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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This confirms Seyfried, as quoted on a preceding page.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The publications were these: