Christian Gottlob Neefe succeeded the persons mentioned as Beethoven’s master in music. When this tutorship began and ended, and whether or not it be true that the Elector engaged and paid him for his services in this capacity, as affirmed by divers writers—here again positive evidence is wanting. Neefe came to Bonn in October, 1779; received the decree of succession to the position of Court Organist on February 15, 1781, and was thus permanently engaged in the Elector’s service. The unsatisfactory nature of the earlier instruction, as well as the high reputation of Neefe, placed in the strongest light before the Bonn public by those proceedings which had compelled him to remain there, would render it highly desirable to Johann van Beethoven to transfer his son to the latter’s care. It would create no surprise should proof hereafter come to light that this change was made even before the issue of the decree of February 15, 1781;—that even then the pupil was profiting by the lessons of the zealous Bachist. Whether this was so or not, it was more than ever necessary that the boy’s talents should be put to profitable use, for the father found his family still increasing. The baptism of a daughter named Anna Maria Franciska after her sponsors Anna Maria Klemmers, dicta Kochs, and Franz Rovantini, court musician, is recorded in the St. Remigius register February 23, 1779, and her death on the 27th of the same month. The baptism of August Franciscus Georgius van Beethoven—Franz Rovantini, Musicus Aulicus and Helene Averdonk, patrini, follows nearly two years later—January 17, 1781. There is no minister of State now to lend his name to a child of Johann van Beethoven, nor any lady abbess. Rovantini, one of the youngest members of the orchestra (relative and friend of the family), and a Frau Kochs, the young contralto, whose musical education the father had superintended, take their places—another indication that the head of the family is gradually sinking in social position.

It is Schlosser who states that “the Elector urged Neefe to make it his particular care to look after the training of the young Beethoven.” How much weight is to be attached to this assertion of a man who hastily threw a few pages together soon after the death of the composer, and who begins by adopting the old error of 1772 as the date of his birth, and naming his father “Anton,” may safely be left to the reader. That the story may possibly have some foundation in truth is not denied; but the probabilities are all against it. Just in these years Max Friedrich is busy with his tric-trac, his balls, his new operettas and comedies, and with his notion of making the theatre a school of morals. The truth seems to be (and it is the only hypothesis that suggests itself, corresponding to the established facts), that Johann van Beethoven had now determined to make an organist of his son as the surest method of making his talents productive. The appointment of Neefe necessarily destroyed Ludwig’s hope of being van den Eeden’s successor; but Neefe’s other numerous employments would make an assistant indispensable, and to this place the boy might well aspire. It will be seen in the course of the narrative that Beethoven never had a warmer, kinder and more valuable friend than Neefe proved throughout the remainder of his Bonn life; that, in fact, his first appointment was obtained for him through Neefe, although this is the first hint yet published that the credit does not belong to a very different personage. What, then, so natural, so self-evident as that Neefe, foreseeing the approaching necessity of some one to take charge of the little organ in the chapel at times when his duties to the Grossmann company would prevent him from officiating in person, should gladly undertake the training of the remarkable talents of van den Eeden’s pupil with no wish for any other remuneration than the occasional services which the youth could render him?

Dr. Wegeler remarks: “Neefe had little influence upon the instruction of our Ludwig, who frequently complained of the too severe criticisms made on his first efforts in composition.” The first of these assertions is evidently an utter mistake. In 1793 Beethoven himself, at all events, thought differently: “I thank you for the counsel which you gave me so often in my progress in my divine art. If I ever become a great man yours shall be a share of the credit. This will give you the greater joy since you may rest assured,” etc. Thus he wrote to his old teacher. As to the complaint of harsh criticism it may be remarked that Neefe, reared in the strict Leipsic school, must have been greatly dissatisfied with the direction which the young genius was taking under the influences which surrounded him, and that he should labor to change its course. He was still a young man, and in his zeal for his pupil’s progress may well have criticized his childish compositions with a severity which, though no more than just and reasonable, may have so contrasted with injudicious praise from other quarters as to wound the boy’s self-esteem and leave a sting behind; especially if Neefe indulged in a tone at all contemptuous, a common fault of young men in like cases. Probably, in some conversation upon this point Beethoven may have remarked to Wegeler that Neefe had criticized him in his childhood rather too severely.

But to return from the broad field of hypothesis to the narrow path of facts. “On this day, June 20, 1782,” Neefe writes of himself and the Grossmann company, “we entered upon our journey to MÜnster, whither the Elector also went. The day before my predecessor, Court Organist van den Eeden, was buried; I received permission, however, to leave my duties in the hands of a vicar and go along to Westphalia and thence to the Michaelmas fair at Frankfort.” The DÜsseldorf documents prove that this vicar was Ludwig van Beethoven, now just eleven and a half years of age. In the course of the succeeding winter, Neefe prepared that very valuable and interesting communication to “Cramer’s Magazine” which has been so largely quoted. In this occurs the first printed notice of Beethoven, one which is honorable to head and heart of its author. He writes, under date of March 2, 1783:

This allusion to Mozart, who had not then produced those immortal works upon which his fame now principally rests, speaks well for the insight of Neefe and renders his high appreciation of his pupil’s genius the more striking. Had this man then really so little influence upon its development as Wegeler supposed?

That C. P. E. Bach’s works were included in Neefe’s course of instruction is rendered nearly certain by the following facts: he was himself a devout student of them; the only reference to his father made by Beethoven in all the manuscripts examined for this work, an official document or two excepted, is upon an unfinished copy of one of Bach’s cantatas in these words: “Written by my dear father;”[22] and one of the works most used by him in compiling his “Materialien fÜr Contrapunkt” in 1809 was Bach’s “Versuch Über die wahre Art das Clavier zu Spielen.” The unlucky remark of Wegeler, founded, too, possibly upon some expression of Beethoven’s in a moment of spleen, but certainly not in justice, has cast a shadow upon the relation between Neefe and his pupil. Writer after writer has copied without examining it. Does it bear examination? Possibly, if it be supposed to relate only to execution upon the pianoforte and organ; but in no other case. It is self-evident that serious study in the severe school of the Bachs was necessary to counteract the influence of the light and trivial music of the Bonn stage upon the young genius; and to Neefe the credit of seeing this and acting accordingly must be given. The reader’s attention is called particularly to the words “He is now training him in composition, and for his encouragement has had nine variations for the pianoforte written by him on a march by Dressler engraved at Mannheim,” in Neefe’s notice of Beethoven above cited, and the date of the article from which it is taken—March 2, 1783. Is it not perfectly clear that these variations have been recently composed, and very recently printed? Yet upon the title stands, “Par un jeune amateur, Louis van Beethoven, ÂgÉ de dix ans.” If this were a solitary case of apparent discrepancy between the boy’s age and the year given it would attract and deserve no notice; but it is one of many and adds its weight to the evidence of that falsification already spoken of.[23]

A second work belonging to this period is a two-part fugue in D for the organ.[24]

To return to the young organist, who, since the publication of Wegeler’s “Notizen,” has always been supposed to have been placed at that instrument by the Elector Max Franz in the year 1785, as a method of giving him pecuniary aid without touching his feelings of pride and independence. The place of assistant to Neefe was no sinecure; although not involving much labor, it brought with it much confinement. The old organ had been destroyed by the fire of 1777, and a small chamber instrument still supplied its place. It was the constantly recurring necessity of being present at the religious services which made the position onerous.

Such a programme gave the organist something at least to do, and when Neefe left Bonn for MÜnster, June 20, 1782, he left his pupil no easy task. Before the close of the theatrical season of the next winter (1782-’83) the master was obliged to call upon the boy for still farther assistance. “In the winter of 1784,” writes the widow Neefe, “my husband of blessed memory was temporarily entrusted with the direction of the church music as well as other music at court while the Electoral Chapelmaster L. was absent on a journey of several months.” The date is wrong, for Lucchesi’s petition for leave of absence was granted April 26, 1783. Thus overwhelmed with business, Neefe could no longer conduct at the pianoforte the rehearsals for the stage, and Ludwig van Beethoven, now 12 years old, became also “cembalist in the orchestra.” In those days every orchestra was provided with a harpsichord or pianoforte, seated at which the director guided the performance, playing from the score. Here, then, was in part the origin of that marvellous power, with which in later years Beethoven astonished his contemporaries, of reading and playing the most difficult and involved scores at first sight. The position of cembalist was one of equal honor and responsibility. Handel and Matthison’s duel grew out of the fact that the former would not leave the harpsichord on a certain occasion before the close of the performance. Gassmann placed the young Salieri at the harpsichord of the Imperial Opera House as the best possible means of training him to become the great conductor that he was. This was the high place of honor given to Haydn when in London. In Ludwig van Beethoven’s case it was the place in which he, as Mosel says of Salieri, “could make practical use of what he learned from books and scores at home.” Moreover, it was a place in which he could, even in boyhood, hear to satiety the popular Italian, French and German operas of the day and learn to feel that something higher and nobler was necessary to touch the deeper feelings of the heart; a place which, had the Elector lived ten years longer, might have given the world another not merely great but prolific, nay inexhaustible, operatic composer. The cembalist’s duties doubtless came to an end with the departure of the Elector for MÜnster in May or June, and he then had time for other pursuits, of which composition was one. A song, “Schilderung eines MÄdchens,” by him was printed this year in Bossler’s “Blumenlese fÜr Liebhaber,” and a Rondo in C for pianoforte, anonymous, which immediately follows, was also of his composition. A more important work, which before the close of the year was published by Bossler with a magniloquent dedication to Max Friedrich, was the three sonatas for pianoforte, according to the title, if true, “composed by Ludwig van Beethoven, aged 11 years.”[25] The reader can judge whether or not the 11 should be 12.

To turn for a moment to the Beethoven family matters. This summer (1783) had brought them some sorrow again. The child Franz Georg, now just two and a half years old, died August 16th. This was another stroke of bad fortune which not only wounded the heart but added to the pecuniary difficulties of the father, who was now losing his voice and whose character is described in an official report made the next summer by the words “of tolerable conduct.” If the duties of Neefe during the last season had been laborious, in the coming one, 1783-’84, they were still more arduous. It was the first under the new contract by which the Elector assumed all the costs of the theatre, and a woman, Mme. Grossmann, had the direction. It was all-important to singers, actors and whoever was concerned that the result of the experiment should be satisfactory to their employer; and as the opera was more to his taste than the spoken drama, so much the more difficult was Neefe’s task. Besides his acting as chapelmaster in the place of Lucchesi, still absent, there was “every forenoon rehearsal of opera,” as Mme. Grossmann wrote to Councillor T., at which, of course, Neefe had to be present. There was ever new music to be examined, arranged, copied, composed—what not?—all which he must attend to; in short, he had everything to do which could be imposed upon a theatrical music director with a salary of 1,000 florins. It therefore became a busy time for his young assistant, who still had no recognition as member of the court chapel, not even as “accessist”—the last “accessist” organist was Meuris (1778)—and consequently no salary from the court. But he had now more than completed the usual year of probation to which candidates were subjected, and his talents and skill were well enough known to warrant his petition for an appointment. The petition has not been discovered; but the report made upon it to the privy council has been preserved, together with the following endorsement: “High Lord Steward Count von Salm, referring to the petition of Ludwig van Beethoven for the position of Assistant Court Organist, is of the humble opinion that the grace ought to be bestowed upon him, together with a small compensation.” This endorsement is dated “Bonn, February 29, 1784.” The report upon the petition is as follows:

Most Reverend Archbishop and Elector, Most Gracious Lord, Lord.

Your Electoral Grace has graciously been pleased to demand a dutiful report from me on the petition of Ludwig van Beethoven to Your Grace under date the 15th inst.

Obediently and without delay (I report) that suppliant’s father was for 29 years, his grandfather for 46, in the service of Your Most Reverend Electoral Grace and Your Electoral Grace’s predecessors; that the suppliant has been amply proved and found capable to play the court organ as he has done in the absence of Organist Neefe, also at rehearsals of the plays and elsewhere and will continue to do so in the future; that Your Grace has graciously provided for his care and subsistence (his father no longer being able to do so). It is therefore my humble judgment that for these reasons the suppliant well deserves to have graciously bestowed upon him the position of assistant at the court organ and an increase of remuneration. Commending myself to the good will of Your Most Reverend Electoral Grace I am Your Most Reverend Grace’s

most humble and obedient servant
Sigismund Altergraff zu
Salm und Reifferscheid.

Bonn, February 23, 1784.