Chapter XII (2)

When it is considered, that the apothecary was a man of some thirty-five years, that he had gained his present position entirely by his own enterprise, perseverance and good fortune, and that, beyond advice and remonstrance, his brother had no more right to meddle in his private concerns than any stranger, it seems hardly credible that Beethoven, with all his eccentricities of character, could have come to Linz with precisely this purpose in view. But, according to the evidence, this was so. Had the motive of his visit been simply fraternal affection, and had he then and there first discovered his brother’s improper connection with Therese, he could justly have employed earnest expostulation and entreaty to the end of breaking it off--but nothing more; if unheeded, he could leave the house. But to come thither for this express object, and employ force to accomplish it, was an indefensible assumption of authority. Such, at all events, was Johann’s opinion, and he refused to submit to his brother’s dictation. Excited by opposition, Ludwig resorted to any and every means to accomplish his purpose. He saw the Bishop about it. He applied to the civil authorities. He pushed the affair so earnestly, as at last to obtain an order to the police to remove the girl to Vienna if, on a certain day, she should be still found in Linz. The disgrace to the poor girl; the strong liking which Johann had for her; his natural mortification at not being allowed to be master in his own house; these and other similar causes wrought him up almost to desperation. Beethoven, having carried his point, might certainly have borne his brother’s anger with equanimity; might have felt pity for him and sought to soothe him in his trouble. But no; when Johann entered his room with reproaches and upbraidings, he, too, became angry and a scene ensued on which--let the curtain be drawn. It was, unhappily, more disgraceful to Ludwig than Johann. The apothecary, to use the language of the card-table, still had the commanding trump. Should he play it? The answer is in the parochial register at Linz. It is the record of marriage, November 8th, 1812, of Johann van Beethoven to Therese Obermeyer. There is some slight reason to think that the journey to Linz was suddenly undertaken in consequence of a false report that Johann was about to marry Therese, and with the intention to prevent it. Whether this be true or not he lost the game and immediately hastened away to Vienna, angry and mortified that the measures he had taken had led to the very result which he wished to prevent; had given to the unchaste girl the legal right to call him “brother,” and had put it in Johann’s power--should he in the future have cause to rue his wedding-day--to reproach him as the author of his misfortune. Indeed, when that unhappy future came, Johann always declared that Ludwig had driven him into this marriage; how the composer then viewed the matter, we shall see when the time comes. One sister-in-law had already been to Beethoven a bitter source of shame and mortification; and now the other?--Time must show. Here we part from the apothecary, and it will be long before we meet him again.

Beethoven’s professional occupation in Linz was the completion of the Eighth Symphony, which, on Johann van Beethoven’s doubtful authority, was wrought out from the sketches during walks to and upon the Pöstlingberg.[107] Schindler’s account of the origin of the famous Allegretto Scherzando adds a new name to our ~dramatis personæ~.

[Sidenote: ASSOCIATION WITH MÄLZEL]

Johann Nepomuk Mälzel was the son of an organ-builder of Ratisbon. He received a thorough musical education, and began life on his own account as a performer upon and a teacher of the pianoforte of no mean ability; but his extraordinary taste for mechanism and talent for invention soon led him to exchange the music-room for the workshop. It is somewhere related, that, having been appointed “Court Mechanician” at Vienna and having a work to execute for the Empress, rooms were assigned him, in 1809, in Schönbrunn. Soon after this, Napoleon took possession of that palace, and while there played a game with Kempelen’s chess player (of which Mälzel had become proprietor), Allgaier being (probably) the person concealed in the chest. The truth of the anecdote we cannot warrant. From Schönbrunn, Mälzel removed to rooms in Stein’s pianoforte manufactory, and began the construction of a new and improved panharmonicon, having sold his first one in Paris. This was his principal employment in the year 1812. Carl Stein (from whom the author derived this information) remembered distinctly the frequent visits of Beethoven to Mälzel’s workshop, the great intimacy of the two men, and the persevering efforts of the mechanician to construct an ear-trumpet which the deaf composer should find of practical use and benefit. It is well known, that of the four instruments constructed, one was so far satisfactory as to be used occasionally for some eight or ten years. The necessity and practicability of inventing some kind of machine by which composers should be able to indicate exactly the duration of a piece of music--in other words, the rapidity of its execution--had been for several years subjects of wide discussion. An article in the “Wiener Vaterländische Blätter” of October 13, 1813, entitled “Mälzel’s musikalischer Chronometer,” reads:

On his journeys through Germany, France and Italy, as a consequence
of his approved knowledge of mechanics and music, Herr Mälzel had
repeatedly been solicited by the most celebrated composers and
conservatories to devote his talent to an invention which should
be useful to the many, after many efforts by others had proved
defective. He undertook the solution of the problem and succeeded
in completely satisfying the first composers of Vienna with the
model which was recently exhibited, which will be followed soon
by the recognition of all others in the countries mentioned.
The model has endured the most varied tests which the composers
Salieri, Beethoven, Weigl, Gyrowetz and Hummel applied to it. Court
Chapelmaster Salieri made the first application of this chronometer
to a work of magnitude, Haydn’s “Creation,” and noted all the
tempos according to the different degrees on the score, etc. Herr
Beethoven looks upon this invention as a welcome means with which
to secure the performance of his brilliant compositions in all
places in the tempos conceived by him, which to his regret have so
often been misunderstood.

The “Allg. Mus. Zeit.” of December 1st devotes some two pages to the instrument, from which a few words of description are enough for our purpose:

The external parts of this chronometer ... consist of a small lever
which is set in motion by a toothed wheel, the only one in the
whole apparatus, by means of which and the resultant blows on a
little wooden anvil, the measures are divided into equal intervals
of time.

That “chronometer” was not what is now known as Mälzel’s “metronome.”

[Sidenote: CANON AND ALLEGRETTO SCHERZANDO]

It is now to be seen whether Schindler’s account of the Allegretto Scherzando will bear examination. It is this:

In the Spring of the year 1812, Beethoven, the mechanician
Mälzel, Count von Brunswick, Stephan von Breuning and others,
sat together at a farewell meal, the first about to undertake
the visit to his brother Johann in Linz, there to work out his
Eighth Symphony and afterward to visit the Bohemian baths--Mälzel,
however, to journey to England to exploit his famous trumpet-player
automaton. The latter project had to be abandoned, however, and
indefinitely postponed. The time-machine--metronome--invented by
this mechanician, was already in such a state of forwardness that
Salieri, Beethoven, Weigl and other musical notabilities had given
a public testimonial of its utility. Beethoven, generally merry,
witty, satirical, “unbuttoned,” as he called it, at this farewell
meal improvised the following canon, which was at once sung by the
participants.

Schindler here prints the now well-known canon and adds: “Out of this canon was developed the Allegretto Scherzando.” That Mälzel’s “ta, ta, ta,” suggested the Allegretto, and that at a farewell meal the canon on that subject was sung, is doubtless true; but it is by no means certain that the canon preceded the symphony. Schindler was then a youth of 17 years, “in the last course of the gymnasium at Olmütz,” and consequently relates his story on the authority of another--Count Brunswick. There may have been a slight lapse of memory on the part of Brunswick as to date, but it is far more probable that Schindler unconsciously adapted what he heard to his own preconceived notions. At all events, the preceding pages show that he was in the wrong as to the metronome, as to the proposed journeys of both Beethoven and Mälzel, and therefore, probably, as to the date of the farewell meal. On this last point, the lists of “Arrivals in Vienna” offer very strong negative evidence, namely: Forray comes from Pesth-Ofen in 1809-10-11; Countess Brunswick, 1811; but no Count Brunswick after March, 1810, until the end of February, 1813--four months after the Eighth Symphony is completed. At that date, we shall find reasons in plenty for the farewell gathering--though none in the “Spring of 1812.” The canon could not have contained the word “Metronome” until 1817; nor could the “ta, ta, ta,” have represented the beat of a pendulum of an instrument not yet invented; it was an imitation of the beat of the lever on the anvil.

The Conversation Books show, in Schindler’s own hand, how he became possessed of the canon. Beethoven, during the first years of their acquaintance, was in the habit of meeting frequently evenings a captain of the ~Arcierenleibgarde des Kaisers~, a certain Herr Pinterics, well known then in musical circles, and Oliva, “in a retired room in the Blumenstock in the Ballgässchen.” In a Conversation Book (1820) Schindler writes:

The motif of the canon, 2d movement of the 8th symphony--I cannot
find the original--you will, I hope, have the kindness to write
it down for me. Herr Pintericks at that time sang the bass, the
Captain 2d tenor, Oliva 2d bass. [Again in 1824]: I am just in
the second movement of the 8th symphony--ta, ta, ta--the canon
on Mälzel--it was really a very jolly evening when we sang this
canon in the “Kamehl”--Mälzel, the bass. At that time I still sang
soprano. I think it was the end of 1817.[108] The time when I was
permitted to appear before Your Majesty--1816--1815--after the
performance of the Symphony in A.--I was still young at that time,
but very courageous, wasn’t I?

On the first of these occasions, therefore, the word “Chronometer” must have been sung; on the second, as Mälzel had returned to Vienna with the “Metronome,” that word was substituted, and of course retained in the copy made in 1820. The necessary conclusion is this: If the canon was written before the Symphony, it was not improvised at the farewell meal; if it was improvised on that occasion, it was but the reproduction of the Allegretto theme in canon-form.

Pierre Rode, who at his culmination had occupied perhaps the first place among living violinists, being driven from Russia, made a concert tour in Germany and came in December to Vienna. Spohr, whose judgment of violin playing cannot be impugned, had heard him ten years before with delight and astonishment, and now again in a public concert on January 6. He now thought that he had retrograded; he found his playing “cold and full of mannerisms”; he “missed the former daring in the overcoming of difficulties,” and felt himself “particularly unsatisfied by his ~cantabile~ playing.” “The public, too, seemed dissatisfied,” he says, “at least he could not warm it into enthusiasm.” Still, Rode had a great name; paid to and received from the nobles the customary homage; and exhibited his still great talents in their saloons. Beethoven must have still thought well of his powers, for he now took up and completed his Sonata, Op. 96, to be played at one of Lobkowitz’s evening concerts by him and Archduke Rudolph. From the tone of two notes to the Archduke (printed by Köchel), the composer seems to have been less satisfied by Rode’s performances than he had expected to be:

To-morrow morning at the earliest hour, the copyist will be able
to begin on the last movement, as I meanwhile am writing on other
works, I did not make great haste for the sake of mere punctuality
in the last movement, the more because I had, in writing it, to
consider the playing of Rode; in our finales we like rushing
and resounding passages, but these are not in Rode’s style and
this--embarrassed me a little. For the rest all is likely to go
well on Tuesday. I take the liberty of doubting if I can appear
that evening at Your Imp. Highness’s, notwithstanding my zeal
in service; but to make it good I shall come to-morrow morning,
to-morrow afternoon, to meet the wishes of my exalted pupil in all
respects.

The date of the concert was December 29th. Therefore, if the sketches for the second, third and fourth movements of this noble sonata do not belong to the year 1811, as argued near the close of the preceding chapter, the entire work, except the first movement, was produced in twelve or fifteen days at most.

[Sidenote: SPOHR’S ACCOUNT OF BEETHOVEN]

Though it may be slightly in advance of strict chronological order, it would seem well to quote here what Spohr in his Autobiography writes of his personal intercourse with Beethoven. It is interesting and doubly acceptable as the only sketch of the kind belonging to just this period; it is, moreover, trustworthy. In general, what he relates of the composer in that work so abounds with unaccountable errors as to necessitate the utmost caution in accepting it; it is pervaded by a harsh and grating tone; and leaves the impression, that his memory retained most vividly and unconsciously exaggerated whatever tended to place Beethoven in a ridiculous light. What is here copied is, at least comparatively, free from these objections:

After my arrival in Vienna (about December 1), I at once hunted
up Beethoven, but did not find him and therefore left my card. I
now hoped to meet him in one of the musical soirées to which I
was frequently invited, but soon learned that since his deafness
had so increased that he could no longer hear music distinctly in
all its context he had withdrawn from all musical parties and,
indeed, become very shy of society. I made another attempt to
visit him, but again in vain. At last, most unexpectedly, I met
him in the eating-place which I was in the habit of patronizing
every Wednesday with my wife. I had, by this time, already given a
concert (December 17), and twice performed my oratorio (January 21
and 24). The Vienna newspapers had reported favorably upon them.
Hence, Beethoven knew of me when I introduced myself to him and
greeted me in an extremely friendly manner. We sat down together at
a table, and Beethoven became very chatty, which greatly surprised
the table company, as he generally looked straight ahead, morose
and curt of speech. It was a difficult task to make him understand,
as one had to shout so loudly that it could be heard three rooms
distant. Afterward, Beethoven came often to this eating-house and
visited me at my lodgings, and thus we soon learned to know each
other well. Beethoven was frequently somewhat blunt, not to say
rude; but an honest eye gleamed from under his bushy eyebrows.

After my return from Gotha (end of May, 1813), I met him
occasionally at the Theater-an-der-Wien, hard behind the orchestra,
where Count Palffy had given him a free seat. After the opera
he generally accompanied me home and spent the remainder of the
evening with me. There he was pleasant toward Dorette and the
children. He very seldom spoke about music. When he did so his
judgments were very severe and so decided that it seemed as if
there could be no contradiction. He did not take the least interest
in the works of others; for this reason I did not have the courage
to show him mine. His favorite topic of conversation at the time
was severe criticism of the two theatrical managements of Prince
Lobkowitz and Count Palffy. He was sometimes over-loud in his abuse
of the latter when we were still inside the theatre, so that not
only the public but also the Count in his office might have heard
him. This embarrassed me greatly and I continually tried to turn
the conversation into something else. The rude, repelling conduct
of Beethoven at this time was due partly to his deafness, which he
not yet learned to endure with resignation, partly to the unsettled
condition of his financial affairs. He was not a good housekeeper
and had the ill-luck to be robbed by those about him. So he often
lacked necessities. In the early part of our acquaintance I once
asked him, after he had been absent from the eating-house: “You
were not ill, were you?”--“My boots were, and as I have only one
pair I had house-arrest,” was the answer.

Beethoven had other cares, troubles and anxieties in the coming year--to which these reminiscences in strictness belong and serve as a sort of introduction--not known to Spohr. Theirs was not the confidential intercourse which lays bare the heart of friend to friend. As Varnhagen last year, so Theodor Körner this and the next informs us that Beethoven’s desire again to try his fortune on the operatic stage was in no wise abated. On June 6th the youthful poet writes: “If Weinlig does not intend soon to compose my Alfred, let him send it back to me; I would then, having bettered my knowledge of the theatre and especially of opera texts, strike out several things, inasmuch as it is much too long, and give it to the Kärnthner Theatre, as I am everlastingly plagued for opera texts by Beethoven, Weigl, Gyrowetz, etc.” On February 10, 1813, he writes: “Beethoven has asked me for ‘The Return of Ulysses.’ If Gluck were alive, that would be a subject for his Muse.”

The ascertained compositions of 1812 were:

I. “Sinfonie. L. v. Beethoven, 1812, 13ten Mai.” A major, Op. 92.

II. “Trio in einem Satze.” B-flat. “Wien am 2ten Juni 1812. Für
seine kleine Freundin Max. Brentano zu ihrer Aufmunterung im
Clavierspielen.”

III. “Sinfonia--Linz im Monath October 1812.” F major, Op. 93.

IV. Three Equali for four trombones. “Linz den 2ten 9ber 1812.”

V. Sonata for Pianoforte and Violin. G major, Op. 96.

VI. Irish airs nearly or quite completed for Thomson, and

VII. Welsh airs probably continued.

The publications:

I. Music to “Egmont” except the overture, Op. 84. Breitkopf and
Härtel, in January.

II. ~Messa a quattro voci coll’accompagnamento dell’Orchestra,
composta da Luigi van Beethoven.~ “Drey Hymnen für vier Singstimmen
mit Begleitung des Orchesters, in Musik gesetzt und Sr. Durchlaucht
dem Herrn Fürsten von Kinsky zugeeignet von Ludw. v. Beethoven, 86.
Werk. Partitur.” Breitkopf and Härtel, in October.

FOOTNOTES:

[89] Kinsky, 725, 80; Archduke Rudolph, 604, 84; Lobkowitz, 282, 26.

[90] After the large payment for a year and a quarter which Beethoven received from Kinsky on July 31, 1810, the Prince continued to pay 450 florins regularly every quarter but on July 26 (from March to May), 1811, with the memorandum: “450 bank-notes, or 90 florins notes of redemption,” and again the same on August 30 (for June-August), 1811;--i. e., one-fifth of the stipulated sum. It was not until the issuance of the Court Decree of September 13, 1811, that the more favorable rate of the above table was established. It is to be assumed that the payments thereafter were made in accordance with the scale, 185 florins in notes of redemption for 450 florins; the receipts have not been preserved. (See “Beethoven und Prinz Kinsky,” Frimmel’s “II. Beethoven-Jahrbuch,” 1909, by V. Kratochvil.) Lobkowitz’s payments were suspended in September, 1811, for nearly four years, his assumption of the management of the theatres having thrown his financial affairs into disorder and caused the sequestration of his estates.

[91] An untranslatable pun.

[92] Under date of London, 14th February, 1875, Mr. E. Speyer writes: “My father ... on a visit to Vienna in 1832, made the acquaintance of the Abbé Stadler, who communicated to him the following curious fact in relation to Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, viz: That the theme of the Trio

was nothing more nor less than a Lower-Austrian Pilgrimage Hymn (Wallfahrtgesang), which the Abbé himself had frequently heard sung.” This correspondent’s father was the W. Speyer, or Speier, whose name so often appears in old volumes of the “Allg. Mus. Zeit.”

[93] Here Beethoven was mistaken. Haydn composed accompaniments for a volume of Scottish songs for Napier, a London publisher, without ritornellos or violoncello; he wrote as Beethoven wrote for Thomson--with violoncello part as well as ritornellos. In a later letter (of February 19) the same error is repeated.

[94] Laub and Jahn read “R”; Köchel, “M.” The former might be the publisher Rizzi, the latter Mollo.

[95] “Andreas Baron von Forray, husband of Countess Julie Brunswick, a cousin of Count Franz Brunswick, was a good pianoforte player and great music lover,” says Köchel.

[96] Related by Court Councillor Wittescheck and confirmed by Schindler, who had “this fact” from Maximiliane--then Frau von Plittersdorf.

[97] Dr. Riemann, who believes that Beethoven’s “Immortal Beloved” was Countess Therese Brunswick but places the love-letter, or letters, in the year 1812, accounts for this date on the hypothesis that Beethoven reached Teplitz (whence he assumes, of course, that the letters were sent) on the fifth of the month but was registered on the seventh, on which day he was reported from his lodgings.

[98] The following information about Beethoven’s association with Varnhagen in the summer of 1812, and much that is new about Beethoven’s meetings with Goethe, is Dr. Riemann’s contribution to Thayer’s biography. It is based on the correspondence between Varnhagen and Rahel Levin, a study: “Beethoven, Goethe und Varnhagen von Ense mit ungedruckten Briefen an Beethoven, Oliva, Varnhagen, etc.,” by Dr. Emil Jacobs, published in the second December installment of “Die Musik,” 1904, and the Weimar Collection of Goethe’s letters.

[99] Giovanni Battista Polledro (1781-1853), violinist, concertmaster in Dresden in 1814, Court Chapelmaster in Turin in 1824.

[100] By Turkish music is meant military music with drums, cymbals, etc.

[101] Dr. Riemann adds: “perhaps because he had heard that the Sebalds were in Teplitz”; but, as the letter to the Archduke shows, he was already expecting to be ordered back to Teplitz on August 12.

[102] Meaning Rudolph.

[103] The credit of suggesting this crushing argument against the authenticity of the letter belongs to Dr. Deiters.--A.W.T.

[104] An album once owned by Amalie Sebald contains this inscription:

Ludwig van Beethoven
Den Sie, wenn Sie auch wollten,
Doch nicht vergessen sollten.

Teplitz, August 8, 1812.

The couplet might be rudely translated:

Whom, even if you would
Forget, you never should.

“At that date,” says Thayer, Beethoven “was not in Teplitz; the 1812 should doubtless be 1811, and was probably added long afterwards by some one who knew nothing of their meeting the previous year.”

[105] A bass trombone in F, a fourth lower than the tenor trombone.

[106] A slip of memory; the composition, which was used at Beethoven’s funeral, is for 4 trombones.

[107] Beethoven had begun to work industriously on the Eighth Symphony before he went to Teplitz; indeed, he seems to have reported to Breitkopf and Härtel in a letter which has not been preserved, but which was sent from Franzensbrunn, that he had finished two symphonies; for the “Allg. Mus. Zeit.” of September 2, 1812, says: “L. van Beethoven, who took the cures first at Töplitz, then in Karlsbad and is now in Eger, has ... again composed two new symphonies.” But the autograph bears the inscription: “Linz in October, 1812.”

[108] Correct. Mälzel was then for a few months again in Vienna.