pizarro of 1805 was unable with all his gesticulation and writhing to avoid the difficulty, the more since the mischievous players in the orchestra below maliciously emphasized the minor second by accentuation. Don Pizarro, snorting with rage, was thus at the mercy of the bows of the fiddlers. This aroused laughter. The singer, whose conceit was thus wounded, thereupon flew into a rage and hurled at the composer among other remarks the words: “My brother-in-law would never have written such damned nonsense.”

Weinkopf (Don Fernando) had “a pure and expressive bass voice,” but his part was too meagre and unimportant to affect the success or failure of the opera.

Caché (Jaquino), according to Castelli, was a good actor,

who was also made serviceable in the opera because Meyer, the stage-manager, knew that good acting, in comic operas, was frequently more effective than a good voice. It was necessary to fiddle his song-parts into his head before he came to rehearsals.

Rothe (Rocco) was so inferior both as actor and singer, that his name is not to be found in any of the ordinary sources of Vienna theatrical history.

One can well believe that very considerable difficulties attended the performance, as Treitschke states. His words, in a passage above cited, as well as certain expressions of Beethoven’s a few months later, indicate that the opera was hurriedly put upon the stage, and the inadequacy of the singers thus increased by the lack of sufficient rehearsals. Seyfried says, “I directed the study of the parts with all the singers according to his suggestions, also all the orchestral rehearsals, and personally conducted the performance.” In 1805 Seyfried was young, talented, ambitious, zealous, and nothing was wanting on his part to insure success.

Incidents at the Rehearsals

Speaking of the rehearsals recalls to mind one of those bursts of puerile wrath, which were passed over with a smile by some of Beethoven’s friends, but gave serious offense to others. Mähler remembered that at one of the general rehearsals the third bassoon was absent; at which Beethoven fretted and fumed. Lobkowitz, who was present, made light of the matter: two of the bassoons were present, said he, and the absence of the third could make no great difference. This so enraged the composer, that, as he passed the Lobkowitz Place, on his way home, he could not restrain the impulse to turn aside and shout in at the great door of the palace: “Lobkowitzian ass!”

There were various stumbling-blocks in the vocal score of “Leonore.” Schindler on this point has some judicious remarks (in his third edition), and they are borne out by his record of conversations with Cherubini and Anna Milder. During his years of frequent intercourse with Beethoven and subsequently, “Leonore” was a work upon whose origin and failure he took much pains to inform himself, and its history as finally drawn up by him is much more satisfactory and correct than others of greater pretensions.

Outside the narrow circle of the playhouse, weightier matters than a new opera now occupied and agitated the minds of the Viennese. On the 20th October, Ulm fell. On the 30th Bernadotte entered Salzburg, on his way to and down the Danube. Vienna was defenceless. The nobility, the great bankers and merchants—all whose wealth enabled and whose vocations permitted it—precisely those classes of society in which Beethoven moved, which knew how to appreciate his music, and of whose suffrages his opera was assured, fled from the capital. On November 9th the Empress departed. On the 10th the French armies had reached and occupied the villages a few miles west of the city. On November 13th, about 11 o’clock in the forenoon, the vanguard of the enemy, Murat and Lannes at the head, 15,000 strong, representing all branches of the service, entered Vienna in order of battle, flags flying and music sounding.

On the 15th, Bonaparte issued his proclamation from Schönbrunn, which he made his headquarters. Murat quartered himself in the palace of Archduke Albert; General Hulin, in that of Prince Lobkowitz. It was just at this most unlucky of all possible periods that Beethoven’s opera was produced; on November 20, 21 and 22.

Beethoven’s friend, Stephan von Breuning, prepared a pretty surprise for him by printing a short complimentary poem and having it distributed in the theatre at the second performance. It is preserved in the “Notizen” (p. 34).[32] Beethoven desired to retain the original title of the opera, “Leonore,” and the directors of the theatre have been severely censured from that day to this for persisting in giving and retaining the title “Fidelio”; but unjustly; for, considering the relations in which Paër stood to Baron Braun, it was surely enough to have taken his subject, without stealing his title.

Recollections of a Singer

A young man, educated at the University of Munich, had for some time past been private secretary to the Bavarian Chargé des Affaires at Salzburg. The approach of the French armies after the fall of Ulm made his position and prospects very uncertain. It was just then that an agent of Baron Braun came thither in search of a young, fresh tenor to succeed Demmer, whose powers were fast yielding to time. The engagement was offered him and thus it came about, that J. A. Röckel, in the Autumn of 1805, became first tenor in the Theater-an-der-Wien. After appearing in divers characters with much success, considering his inexperience, he was offered the part of Florestan in the contemplated revival of “Fidelio.” A conversation with the singer at Bath in April, 1861, is authority for these particulars, and a letter from him dated February 26 of the same year adds more. Röckel wrote:

It was in December, 1805—the opera house An-der-Wien and both the Court theatres of Vienna having been at that time under the intendance of Baron Braun, the Court Banker—when Mr. Meyer, brother-in-law to Mozart and Regisseur of the opera An-der-Wien, came to fetch me to an evening meeting in the palace of Prince Charles Lichnowsky, the great patron of Beethoven. “Fidelio” was already a month previously performed An-der-Wien—unhappily just after the entrance of the French, when the city was shut against the suburbs. The whole theatre was taken up by the French, and only a few friends of Beethoven ventured to hear the opera. These friends were now at that soirée, to bring Beethoven about, to consent to the changes they wanted to introduce in the opera in order to remove the heaviness of the first act. The necessity of these improvements was already acknowledged and settled among themselves. Meyer had prepared me for the coming storm, when Beethoven should hear of leaving out three whole numbers of the first act.

At the soirée were present Prince Lichnowsky and the Princess, his lady, Beethoven and his brother Kaspar, [Stephan] von Breuning, [Heinrich] von Collin, the poet, the tragedian Lange (another brother-in-law to Mozart), Treitschke, Clement, leader of the orchestra, Meyer and myself; whether Kapellmeister von Seyfried was there I am not certain any more, though I should think so.

I had arrived in Vienna only a short time before, and met Beethoven there for the first time.

As the whole opera was to be gone through, we went directly to work. Princess L. played on the grand piano the great score of the opera and Clement, sitting in a corner of the room, accompanied with his violin the whole opera by heart, playing all the solos of the different instruments. The extraordinary memory of Clement having been universally known, nobody was astonished by it, except myself. Meyer and I made ourselves useful, by singing as well as we could, he (basso) the lower, I the higher parts of the opera. Though the friends of Beethoven were fully prepared for the impending battle, they had never seen him in that excitement before, and without the prayers and entreaties of the very delicate and invalid princess, who was a second mother to Beethoven and acknowledged by himself as such, his united friends were not likely to have succeeded in this, even to themselves, very doubtful enterprise. But when after their united endeavors from seven till after one o’clock, the sacrifice of the three numbers was accomplished, and when we, exhausted, hungry and thirsty, went to restore ourselves by a splendid supper—then, none was happier and gayer than Beethoven. Had I seen him before in his fury, I saw him now in his frolics. When he saw me, opposite to him, so intently occupied with a French dish, and asked me what I was eating, and I answered: “I don’t know!” with his lion-voice he roared out: “He eats like a wolf—without knowing what! Ha, ha, ha!”

The condemned three numbers were:

1. A great aria with chorus of Pizarro;

2. A comic duo between Leonore (Fidelio) and Marcelline, with violin and violoncello solo;

3. A comic terzetto between Marcelline, Jacquino and Rocco.

Many years after, Mr. Schindler found the scores of these three pieces amongst the rubbish of Beethoven’s music, and got them as a present from him.

A question has been raised as to the accuracy of Röckel’s memory in his statement of the numbers cancelled on this occasion; to which it may be remarked, that the particulars of this first and extraordinary meeting with Beethoven would naturally impress themselves very deeply upon the memory of the young singer; that the numbers to be condemned had been previously agreed upon by the parties opposed to the composer in the transaction, and doubtless made known to Röckel; that Röckel’s relations to Meyer were such as to render it in the highest degree improbable, that he should confound Rocco’s gold aria with either of the Pizarro airs with chorus belonging to Meyer’s part; that both of these belong to the first and second original acts—i. e., to the first act of the opera as Röckel knew it; that he (Röckel) in his letter to the writer is not reporting upon the pieces actually omitted in the subsequent performance three or four months later, but upon those which, at this meeting, Beethoven was with great difficulty persuaded to omit: that the objections made to them were not to the music, but because they retarded the action; and, therefore, that the decision now reached was by no means final, provided the end desired could be attained in some other way. Perhaps it may yet appear that Beethoven, now cunningly giving way, succeeded in winning the game, and retaining all three of the pieces condemned.

Outside theatrical circles we catch also a glimpse or two of Beethoven in these months. Pierre Baillot, the violinist, was in Vienna just before the French invasion on his way to Moscow, and was taken by Anton Reicha to see Beethoven.

They did not find him in his lodgings but in a by no means elegant inn in the Vorstadt. What first attracted the attention of the Frenchman was that Beethoven did not have the bulldog, gloomy expression which he had expected from the majority of his portraits; he even thought he recognized an expression of good-nature in the face of the composer. The conversation had just got well under way when it was interrupted by a terrific snore. It came from a stableman or coachman who was taking his little nap in a corner of the room. Beethoven gazed at the snorer a few moments attentively and then broke out with the words: “I wish I were as stupid as that fellow.”[33]

Schindler closes his account of these last five years in Beethoven’s life with great propriety and elegance by quoting a passage copied by the master from Christian Sturm’s “Betrachtungen.” It is made up of scattered sentences which may be found on page 197 of the ninth edition (Reutlingen, 1827):

To the praise of Thy goodness I must confess that Thou hast tried all means to draw me to Thee. Now it hath pleased Thee to let me feel the heavy hand of Thy wrath, and to humiliate my proud heart by manifold chastisements. Sickness and misfortune hast Thou sent to bring me to a contemplation of my digressions. But one thing only do I ask, O God, cease not to labor for my improvement. Only let me, in whatsoever manner pleases Thee, turn to Thee and be fruitful of good works.

Works Published in 1805

The publications for the year 1805 were the Two Easy Sonatas, G minor and G major, Op. 49, advertised by the Kunst- und Industrie-Comptoir, on January 23; Trio (arranged from the Septet) for Pf., Violin (or Clarinet) and Violoncello, E-flat, Op. 38, advertised by the same institution on the same date; Prelude for the Pf., F minor, advertised by the same on January 30; Romance for Violin and Orchestra, F major, Op. 50, advertised by the same on May 15; Sonata in C major for Pf., Op. 53, dedicated to Count Waldstein, advertised with the Romance; song, “An die Hoffnung,” Op. 32, advertised by the same on September 18; Six Variations for Pf. four hands, on “Ich denke Dein,” advertised by the same on January 23; Minuet in E-flat for Pf., advertised by same on January 30; Scene and Air, “Ah, perfido! spergiuro,” in pianoforte score, published by Hoffmann and Kühnel.

The compositions which were completed were the opera “Leonore” (“Fidelio”) in its first form; the Concerto for Pf. and Orchestra, G major, Op. 58 (this on the authority of Nottebohm); the Pf. Sonata in F major. Op. 54; perhaps also may be added the Concerto for Pf., Violin and Violoncello, C major. Op. 56. It was sketched at the beginning of the year and was written, as Schindler states, for Archduke Rudolph, Seidler, violin, and Kraft, violoncello; it may well have been completed so as to be played by the winter of 1805-1806.

Chapter IV

The Year 1806—Repetition of “Fidelio”—Changes in the Opera—Its Withdrawal—Journey to Silesia—Correspondence with Thomson—The Scottish Songs.