Alexander Wheelock Thayer

Introductory—The Electors of Cologne in the Eighteenth Century—Joseph Clemens, Clemens August and Max Friedrich—The Electoral Courts and Their Music—Musical Culture in Bonn at the Time of Beethoven’s Birth—Appearance of the City in 1770.

One of the compensations for the horrors of the French Revolution was the sweeping away of many of the petty sovereignties into which Germany was divided, thereby rendering in our day a union of the German People and the rise of a German Nation possible. The first to fall were the numerous ecclesiastical-civil members of the old, loose confederation, some of which had played no ignoble nor unimportant part in the advance of civilization; but their day was past. The people of these states had in divers respects enjoyed a better lot than those who were subjects of hereditary rulers, and the old German saying: “It is good to dwell under the crook,” had a basis of fact. At the least, they were not sold as mercenary troops; their blood was not shed on foreign fields to support their princes’ ostentatious splendor, to enable mistresses and ill-begotten children to live in luxury and riot. But the antiquated ideas to which the ecclesiastical rulers held with bigoted tenacity had become a barrier to progress, the exceptions being too few to render their farther existence desirable. These members of the empire, greatly differing in extent, population, wealth and political influence, were ruled with few or no exceptions by men who owed their positions to election by chapters or other church corporations, whose numbers were so limited as to give full play to every sort of intrigue; but they could not assume their functions until their titles were confirmed by the Pope as head of the church, and by the Emperor as head of the confederation. Thus the subject had no voice in the matter, and it hardly need be said that his welfare and prosperity were never included among the motives and considerations on which the elections turned.

The sees, by their charters and statutes, we think without exception, were bestowed upon men of noble birth. They were benefices and sinecures for younger sons of princely houses; estates set apart and consecrated to the use, emolument and enjoyment of German John Lacklands. In the long list of their incumbents, a name here and there appears, that calls up historic associations;—a man of letters who aided in the increase or diffusion of the cumbrous learning of his time; a warrior who exchanged his robes for a coat of mail; a politician who played a part more or less honorable or the reverse in the affairs and intrigues of the empire, and, very rarely, one whose daily walk and conversation reflected, in some measure, the life and principles of the founder of Christianity. In general, as they owed their places wholly to political and family influences, so they assumed the vows and garb of churchmen as necessary steps to the enjoyment of lives of affluence and pleasure. So late as far into the eighteenth century, travelling was slow, laborious and expensive. Hence, save for the few more wealthy and powerful, journeys, at long intervals, to a council, an imperial coronation or a diet of the empire, were the rare interruptions to the monotony of their daily existence. Not having the power to transmit their sees to their children, these ecclesiastics had the less inducement to rule with an eye to the welfare of their subjects: on the other hand, the temptation was very strong to augment their revenues for the benefit of relatives and dependents, and especially for the gratification of their own tastes and inclinations, among which the love of splendor and ostentatious display was a fruitful source of waste and extravagance.

Confined so largely to their own small capitals, with little intercourse except with their immediate neighbors, they were far more dependent upon their own resources for amusement than the hereditary princes: and what so obvious, so easily obtained and so satisfactory as music, the theatre and the dance! Thus every little court became a conservatory of these arts, and for generations most of the great names in them may be found recorded in the court calendars. One is therefore not surprised to learn how many of the more distinguished musical composers began life as singing boys in cathedral choirs of England and Germany. The secular princes, especially those of high rank, had, besides their civil administration, the stirring events of war, questions of public policy, schemes and intrigues for the advancement of family interests and the like, to engage their attention; but the ecclesiastic, leaving the civil administration, as a rule, in the hands of ministers, had little to occupy him officially but a tedious routine of religious forms and ceremonies; to him therefore the theatre, and music for the mass, the opera, the ball-room, and the salon, were matters of great moment—they filled a wide void and were cherished accordingly.

Cologne and Its Electors

The three German ecclesiastical princes who possessed the greatest power and influence were the Archbishops of Mayence, TrÈves and Cologne—Electors of the Empire and rulers of the fairest regions of the Rhine. Peace appears hardly to have been known between the city of Cologne and its earlier archbishops; and, in the thirteenth century, a long-continued and even bloody quarrel resulted in the victory of the city. It remained a free imperial town. The archbishops retained no civil or political power within its walls, not even the right to remain there more than three days at any one time. Thus it happened, that in the year 1257 Archbishop Engelbert selected Bonn for his residence, and formally made it the capital of the electorate, as it remained until elector and court were swept away in 1794.

Of the last four Electors of Cologne, the first was Joseph Clemens, a Bavarian prince, nephew of his predecessor Maximilian Heinrich. The choice of the chapter by a vote of thirteen to nine had been Cardinal FÜrstenberg; but his known, or supposed, devotion to the interests of the French king had prevented the ratification of the election by either the Emperor or the Pope. A new one being ordered, resulted in favor of the Bavarian, then a youth of eighteen years. The Pope had ratified his election and appointed a bishop to perform his ecclesiastical functions ad interim, and the Emperor invested him with the electoral dignity December 1, 1689. Vehse says of him:

Like two of his predecessors he was the incumbent of five sees; he was Archbishop of Cologne, Bishop of Hildesheim, LiÈge, Ratisbon and Freisingen. His love for pomp and splendor was a passion which he gratified in the magnificence of his court. He delighted to draw thither beautiful and intellectual women. Madame de Raysbeck, and Countess Fugger, wife of his chief equerry, were his declared favorites. For seventeen years, that is, until the disastrous year 1706, when FÉnelon consecrated him, he delayed assuming his vows. He held the opinion, universal in the courts of those days, that he might with a clear conscience enjoy life after the manner of secular princes. In pleasing the ladies, he was utterly regardless of expense, and for their amusement gave magnificent balls, splendid masquerades, musical and dramatic entertainments, and hunting parties.

St. Simon relates that several years of his exile were passed at Valenciennes, where, though a fugitive, he followed the same round of costly pleasures and amusements. He also records one of the Elector’s jests which in effrontery surpasses anything related of his contemporary, Dean Swift. Some time after his consecration, he caused public notice to be given, that on the approaching first of April he would preach. At the appointed time he mounted the pulpit, bowed gravely, made the sign of the cross, shouted “Zum April!” (April fool!), and retired amid a flourish of trumpets and the rolling of drums.

Dr. Ennen labors energetically to prove that Joseph Clemens’s fondness in later years for joining in all grand church ceremonies rested upon higher motives than the mere pleasure of displaying himself in his magnificent robes; and affirms that after assuming his priestly vows he led a life devoted to the church and worthy of his order; thenceforth never seeing Madame de Raysbeck, mother of his illegitimate children, except in the presence of a third person. It seems proper to say this much concerning a prince whose electorship is the point of departure for notices of music and musicians in Bonn during the eighteenth century; a prince whose fondness for the art led him at home and in exile to support both vocal and instrumental bands on a scale generous for that age; and who, moreover, made some pretensions to the title of composer himself, as we learn from a letter which under date of July 20, 1720, he wrote to a court councillor Rauch to accompany eleven of his motets. It is an amusingly frank letter, beginning with a confession that he was an Ignorant who knew nothing about notes and had absolutely no knowledge of musique, wherefore he admits that his manner of composing is “very odd,” being compelled to sing anything that came into his head to a composer whose duty it was to bring the ideas to paper. Nevertheless he is quite satisfied with himself, “At all events I must have a good ear and gusto, for the public that has heard has always approved. But the methodum which I have adopted is that of the bees that draw and collect the honey from the sweetest flowers; so, also, I have taken all that I have composed from good masters whose Musikalien pleased me. Thus I freely confess my pilfering, which others deny and try to appropriate what they have taken from others. Let no one, therefore, get angry if he hears old arias in it, for, as they are beautiful, the old is not deprived of its praise.... I ascribe everything to the grace of God who enlightened me, the unknowing, to do these things.” Not all “composers,” royal or mean, are as honest as the old Elector!

It is fortunate for the present purpose, that the portion of the electoral archives discovered after a lapse of nearly seventy years and now preserved at DÜsseldorf, consists so largely of documents relating to the musical establishment of the court at Bonn during the last century of its existence. They rarely afford information upon the character of the music performed, but are sufficiently complete, when supplemented by the annual Court Calendars, to determine with reasonable correctness the number, character, position and condition of its members. The few petitions and decrees hereafter to be given in full because of their connection with the Beethovens, suffice for specimens of the long series of similar documents, uniform in character and generally of too little interest to be worth transcription.

In 1695 a decree issued at LiÈge by Joseph Clemens, then in that city as titular bishop, though not consecrated, adds three new names to the “Hoff-Musici,” one of which, Van den Eeden, constantly reappears in the documents and calendars down to the year 1782. From a list of payments at LiÈge in the second quarter of 1696, we find that Henri Vandeneden (Heinrich Van den Eeden) was a bass singer, and that the aggregate of vocalists, instrumentists, with the organ-blower (calcant), was eighteen persons.

Returned to Bonn, Joseph Clemens resumed his plan of improving his music, and for those days of small orchestras and niggardly salaries he set it upon a rather generous foundation. A decree of April 1, 1698, put in force the next month, names 22 persons with salaries aggregating 8,890 florins.

Political Vicissitudes of the Electorate

After the death of Maximilian Heinrich the government passed into the hands of Cardinal FÜrstenberg, his coadjutor, who owed the position to the intrigues of Louis XIV, and now used it by all possible means to promote French interests. The king’s troops under French commanders, he admitted into the principal towns of the electorate, and, for his own protection, a French garrison of 10,000 men into Bonn. War was the consequence; an imperial army successfully invaded the province, and, advancing to the capital, subjected its unfortunate inhabitants to all the horrors of a relentless siege, that ended October 15, 1689, in the expulsion of the garrison, now reduced to some 3900 men, of whom 1500 were invalids. Yet in the war of the Spanish Succession which opened in 1701, notwithstanding the terrible lesson taught only eleven years before, the infatuated Joseph Clemens embraced the party of Louis. Emperor Leopold treated him with singular mildness, in vain. The Elector persisted. In 1702 he was therefore excluded from the civil government and fled from Bonn, the ecclesiastical authority in Cologne being empowered by the Emperor to rule in his stead. The next year, the great success of the French armies against the allies was celebrated by Joseph Clemens with all pomp in Namur, where he then was; but his triumph was short. John Churchill, then Earl of Marlborough, took the field as commander-in-chief of the armies of the allies. His foresight, energy and astonishing skill in action justified Addison’s simile—whether sublime or only pompous—of the angel riding in the whirlwind and directing the storm. He was soon at Cologne, whence he despatched Cochorn to besiege Bonn. That great general executed his task with such skill and impetuosity, that on May 15 (1703) all was ready for storming the city, when d’AllÈgre, the French commander, offered to capitulate, and on the 19th was allowed to retire. “Now was Bonn for the third time wrested from the hands of the French and restored to the archbishopric, but alas, in a condition that aroused indignation, grief and compassion on all sides,” says MÜller.

Leopold was still kindly disposed toward Joseph Clemens, but he died May 5, 1705, and his successor, Joseph I, immediately declared him under the ban of the Empire. This deprived him of the means and opportunities, as Elector, for indulging his passion for pomp and display, while his neglect hitherto, under dispensations from the Pope, to take the vows necessary to the performance of ecclesiastical functions, was likewise fatal to that indulgence as archbishop. But this could be remedied; FÉnelon, the famous Archbishop of Cambray, ordained him subdeacon August 15, 1706; the Bishop of Tournay made him deacon December 8, and priest on the 25th; on January 1, 1707, he read his first mass at Lille, and indulged his passion for parade to the full, as a pamphlet describing the incident, and silver and copper medals commemorating it, still evince. “Two years later, May 1, 1709, Joseph Clemens received from FÉnelon in Ryssel (Lille) episcopal consecration and the pallium.”—(MÜller.) Upon the victory of Oudenarde by Marlborough, and the fall of Lille, he took refuge in Mons. The treaty of Rastadt, March, 1714, restored him to his electoral dignities and he returned to the Rhine; but Dutch troops continued to hold Bonn until December 11, 1715. On the morning of that day they evacuated the city and in the afternoon the Elector entered in a grand, solemn procession commemorated by an issue of silver medals.

During all these vicissitudes Joseph Clemens, from whatever source he derived the means, did not suffer his music to deteriorate and, returned to Bonn, no sooner was the public business regulated and restored to its former routine than he again turned his attention to its improvement.

Joseph Clemens died November 12, 1723, having previously secured the succession to his nephew Clemens August, last of the five Electors of Cologne of the Bavarian line. The new incumbent, third son of Maximilian Emanuel, Elector of Bavaria and his second wife, a daughter of the celebrated John Sobieski of Poland, was born August 17, 1700, at Brussels, where his father resided at the time as Governor General. From his fourth to his fifteenth year he had been held in captivity by the Austrians at Klagenfurt and Gratz; then, having been destined for the church, he spent several years at study in Rome. As a child in 1715 he had been appointed coadjutor to the Bishop of Regensburg; in 1719 he was elected to the two sees of Paderborn and MÜnster made vacant by the death of his brother Moritz, was chosen coadjutor to his uncle of Cologne in 1722, made his solemn entry into Bonn as elector May 15, 1724, was the same year also elected Bishop of Hildesheim, in 1725 Provost of the Cathedral at LiÈge, 1728 Bishop of OsnabrÜck, and, finally, in 1732 reached the dignity of Grand Master of the Teutonic Order.

The Rule of Elector Clemens August

His rule is distinguished in the annals of the electorate for little else than the building, repairing, renewing and embellishing of palaces, hunting-seats, churches, convents, and other edifices. At Bonn he erected the huge pile the foundation of which had been laid by his uncle, now the seat of the university. The handsome City Hall was also his work; the villa at Poppelsdorf was enlarged by him into a small palace, Clemensruhe, now the University Museum of Natural History. In BrÜhl, the Augustusburg, now a Prussian royal palace, dates from his reign, and MÜnster, Mergentheim, Arnsberg and other places show similar monuments of his prodigality in the indulgence of his taste for splendor. “Monstrous were the sums,” says Dr. Ennen, “squandered by him in the purchase of splendid ornaments, magnificent equipages, furniture costly for its variety, and of curious works of art; upon festivities, sleighing-parties, masquerades, operas, dramas and ballets; upon charlatans, swindlers, female vocalists, actors and dancers. His theatre and opera alone cost him 50,000 thalers annually and the magnificence of his masked balls, twice a week in winter, is proof sufficient that no small sums were lavished upon them.”

The aggregate of the revenues derived from the several states of which Clemens August was the head nowhere appears; but the civil income of the electorate alone had, in his later years, risen from the million of florins of his predecessor to about the same number of thalers—an increase of some 40 per centum; added to this were large sums derived from the church, and subsidies from Austria, France and the sea-coast states amounting to at least 14,000,000 francs; indeed, during the Elector’s last ten years the French subsidies alone made an aggregate of at least 7,300,000 francs; in 1728 Holland paid on account of the Clemens Canal 76,000 thalers. At the centennial opening of the strong-box of the Teutonic Order he obtained the fat accumulations of a hundred years; and 25 years later he opened it again. Yet, though during his rule peace was hardly interrupted in his part of Europe, he plunged ever deeper and more inextricably into debt, leaving one of large proportions as his legacy to his successor. He was a bad ruler, but a kindly, amiable and popular man. How should he know or feel the value of money or the necessity of prudence? His childhood had been spent in captivity, his student years in Rome, where, precisely at that period, poetry and music were cultivated, if not in very noble and manly forms, at least with a Medicean splendor. The society of the Arcadians was in full activity. True, both Clemens August and his brother were under the age which enabled them to be enrolled as “Shepherds,” and consequently their names appear neither in Crescembini nor in Quadrio; but it is not to be supposed that two young princes, already bishops by election and certain of still higher dignities in the future, were excluded from the palaces of Ruspoli and Ottoboni, from those brilliant literary, artistic and luxurious circles in which, only half a dozen years before, their young countryman, the musician Handel, had found so cordial a welcome. Those were very expensive tastes, as the citation from Ennen shows, which the future elector brought with him from Rome. Italian palaces, Italian villas, churches, gardens, music, songstresses, mistresses, an Italian holy staircase on the Kreuzberg (leading to nothing); Italian pictures, mosaics and, what not? All these things cost money—but must he not have them?

This elector is perhaps the only archbishop on record to whose epitaph may truthfully be added: “He danced out of this world into some other”;—which happened in this wise: Having, in the winter of 1760-61, by some unexpected stroke of good fortune, succeeded in obtaining from the usually prudent and careful bankers of Holland a loan of 80,000 thalers, he embraced the opportunity of making a long-desired visit to his family in Munich. Owing to a sudden attack of illness he was once on the point of turning back soon after leaving Bonn. He persevered, however, reached Coblenz and crossed over to the palace of the Elector of TrÈves at Ehrenbreitstein, where he arrived at 4 p.m. February 5, 1761. At dinner an hour later he was unable to eat; but at the ball, which followed, he could not resist the fascination of the Baroness von Waldendorf—sister of His Transparency of TrÈves—and danced with her “eight or nine turns.” Of course he could not refuse a similar compliment to several other ladies. The physical exertion of dancing, joined to the excitement of the occasion and following a dreary winter-day’s journey, was too much for the enfeebled constitution of a man of sixty years. He fainted in the ballroom, was carried to his chamber and died next day.

Appointments in the Electoral Chapel

It seems to have been the etiquette, that when an elector breathed his last, the musical chapel expired with him. At all events, no other explanation appears of the fact that so many of the petitions for membership, which are still preserved, should be signed by men who had already been named in the Court Calendars. It is also to be remarked that some of the petitioners receive appointments “without salary.” These seem to have been appointments of the kind, which in later years were distinguished in the records and in the calendars by the term “accessist,” and which, according to the best lights afforded by the archives, may be considered as having been provisional, until the incumbent had proved his skill and capacity, or until a vacancy occurred through the death or resignation of some old member. There are indications that the “accessists,” though without fixed salary, received some small remuneration for their services; but this is by no means certain. It would seem that both vocalists and instrumentists who received salaries out of the state revenues were limited to a fixed number; that the amount of funds devoted to this object was also strictly limited and the costs incurred by the engagement of superior artists with extra salaries, or by an increase of the number, were defrayed from the Elector’s privy purse; that the position of “accessist” was sought by young musicians as a stepping-stone to some future vacancy which, when acquired, insured a gradually increasing income during the years of service and a small pension when superannuated; that the etiquette of the court demanded, even in cases when the Elector expressly called some distinguished artist to Bonn, that the appointment should be apparently only in gracious answer to an humble petition, and that, with few exceptions, both singers and members of the orchestra were employed in the church, the theatre and the concert-room.

Clemens August made his formal entry into Bonn, May 15, 1724. A number of petitions are passed over, but one granted “without salary” on February 18, 1727, from Van den Eeden must be given in its entirety:

Supplique tres humble a S. A. S. E. de Cologne
pour Gille Vandeneet.

Bonn, d. 18 Feb., 1727.

Prince Serenissime,
Monsigneur.

Vandeneet vient avec tout le respect qui luy est possible se mettre aux pieds de V. A. S. E. luy representer qu’ayant eu l’honneur d’avoir estre second organiste de feu S. A. S. E. d’heureuse memoire, elle daigne luy vouloir faire la mÊme grace ne demendant aucun gage si long tems qu’il plaira a V. A. S. E. promettant la servire avec soin et diligence.

Quoi faisant etc. etc.

On the same date Van den Eeden received his appointment as second court organist. June 8, 1728, a decree is issued granting him a salary of 100 florins. To a third petition the next year, signed Van den Enden, the answer is an increase of his salary to 200 thalers, and thus a future instructor of Ludwig van Beethoven becomes established in Bonn. The records need not concern us now until we reach the following, which forms part of the history of the grandfather of the subject of this biography:

March, 1733,

DECRETUM
For Ludovicum van Beethoven as Electoral Court Musician.

Cl. A. Whereas His Serene Highness Elector of Cologne, Duke Clemens August in Upper and Lower Bavaria, etc. Our Gracious Lord having, on the humble petition of Ludovico van Beethoven, graciously declared and received him as Court Musician, and assigned him an annual salary of 400 florins Rhenish, the present decree under the gracious hand of His Serene Electoral Highness and the seal of the Privy Chancellor, is granted to him, and the Electoral Councillor and Paymaster Risack is herewith commanded to pay the said Beethoven the 400 fl. quartaliter from the beginning of this year and to make a proper accounting thereof.
B... March, 1733.

Thirteen years later we find this:

Allowance of an additional 100 Thalers annually to the Chamber Musician van Beethoven.

Inasmuch as His Serene Highness Elector of Cologne, Duke Clement August of Upper and Lower Bavaria, our most Gracious Lord has increased the salary of his Chamber Musician van Beethoven by the addition of 100 thalers annually which became due through the death of Joseph Kayser, instrument maker, the Court Chamber Councillor and Paymaster Risach is hereby informed and graciously commanded to pay to him the said Beethoven the 100 fl. a year in quarterly installments against voucher from the proper time and to make the proper accounting.
Witness, etc. Poppelsdorf, August 22, 1746.

On May 2, 1747, Johann Ries became Court Trumpeter with a salary of 192 thalers. This is the first representative we have met of a name which afterwards rose to great distinction, not only in the orchestra of the Elector but also in the world at large. On March 5, 1754, he was formally appointed Court Musician (violinist) having set forth in his petition that instead of confining himself to the trumpet he had made himself serviceable in the chapel by singing and playing other instruments. Later he took ill and was sent to Cologne. We shall presently meet his two daughters and his son Franz Ries, the last of whom will figure prominently in the life-history of Beethoven. Under date March 27, 1756, occur several papers which have a double interest. They relate to the Beethoven family and are so complete as to exhibit the entire process of appointment to membership in the electoral chapel. The original documents are not calculated to give the reader a very exalted idea of the orthographical knowledge of the petitioner or the Chamber Music Director Gottwaldt; but that fault gives us the clue to the correct pronunciation of the name Beethoven—the English “Beet-garden.”

Johann van Beethoven Becomes “Accessist”

To His Electoral Serenity of Cologne, etc. My most Gracious Lord the humble petition and prayer of
Joan van Biethoffen.

Most Reverend, most Serene Elector,
Most Gracious Lord, Lord, etc.

May it please your Electoral Serenity graciously to hear the humble representations how in the absence of voices in Your Highness’s Court Chapel my insignificant self took part in the music for at least four years without the good fortune of having allotted by Your Serene Electoral Highness a small salario.

I therefore pray Your Serene Electoral Highness most humbly that it graciously please you (in consideration of my father’s faithful service for 23 years) to rejoice me with a decree as court musician, which high grace will infuse me with zeal to serve Your Serene Highness with the greatest fidelity and zealousness.

Your
Serene Electoral Highness’s
Most humble-obedient-faithful servant,
Joan van Biethoffen.

To the Music Director Gottwaldt for a report of his humble judgment. Attestation by the most gracious sign manual and seal of the privy chancellary.

Bonn, March 19, 1756.

(Signed) Clemens August (L.S.)

Most reverend, most serene Elector,
Most gracious Lord, Lord, etc.

Your Serene Electoral Highness has referred to my humble judgment the petition of Joan van Piethoffen, the supplicant prays Your Electoral Highness for a gracious decree as accessist in the court music, he has indeed served for two years with his voice on the Duc Sall (doxal), hopes in time to deserve the good will of Your Serene Highness by his industry, and his father who enjoys the grace of serving Your Highness as bass singer prays his appointment, I pray most humbly and obediently for instruction concerning your Highness’s good will in the matter, submit myself humbly and obediently to Your Serene Highness’s grace and remain in greatest humility.

Your Serene and Electoral Highness’s
Most Humble and obedient servant
Gottwaldt, Director of the
Chamber Music.

A further report was made to the Elector as follows:

Bonn, March 27, 1756.

Coloniensis gratiosa.

Chamber Music Director Gottwaldt ad supplicam of Joan van Betthoffen has served two years on the docsal and hopes through his industry to serve further to the satisfaction of Your Electoral Highness, to which end his father who through Your Highness’s grace serves as bass singer will seek completely to qualify him which may it please Your Serene Highness to allow.

Idem Gottwaldt ad supplicam Ernest Haveckas, accessist in the court music, reports that suppliant, though not fully capable as yet hopes by special diligence to make himself worthy of Your Highness’s service and would be encouraged and rejoiced in his efforts if Your Serene Highness would graciously deign to grant him a decreto, humbly praying to be informed as to Your Highness’s wishes in the matter.

DECRETUM
Court Musician’s Decree for Johan van Biethofen.

Clm. A. Whereas His Serene Electoral Highness of Cologne, Duke Clement August in Upper and Lower Bavaria etc. Our Gracious Lord on the humble petition of Johan van Biethofen and in consideration of his skill in the art of singing, also the experience in the same already gained, having graciously declared and accepted him as court musician, appoint and accept him by this writing; therefore the said Biethofen receives this decree with the gracious sign manual and seal of the Privy Chancellary, and those who are concerned to recognize him hereafter as an Electoral court musician and to pay him such respect as the position deserves.
Bonn, March 25, 1756.

Johann van Beethoven was 16 years old at this time. Why he should appear in the Court Calendar as an accessist four years after the publication of this decree appointing him Court Musician does not appear.

The Duties of Court Chapelmasters

But slender success has rewarded the search for means of determining the character and quality of that opera and music, upon which, according to Ennen, Clemens August lavished such large sums. The period embraced in that elector’s rule (1724-1761) was precisely that in which the old Italian opera, the oratorio and the sacred cantata reached their extreme limits of development through the genius of Handel and J. S. Bach. It closes at the moment when Gluck, C. P. E. Bach and Joseph Haydn were laying the immovable foundations of a new operatic, orchestral and pianoforte music, and before the perfected sonata-form, that found universal adoption in all compositions of the better class, not vocal. Little music comparatively was issued from the press in those days, and consequently new forms and new styles made their way slowly into vogue. Another consequence was that the offices of composer for the chamber, the church, the comedy, or however they were named, were by no means sinecures—neither at the imperial court of Maria Theresia, nor at the court of any petty prince or noble whose servants formed his orchestra. Composers had to furnish music on demand and as often as was necessary, as the hunter delivered game or the fisherman fish. What a volume of music was produced in this manner can be seen in the case of Joseph Haydn at Esterhaz, whose fruitfulness did not, in all probability, exceed that of many another of his contemporaries. The older Telemann furnished compositions to the courts of Bayreuth and Eisenach as well as the Gray Friars at Frankfort-on-the-Main, and also performed his duties as musical director and composer at Hamburg. He wrote music with such ease that, as Handel said, he could write for eight voices as rapidly as an ordinary man could write a letter. Under such conditions did the men write who are mentioned as official composers in our narrative. It is probable that not a note of theirs remains in existence, and equally probable that the loss is not at all deplorable except as it leaves the curiosity of an antiquary unsatisfied. A few text-books to vocal pieces performed on various occasions during this reign have been preserved, their titles being “Componimento per Musica,” music by Giuseppe dall’Abaco, Director of the Chamber Music (1740); “La Morte d’Abel” (no date is given, but “il Signor Biethoven” sang the part of Adamo); “Esther” (“From the Italian of S. F. A. Aubert,” the text partly in German, partly in Italian); “Anagilda” (Drama per Musica).

After the unlucky ball at Ehrenbreitstein the crook and sceptre of Cologne passed from the Bavarian family which had so long held them into the hands of Maximilian Friedrich of the Suabian line KÖnigsegg- (or KÖnigseck-) Rothenfels. For a century or more this house had enjoyed fat livings in the church at Cologne, in which city the new elector was born on May 13, 1708. He was the fourth of his race who had held the important office of Dean of the Cathedral, from which post he was elevated to the electorship on April 6, 1761, and to the ecclesiastical principality of MÜnster the next year; with which two sees he was fain to be content. He was by nature an easy, good-tempered, indolent, friendly man, of no great force of character—qualities which in the incumbent of a rich sinecure just completing his fifty-third year, would be too fully confirmed and developed by habit to change with any change of circumstances; and which, says Stramberg, made him unusually popular throughout the land despite the familiar little verse:

Bei Clemens August trug man blau und weiss,
Da lebte man wie im Paradeis;
Bei Max Friedrich trug man sich schwarz und roth,
Da litt man Hunger wie die schwere Noth.

The condition of the finances had become such through the extravagant expenditures of Clemens August that very energetic measures were necessary, and to the effects of these, during the first few years of Max Friedrich’s rule, in throwing many persons out of employment, these doggerel lines doubtless owe their origin.

Max Friedrich and His Minister

It was fortunate for the Elector’s subjects that his indolence was made good by the activity and energy of a prime minister who found his beau ideal of a statesman in Frederick II of Prussia, whom, in his domestic policy, he imitated as far as the character of the two governments allowed. This was equally if not more true in the principality of MÜnster. To the respect which one must feel for the memory of Belderbusch, the all-powerful minister at Bonn, is added, in the case of FÜrstenberg, the equally powerful minister at MÜnster, admiration and regard for the man. The former was respected, feared, but not loved in the electorate; the latter was respected and very popular in the principality. To Kasper Anton von Belderbusch the new Elector owed his elevation; to his care he entrusted the state; to his skill and strength of character he was indebted for release from the pecuniary difficulties which beset him and for the satisfaction, as the years rolled by, of seeing his states numbered among the most prosperous and flourishing in Germany. Belderbusch’s first care was to reduce the expenditure. “He put a stop to building,” says Ennen, “dismissed a number of the actors, restricted the number of concerts and court balls, dispensed with the costly hunts, reduced the salaries of court officials, officers and domestics, lessened the État for the kitchen, cellar and table of the prince, turned the property left by Clemens August into money and comforted the latter’s creditors with the hope of better times.” But though economy was the rule, still, where the Elector considered it due to his position, he could be lavish. Whatever opinions may be entertained as to the wisdom and expediency of clothing ecclesiastics with civil power, it would be unjust not to give the bright as well as the dark side of the picture. This is well put by Kaspar Risbeck in relation to the Rhenish states whose princes were churchmen, and his remarks are in place here, since they relate in part to that in which the childhood and youth of Beethoven were spent.

The whole stretch of the country from here to Mayence is one of the richest and most populous in Germany. Within this territory of 18 German miles there are 20 cities lying hard by the shore of the Rhine and dating, for the greater part, from the period of the Romans. It is still plainly to be seen that this portion of Germany was the first to be built up. Neither morasses nor heaths interrupt the evidences of cultivation which stretch with equal industry far from the shores of the river over the contiguous country. While many cities and castles built under Charlemagne and his successors, especially Henry I, in other parts of Germany have fallen into decay, all in this section have not only been preserved but many have been added to them.... The natural wealth of the soil in comparison with that of other lands, and the easy disposition of its products by means of the Rhine, have no doubt contributed most to these results. Nevertheless, great as is the prejudice in Germany against the ecclesiastical governments, they have beyond doubt aided in the blooming development of these regions. In the three ecclesiastical electorates which make up the greater part of this tract of land nothing is known of those tax burdens under which the subjects of so many secular princes of Germany groan. These princes have exceeded the old assessments but slightly. Little is known in their countries of serfdom. The appanage of many princes and princesses do not force them to extortion. They have no inordinate military institution, and do not sell the sons of their farmers; and they have never taken so active a part in the domestic and foreign wars of Germany as the secular princes. Though they are not adept in encouraging their subjects in art culture, varied agriculture has been developed to a high degree of perfection throughout the region. Nature does of its own accord what laws and regulations seek to compel, as soon as the rocks of offence are removed from the path.[1]

Henry Swinburne, whose letters to his brother were published long after his death under the title of “The Courts of Europe,” writes under date of November 29, 1780:

Bonn is a pretty town, neatly built, and its streets tolerably well paved, all in black lava. It is situated in a flat near the river. The Elector of Cologne’s palace faces the South entry. It has no beauty of architecture and is all plain white without any pretensions.

We went to court and were invited to dine with the Elector (KÖnigsegge). He is 73 years old, a little, hale, black man, very merry and affable. His table is none of the best; no dessert wines handed about, nor any foreign wines at all. He is easy and agreeable, having lived all his life in ladies’ company, which he is said to have liked better than his breviary. The captains of his guard and a few other people of the court form the company, amongst whom were his two great-nieces, Madame de Hatzfeld and Madame de Taxis. The palace is of immense size, the ball-room particularly large and low.... The Elector goes about to all the assemblies and plays at Tric-trac. He asked me to be of his party but I was not acquainted with their way of playing. There is every evening an assembly or play at court. The Elector seems very strong and healthy, and will, I think, hold the Archduke a good tug yet.

This Archduke was Max Franz, youngest son of Maria Theresia, whose acquaintance Swinburne had made in Vienna, and who had just been chosen coadjutor to Max Friedrich. A curious proof of the liberality, not to say laxity, of the Elector’s sentiments in one direction is given by Stramberg in his “Rheinischer Antiquarius,” to wit, the possession of a mistress in common by him and his minister Belderbusch—the latter fathering the children—and this mistress was the Countess Caroline von Satzenhofen, Abbess of Vilich!

Chapelmaster Ludwig van Beethoven

The reduction which was made by Belderbusch upon the accession of Max Friedrich in the expenses of the theatre and other amusements does not appear, except in the case of the chapelmaster, to have extended to the court music proper, nor to have been long continued in respect to the “operetta and comedy.” The first in order of the documents and notices discovered relating to the musical establishment of this Elector are of no common interest, being the petition of a candidate for the vacant office of chapelmaster and the decree appointing him to that position. They are as follows:

Very Reverend Archbishop and Elector
most gracious Lord Lord!

May it please Your Electoral Grace to permit a representation of my faithfully and dutifully performed services for a considerable space as vocalist as well as, since the death of the chapelmaster, for more than a year his duties in Dupplo, that is to say by singing and wielding the baton concerning which my demand still remains ad referendum much less have I been assured of the position. Inasmuch as because of particular recommendation Dousmoulin was preferred over me, and indeed unjustly, I have been forced hitherto to submit to fate.

But now, gracious Elector and Lord, that because of the reduction in salaries Chapelmaster Dousmoulin has already asked his demission or will soon do so, and I at the command of Baron Belderbusch am to begin de novo to fill his office, and the same must surely be replaced,—Therefore

There reaches Your Electoral Grace my humble petition that you may graciously be pleased (: inasmuch as the “Toxal” must be sufficiently supplied with musique, and I must at all events take the lead in the occurring church ceremonies in puncto the chorales:) to grant me the justice of which I was deprived on the death of Your Highness’s antecessori of blessed memory, and appoint me chapelmaster with some augmentation of my lessened salary because of my services performed in Duplo. For which highest grace I shall pour out my prayers to God for the long continuing health and government of your Electoral Grace, while in deepest submission I throw myself at your feet.

Your
Electoral Grace’s
most humble servant
Ludwig van Beethoven
“Passist.”

M. F. Whereas We, Maximilian Friedrich, Elector of Cologne, on the demission of our former chapelmaster Touche Moulin, and the humble petition of our bass singer Ludwig van Beethoven have appointed the latter to be chapelmaster with the retention of his position as bass singer, and have added 97 rthlr. species 40 alb. to his former salary of 292 rthlr. species 40 alb. per annum divided in quartalien, which appointment is hereby made and payment ordered by our grace, our exchequer and all whom it may concern are called on to observe the fact and do what is required under the circumstances.

Attest, etc.

Bonn, July 16, 1761.

Next in order, at an interval of rather more than a year, is the following short paper in reply to a petition, not preserved, of the new chapelmaster’s son:

Supplicanten is hereby graciously assured that in the event of a vacatur of a court musician’s salary he shall have special consideration. Attest our gracious sign manual and the impress of the seal of the Privy Chancellary.

Max Fried. Elector.
v. Belderbusch, (:L. S.:)

Bonn, November 27, 1762.

About December, 1763, a singer, Madame Lentner, after some four and a half years of service, threw up her appointment, giving occasion, through the vacancy thus caused, for the following petition, report and decrees:

Most Reverend Elector, Most Gracious
Lord, Lord.

Will Your Electoral Grace deign to receive the representation that by the acceptance of service elsewhere of Court Musician Dauber there has fallen to the disposition of Your Reverend Electoral Grace a salary of 1,050 rth., wherefore I, Joannes van Beethoven, having graciously been permitted for a considerable time to serve as court musician and have been graciously assured by decree of appointment to the first vacancy, and have always faithfully and diligently performed my duties and graciously been permitted to be in good voice, therefore my prayer is made to Your Reverend and Electoral Grace for a grant of the aforesaid 1,050 rth. or a gracious portion thereof, which act of highest grace I shall try to merit by fidelity and zeal in the performance of my duties.

Your
Reverend Electoral Grace’s
most obedient servant
Joannes van Beethoven,
vocalist.

This petition was seconded by the father in the following manner:

Under the same date a decree was issued appointing Anna Maria Ries, daughter of Johann Ries, Court Singer, with a salary of 100 th. also out of that of the Lentner. A few days later the following action was taken:

On April 3, 1778, Anna Maria Ries received an additional 100 fl. A few more documents lead us to the family of Johann Peter Salomon:

In spite of this order on July 1, 1765, the Elector gave a document to the son, Johann Peter Salomon, certifying that he had served him faithfully and diligently and had “so conducted himself as to deserve to be recommended to every one according to his station.”[2] On petition of Philipp Salomon, the father, he and his daughter were appointed Court Musicians by decree dated August 11, 1764.

Several papers, dated April 26, 1768, although upon matters of very small importance, have a certain interest as being in part official communications from the pen of Chapelmaster van Beethoven, and illustrating in some measure his position and duties. They show, too, that his path was not always one bordered with roses. Being self-explanatory they require no comment:

I.

II.

III.

On November 17, 1769, Johann van Beethoven submits a petition in which he exhibits anew his genius for devising methods for varying the spelling of his own name. That he could no longer live on 100 th. salary is evident when it is remembered that he has now been married two years; but as there were several applicants for the salary which had fallen to the disposal of the Elector, it was divided among the four most needy. Beethoven’s memorial contains a fact or two in regard to his duties as Court Musician which are new:

In answer to this there came the following decree:

There need be no apology for filling a few more pages with extracts from documents found in the DÜsseldorf archives; for now a period has been reached in which the child Ludwig van Beethoven is growing up into youth and early manhood, and thrown into constant contact with those whose names will appear. Some of these names will come up many years later in Vienna; others will have their parts to play in the narrative of that child’s life. Omitting, for the present, a petition of Johann van Beethoven, we begin them with that of Joseph Demmer, of date January 23, 1773, which first secured him his appointment after a year’s service and three months’ instruction from “the young Mr. van Beethoven.”

In response to another petition after the death of L. van Beethoven the following decree was issued:

Two years later leave of absence, but without salary, was granted to Joseph Demmer to visit Amsterdam to complete his education in music. Further notes from documentary sources:

Under date May 22, 1778, J. van Beethoven informs the Elector that “the singer Averdonck, who is to be sent to Chapelmaster Sales at Coblenz, is to pay 15 fl. per month for board and lodging but that only a douceur is to be asked for her instruction and that to take her thither will cost 20 th.” There followed upon this the following document:

This pupil of Johann van Beethoven, Johanna Helena Averdonk, born in Bonn on December 11, 1760, and brought forward by her teacher at a concert in Cologne, received 120 th. “as a special grace” on July 2, and was appointed Court Singer on November 18, 1780, with a salary of 200 th. She died nine years later, August 13, 1789.

The petitions sent in to the Elector were rarely dated and were not always immediately attended to; therefore the date of a decretum is not to be taken as conclusive in regard to the date of facts mentioned in a petition. An illustration is afforded by a petition of Franz Ries. He has returned from a tour to Vienna and prays for a salary of 500 fl. “not the half of what he can earn elsewhere.” The petition is dated March 2. Two months passing without bringing him an answer, he petitions again and obtains a decree on May 2 that in addition to his salary of 28 th. 2 alb. 6, he shall receive “annoch so viel,”—again as much,—i.e., 400 fl.

The archives of DÜsseldorf furnish little more during the time of Max Frederick save certain papers relating to the Beethoven family, which are reserved for another place.

The search for means to form some correct idea of the character of the musical performances at the Elector’s court during this reign has been more successful than for the preceding; but much is left to be desired down to the year 1778, when the theatre was placed upon a different basis and its history is sufficiently recorded. Such notices, however, in relation to the operatic entertainments as have been found scattered, mostly in the newspapers of Bonn, in those years, are numerous enough to give an idea of their character; while the remarks upon the festivities of the court, connected with them, afford a pretty lively picture of social amusement in the highest circle. We make room for some of the most significant occurrences, in chronological order:

There are three more operettas which evidently belong to the succeeding winter when the Bonn company had the aid of two singers from the electoral court of TrÈves. Their titles are “L’Improvvisata, o sia la Galanteria disturbata,” by Lucchesi, “Li tre Amanti ridicoli,” by Galuppi, and “La Moda,” by Baroni. Ludwig van Beethoven did not sing in them. The means are still wanting to fill up the many gaps in the annals of this period or to carry them on during the next three years. Perhaps, however, the loss is not of much importance, for the materials collected are sufficient to warrant certain conclusions in regard to the general character of the court music. The musicians, both vocal and instrumental, were employed in the church, concert-room and theatre; their number remained without material change from the days of Christopher Petz to the close of Chapelmaster van Beethoven’s life; places in this service were held to be a sort of heritage, and of right due to the children of old incumbents, when possessed of sufficient musical talent and knowledge; few if any names of distinguished virtuosos are found in the lists of the members, and, in all probability, the performances never rose above the respectable mediocrity of a small band used to playing together in the light and pleasing music of the day.

The dramatic performances appear to have been confined to the operetta; and the vocalists, who sang the Latin of the mass, seem to have been required to be equally at home in German, Italian and French in the theatre. Two visits of the Angelo Mingotti troupe are noted; and one attempt, at least, to place the opera upon a higher basis by the engagement of Italian songstresses, was evidently made in the time of Clemens August.; it may be concluded that no great improvement was made—it is certain that no permanent one was; for in the other case the Bonn theatrical revolution of 1778 had not been needed. This must be noticed in detail.

Chronologically the following sketch belongs to the biography of Ludwig van Beethoven, as it embraces a period which happens in his case to be of special interest, young as he was;—the period from his 8th to his 14th year. But the details given, though of great importance for the light which they throw upon the musical life in which he moved and acted, would hardly be of so much interest to most readers as to justify breaking with them the course of the future narrative.

It was a period of great awakening in theatrical matters. Princes and courts were beginning everywhere in Germany to patronize the drama of their mother tongue and the labors of Lessing, Gotter and other well-known names, in the original production of German, or in the translation of the best English, Italian and French plays, were justifying and giving ever new impulse to the change in taste. From the many itinerant troupes of players performing in booths, or, in the larger cities, in the play-houses, the better class of actors were slowly finding their way into permanent companies engaged and supported by the governments. True, many of the newly established court theatres had but a short and not always a very merry life; true, also, that the more common plan was merely to afford aid and protection to some itinerant troupe; still the idea of a permanent national theatre on the footing of the already long-existing court musical establishments had made way, and had already been carried out in various places before it was taken up by the elector at Bonn. It can hardly be supposed that the example of the imperial court at Vienna, with the immense means at its disposal, could exert any direct influence upon the small court at Bonn at the other extremity of Germany; but what the Duke of Gotha and the elector at Mannheim had undertaken in this direction, Max Friedrich may well have ventured and determined to imitate. But there was an example nearer home—in fact in his own capital of MÜnster, where he, the prince primate, usually spent the summer. In 1775, Dobbler’s troupe, which had been for some time playing in that city, was broken up.

At Easter, 1777, Seyler, a manager famous in German theatrical annals, and then at Dresden, finding himself unable to compete with his rival, Bondini, left that city with his company to try his fortunes in Frankfort-on-the-Main, Mayence, and other cities in that quarter. The company was very large—the Theatre Lexicon (Article “Mainz”) makes it, including its orchestra, amount to 230 individuals!—much too large, it seems, in spite of the assertion of the Theatre Lexicon, to be profitable. Be that as it may, after an experience of a year or more, two of the leading members, Grossmann and Helmuth, accepted an engagement from Max Friedrich to form and manage a company at Bonn in order that “the German art of acting might be raised to a school of morals and manners for his people.” Taking with them a pretty large portion of Seyler’s company, including several of the best members, the managers reached Bonn and were ready upon the Elector’s return from MÜnster to open a season. “The opening of the theatre took place,” says the Bonn “Dramaturgische Nachrichten,” “on the 26th of November, 1778, with a prologue spoken by Madame Grossmann, ‘Wilhelmine Blondheim,’ tragedy in three acts by Grossmann, and ‘Die grosse Batterie,’ comedy in one act by Ayrenhofer.” The same authority gives a list of all the performances of the season, which extended to the 30th of May, 1779, together with dÉbuts, the dismissals and other matters pertaining to the actors. The number of the evenings on which the theatre was open was 50. A five-act play, as a rule, occupied the whole performance, but of shorter pieces usually two were given; and thus an opening was found occasionally for an operetta. Of musical dramas only seven came upon the stage and these somewhat of the lightest order except the first—the melodrama “Ariadne auf Naxos,” music by Benda. The others were:

The selection of dramas was, on the whole, very creditable to the taste of the managers. Five of Lessing’s works, among them “Minna von Barnhelm” and “Emilia Galotti,” are in the list and some of the best productions of Bock, Gotter, Engel and their contemporaries; of translations there were Colman’s “Clandestine Marriage” and “Jealous Wife,” Garrick’s “Miss in her Teens,” Cumberland’s “West Indian,” Hoadly’s “Suspicious Husband,” Voltaire’s “Zaire” and “Jeannette,” Beaumarchais’s “EugÉnie,” two or three of the works of MoliÈre, and Goldoni, etc.;—in short, the list presents much variety and excellence.

Max Friedrich was evidently pleased with the company, for the “Nachrichten” has the following in the catalogue of performances: “On the 8th (of April) His Electoral Grace was pleased to give a splendid breakfast to the entire company in the theatre.... The company will occupy itself until the return of His Electoral Grace from MÜnster, which will be in the middle of November, with learning the newest and best pieces, among which are ‘Hamlet,’ ‘King Lear’ and ‘Macbeth,’ which are to be given also with much splendor of costume according to the designs of famous artists.”

It may be remarked here that the “Bonn Comedy House” (for painting the interior of which Clemens August paid 468 thalers in 1751, a date which seems to fix the time at which that end of the palace was completed), occupied that portion of the present University ArchÆological Museum room next the Coblenz Gate, with large doors opening from the stage into the passageway so that this space could be used as an extension of the stage in pieces requiring it for the production of grand scenic effects. Above the theatre was the “Redouten-Saal” of Max Franz’s time. The Elector had, of course, an entrance from the passages of the palace into his box. The door for the public, in an angle of the wall now built up, opened out upon the grove of horse-chestnuts. The auditorium was necessarily low, but spacious enough for several hundred spectators. Though much criticized by travellers as being unworthy so elegant a court, not to say shabby, it seems to have been a nice and snug little theatre.

Meanwhile affairs with Seyler were drawing to a crisis. He had returned with his company from Mannheim and reopened at Frankfort, August 3, 1779. On the evening of the 17th, to escape imprisonment as a bankrupt, whether through his own fault or that of another—the Theatre Lexicon affirms the latter case—he took his wife and fled to Mayence. The company was allowed by the magistrates to play a few weeks with a view of earning at least the means of leaving the city; but on October 4, its members began to separate; Benda and his wife went to Berlin, but C. G. Neefe, the music director, and Opitz, descended the Rhine to Bonn and joined the company there—Neefe assuming temporarily the direction of the music in the theatre—of which more in another place.

No record has been found of the repertory of the Bonn theatre for the season 1779-1780, except that the opening piece on December 3, on the evening after the Elector’s return from MÜnster, was a prologue, “Wir haben Ihn wieder!” text by Baron vom Hagen, with airs, recitatives and choruses composed by Neefe; that the “DÉserteur” was in the list, and finally Hiller’s “Jagd.” In June, 1781, the season being over, the company migrated to Pyrmont, from Pyrmont to Cassel, and thence, in October, back to Bonn.

The season of 1781-’82 was a busy one; of musical dramas alone 17 are reported as newly rehearsed from September, 1781, to the same time in 1782, viz:

It does not follow, however, that all these operas, operettas and plays with music were produced during the season in Bonn. The company followed the Elector to MÜnster in June, 1782, and removed thence to Frankfort-on-the-Main for its regular series of performances at Michaelmas. It came back to Bonn in the Autumn.

The season 1782-’83 was as active as the preceding. Some of the newly rehearsed spoken dramas were “Sir John Falstaff,” from the English, translations of Sheridan’s “School for Scandal,” Shakespeare’s “Lear,” and “Richard III,” Mrs. Cowley’s “Who’s the Dupe?” and, of original German plays, Schiller’s “Fiesco” and “Die RÄuber,” Lessing’s “Miss Sara Sampson,” Schroeder’s “Testament,” etc., etc. The number of newly rehearsed musical dramas—in which class are included such ballad operas as General Burgoyne’s “Maid of the Oaks”—reached twenty, viz:

But a still farther provision has been made for the Elector’s amusement during the season of 1783-’84, by the engagement of a ballet corps of eighteen persons. The titles of five newly rehearsed ballets are given in the report from which the above particulars are taken, and which may be found in the theatrical calendar for 1784.

With an enlarged company and a more extensive repertory, preparations were made for opening the theatre upon the Elector’s return, at the end of October, from MÜnster to Bonn. But the relations of the company to the court have been changed. Let the “Theater-Kalender” describe the new position in which the stage at Bonn was placed:

The advantages of this plan for securing a good repertory, a good company and a zealous striving for improvement are obvious; and its practical working during this, its only, season, so far as can now be gathered from scanty records, was a great success. It will hereafter be seen that the boy Ludwig van Beethoven was often employed at the pianoforte at the rehearsals—possibly also at the performances of the company of which Neefe was the musical director. That a company consisting almost exclusively of performers who had passed the ordeal of frequent appearance on the stage and had been selected with full knowledge of the capacity of each, and which, moreover, had gained so much success at the Bonn court as to be put upon a permanent footing, must have been one of more than the ordinary, average excellence, at least in light opera, needs no argument. Nor need comments be made upon the influence which daily intercourse with it, and sharing in its labors, especially in the direction of opera, must have exerted upon the mind of a boy of twelve or thirteen years possessed of real musical genius.

The theatrical season, and with it the company, came to an untimely end. Belderbusch died in January, 1784. Madame Grossmann died in childbed on March 28, and on April 15 the Elector followed them to another world. After the death of the Elector Maximilian Friedrich the Court Theatre was closed for the official mourning and the company dismissed with four weeks’ salary.

It is consonant to the plan of this introductory chapter that some space be devoted to sketches of some of the principal men whose names have already occurred and to some notes upon the musical amateurs of Bonn who are known, or may be supposed, to have been friends of the boy Beethoven. These notices make no claim to the credit of being the result of original research; they are, except that of Neefe, little more than extracts from a letter, dated March 2, 1783, written by Neefe and printed in Cramer’s “Magazin der Musik” (Vol. I, pp. 337 et seq.). At that time the “Capelldirector,” as Neefe calls him, was Cajetano Mattioli, born at Venice, August 7, 1750, whose appointments were concertmaster and musical director in Bonn, made on May 26, 1774 and April 24, 1777.

The organist of the Court Chapel was Christian Gottlob Neefe, son of a poor tailor of Chemnitz in Saxony, where he was born February 5, 1748. He is one of the many instances in musical history in which the career of the man is determined by the beauty of his voice in childhood. At a very early age he became a chorister in the principal church, which position gave him the best school and musical instruction that the small city afforded—advantages so wisely improved as to enable him in early youth to gain a living by teaching. At the age of 21, with 20 thalers in his pocket and a stipend of 30 thalers per annum from the magistrates of Chemnitz, he removed to Leipsic to attend the lectures of the university, and at that institution in the course of time he passed his examination in jurisprudence. Upon this occasion he argued the negative of the question: “Has a father the right to disinherit a son for devoting himself to the theatre?” In Chemnitz Neefe’s teachers in music had been men of small talents and very limited acquirements, and even in Leipsic he owed more to his persevering study of the theoretical works of Marpurg and C. P. E. Bach than to any regular instructor. But there he had the very great advantage of forming an intimate acquaintance with, and becoming an object of special interest to, Johann Adam Hiller, the celebrated director of the Gewandhaus Concerts, the then popular and famous composer, the introducer of Handel’s “Messiah” to the German public, the industrious writer upon music, and finally a successor of Johann Sebastian Bach as Cantor of the Thomas School. Hiller gave him every encouragement in his power in his musical career; opened the columns of his musical “WÖchentliche Nachrichten” to his compositions and writings; called him to his assistance in operatic composition; gave him the results of his long experience in friendly advice; criticized his compositions, and at length, in 1777, gave him his own position as music director of Seyler’s theatrical company, then playing at the Linkische Bad in Dresden. Upon the departure of that troupe for Frankfort-on-the-Main, Neefe was persuaded to remain with it in the same capacity. He thus became acquainted with FrÄulein Zinck, previously court singer at Gotha but now engaged for Seyler’s opera. The acquaintance ripened into a mutual affection and ended in marriage not long afterward. It is no slight testimony to the high reputation which he enjoyed that at the moment of Seyler’s flight from Frankfort (1779) Bondini, whose success had driven that rival from Dresden, was in correspondence with Neefe and making him proposals to resign his position under Seyler for a similar but better one in his service. Pending the result of these negotiations Neefe, taking his wife with him, temporarily joined Grossmann and Helmuth at Bonn in the same capacity. Those managers, who knew the value of his services from their previous experience as members of the Seyler troupe, paid a very strong, though involuntary, tribute to his talents and personal character by adopting such unfair measures as to compel the musician to remain in Bonn until Bondini was forced to fill his vacancy by another candidate. Having once got him, Grossmann was determined to keep him—and succeeded.

As long as the Grossmann company remained undivided Neefe accompanied it in its annual visits to MÜnster and other places;—thus the sketch of his life printed sixteen years later in the first volume of the “Allgemeine Musikzeitung” of Leipsic bears date “Frankfort-on-the-Main, September 30, 1782”; but from that period save, perhaps, for a short time in 1783, he seems not to have left Bonn at all.

There were others besides Grossmann and Helmuth who thought Neefe too valuable an acquisition to the musical circles of Bonn not to be secured. Less than a year and a half after his arrival there the minister Belderbusch and the countess Hatzfeld, niece of the Elector, secured to him, though a Protestant, an appointment to the place of court organist. The salary of 400 florins, together with the 700 florins from Grossmann, made his income equal to that of the court chapelmaster. It is difficult now to conceive of the forgotten name of C. G. Neefe as having once stood high in the list of the first North German composers; yet such was the case. Of Neefe’s published compositions, besides the short vocal and clavier pieces in Hiller’s periodical, there had already appeared operettas in vocal score, “Die Apotheke” (1772), “Amor’s Guckkasten” (1772), “Die EinsprÜche” (1773) and “Heinrich und Lyda” (1777); also airs composed for Hiller’s “Dorf-Barbier” and one from his own republished opera “Zemire und Azor”; twelve odes of Klopstock—sharply criticized by Forkel in his “Musikalisch-Kritische Bibliothek,” much to the benefit of the second edition of them; and a pretty long series of songs. Of instrumental music he had printed twenty-four sonatas for pianoforte solo or with violin; and from Breitkopf and HÄrtel’s catalogues, 1772 and 1774, may be added the following works included neither in his own list nor that of Gerber: a partita for string quartet, 2 horns, 2 oboes, 2 flutes and 2 bassoons; another for the same instruments minus the flutes and bassoons; a third for the string quartet and 2 oboes only, and two symphonies for string quartet, 2 horns, 2 oboes and 2 flutes. The “Sophonisbe” music was also finished and twenty years later, after Mozart had given a new standard of criticism, it was warmly eulogized in the “Allgemeine Musikzeitung” of Leipsic. At the date of his letter to Cramer (March 2, 1783) he had added to his published works “Sechs Sonaten am Clavier zu singen,” “Vademecum fÜr Liebhaber des Gesangs und Clavier,” the clavier score of “Sophonisbe,” and a concerto for clavier and orchestra. His manuscripts, he adds (Cramer’s “Magazine,” I; p. 382), consist of (a) the scores of the operettas which had appeared in pianoforte arrangements; (b) the score of his opera “Zemire und Azor”; (c) the score of his opera “Adelheit von Veltheim”; (d) the score of a bardic song for the tragedy “The Romans in Germany”; (e) the scores of theatrical between-acts music; (f) the score of a Latin “Pater noster”; (g) various other smaller works. He had in hand the composition of the operetta “Der neue Gutsherr,” the pianoforte score of which, as also that of “Adelheit von Veltheim,” was about to be published by Dyck in Leipsic. A year before at a concert for amateurs at the house of Mr. von Mastiaux he had produced an ode by Klopstock, “Dem Unendlichen,” for four chorus voices and a large orchestra, which was afterwards performed in Holy Week in the FrÄuleinstiftskirche. In short, Neefe brought to Bonn a high-sounding reputation, talent, skill and culture both musical and literary, which made him invaluable to the managers when new French and Italian operas were to be prepared for the German stage; great facility in throwing off a new air, song, entr’acte or what not to meet the exigencies of the moment; very great industry, a cacoethes scribendi of the very highest value to the student of Bonn’s musical history in his time and a new element into the musical life there. This element may have seemed somewhat formal and pedantic, but it was solid, for it was drawn from the school of Handel and Bach.

Let us return to Neefe’s letter to Cramer again for some notices of music outside the electoral palace:

What with the theatre, the court music, the musical productions in the church and such opportunities in private it is plain that young talent in those days in Bonn was in no danger of starvation for want of what Neefe calls “musikalische Nahrung.”

So much upon the dramatis personÆ, other than the principal figure and his family. Let an attempt follow to describe the little city as it appeared in 1770—in other words, to picture the scene. By an enumeration made in 1789, the population of Bonn was 9,560 souls, a number which probably for a long series of years had rarely varied beyond a few score, more or less—one, therefore, that must very nearly represent the aggregate in 1770. For the town had neither manufactures nor commerce beyond what its own wants supported; it was simply the residence of the Elector—the seat of the court, and the people depended more or less directly upon that court for subsistence—as a wag expressed it, “all Bonn was fed from the Elector’s kitchen.” The old city walls—(the “gar gute Fortification, dass der ChurfÜrst sicher genug darinnen Hof halten kann” of Johann HÜbner’s description)—were already partially destroyed. Within them the whole population seems to have lived. Outside the city gates it does not appear that, save by a chapel or two, the eye was impeded in its sweep across gardens and open fields to the surrounding villages which, then as now hidden in clusters of walnut and fruit trees, appeared, when looked upon from the neighboring hills, like islands rising upon the level surface of the plain. The great increase of wealth and population during the last 150 years in all this part of the Rhine valley under the influence of the wise national economy of the Prussian government, has produced corresponding changes in and about the towns and villages; but the grand features of the landscape are unchanged; the ruins upon the Drachenfels and Godesberg looked down, as now, upon the distant roofs and spires of Bonn; the castle of Siegburg rose above the plains away to the East; the chapel crowned the Petersberg, the church with the marble stairs the nearer Kreuzberg.

The fine landing place with its growing trees and seats for idlers, the villas, hotels, coffee-houses and dwellings outside the old walls, are all recent; but the huge ferryboat, the “flying bridge,” even then was ever swinging like a pendulum from shore to shore. Steam as a locomotive power was unknown, and the commerce of the Rhine floated by the town, gliding down with the current on rafts or in clumsy but rather picturesque boats, or impelled against the stream by the winds, by horses and even by men and women. The amount of traffic was not, however, too great to be amply provided for in this manner; for population was kept down by war, by the hard and rude life of the peasant class, and by the influences of all the false national-economic principles of that age, which restrained commerce by every device that could be made to yield present profit to the rulers of the Rhine lands. Passengers had, for generations, no longer been plundered by mail-clad robbers dwelling upon a hundred picturesque heights; but each petty state had gained from the Emperor’s weakness “vested rights” in all sorts of custom-levies and taxes. Risbeck (1780) found nine toll-stations between Mayence and Coblenz; and thence to the boundary of Holland, he declares there were at least sixteen, and that in the average each must have collected 30,000 Rhenish florins per annum.

To the stranger, coming down from Mayence, with its narrow dark lanes, or up from Cologne, whose confined and pestiferously dirty streets, emitting unnamed stenches, were but typical of the bigotry, superstition and moral filth of the population—all now happily changed, thanks to a long period of French and Prussian rule—little Bonn seemed a very picture of neatness and comfort. Even its ecclesiastical life seemed of another order. The men of high rank in the church were of high rank also by birth; they were men of the world and gentlemen; their manners were polished and their minds enlarged by intercourse with the world and with gentlemen; they were tolerant in their opinions and liberal in their views. Ecclesiastics of high and low degree were met at every corner as in other cities of the Rhine region; but absence of military men was a remarkable feature. Johann HÜbner gives the reason for this in few and quaint words:—“In times of war much depends upon who is master of Bonn, because traffic on the Rhine can be blockaded at this pass. Therefore the place has its excellent fortification which enables the Elector to hold his court in ample security within its walls. But he need not maintain a garrison there in time of peace, and in time of war troops are garrisoned who have taken the oath to the Emperor and the empire. This was settled by the peace of Ryswick as well as Rastatt.”

While the improvement in the appearance of the streets of Bonn has necessarily been great, through the refitting or rebuilding of a large portion of the dwelling-houses, the plan of the town, except in those parts lying near the wall, has undergone no essential change, the principal one being the open spaces, where in 1770 churches stood. On the small triangular RÖmer-Platz was the principal parish church of Bonn, that of St. Remigius, standing in such a position that its tall tower looked directly down the Acherstrasse. In 1800 this tower was set on fire by lightning and destroyed; six years later the church itself was demolished by the French and its stones removed to become a part of the fortifications at Wesel. On the small, round grass plot as one goes from the MÜnster church toward the neighboring city gate (Neuthor) stood another parish church—a rotunda in form—that of St. Martin, which fell in 1812 and was removed; and at the opposite end of the minster, separated from it only by a narrow passage, was still a third, the small structure dedicated to St. Gangolph. This, too, was pulled down in 1806. Only the fourth parish church, that of St. Peter in Dietkirchen, is still in existence and was, at a later date, considerably enlarged. After the demolition of these buildings a new division of the town into parishes was made (1806).

The city front of the electoral palace, now the university, was more imposing than now, and was adorned by a tall, handsome tower containing a carillon, with bells numerous enough to play, for instance, the overture to Monsigny’s “Deserter.” This part of the palace, with the tower and chapel, was destroyed by fire in 1777.

The town hall, erected by Clemens August, and the other churches were as now, but the large edifice facing the university library and museum of casts, now occupied by private dwellings and shops, was then the cloister and church of the Franciscan monks. A convent of Capuchin nuns stood upon the Kesselgasse; its garden is now a bleaching ground.

Let the fancy picture, upon a fine Easter or Pentecost morning in those years, the little city in its holiday attire and bustle. The bells in palace and church tower ringing; the peasants in coarse but picturesque garments, the women abounding in bright colors, come in from the surrounding villages, fill the market-place and crowd the churches at the early masses. The nobles and gentry—in broad-flapped coats, wide waistcoats and knee-breeches, the entire dress often of brilliant colored silks, satins and velvets, huge, white, flowing neckcloths, ruffles over the hands, buckles of silver or even of gold at the knees and upon the shoes, huge wigs becurled and bepowdered on the heads, and surmounted by the cocked hat, when not held under the arm, a sword at the side, and commonly a gold-headed cane in the hand (and if the morning be cold, a scarlet cloak thrown over the shoulders)—are daintily picking their way to the palace to kiss His Transparency’s hand or dashing up to the gates in heavy carriages with white wigged and cocked-hatted coachmen and footmen. Their ladies wear long and narrow bodices, but their robes flow with a mighty sweep; their apparent stature is increased by very high-heeled shoes and by piling up their hair on lofty cushions; their sleeves are short, but long silk gloves cover the arms. The ecclesiastics, various in name and costume, dress as now, save in the matter of the flowing wig. The Elector’s company of guards is out and at intervals the thunder of the artillery on the walls is heard. On all sides, strong and brilliant contrasts of color meet the eye, velvet and silk, purple and fine linen, gold and silver—such were the fashions of the time—costly, inconvenient in form, but imposing, magnificent and marking the differences of rank and class. Let the imagination picture all this, and it will have a scene familiar to the boy Beethoven, and one in which as he grew up to manhood he had his own small part to play.