Beethoven’s splenetic remarks to strangers in his last years upon the music, musicians and public of Vienna have given rise to widely diffused but utterly false conceptions as to the facts. Thus William Henry Fry, a leading American writer on music in the middle of the nineteenth century,[172] did but express a common opinion in the following:

The popular want of appreciation of his merits “doomed Beethoven to a garret, which no Irish emigrant would live in.” It is altogether unnecessary to argue against such statements, as the whole tenor of this biography refutes them; but the public press of Vienna deserves a vindication, and the appearance of a new “Allgemeine Musik-Zeitung” on January 2nd, 1817, affords a suitable opportunity for the little that need be said on the subject. This journal, conducted “with particular reference to the Austrian Empire,” and published by Steiner and Co., was, during the first two years, without the name of any responsible editor; the volumes for 1819 and 1820 announce Ignaz von Seyfried as holding that position; the others, from 1821 to 1824, bear the name of Friedrich August Kanne. A leading writer in the earlier volumes was Hofrath Ignaz von Mosel, who already had some local celebrity for his articles on musical topics in the “VaterlÄndische BlÄtter” and other periodicals, and who continued a prolific contributor to musical journals to the end of his life in 1844. Beethoven valued him as a writer; but Mosel had the temerity to undertake, like Mozart, the task of revising and modernizing Handel. Of his eight mutilations of that great man’s works, two, “Samson” and “Belshazzar,” were printed and, for some fifty years, adopted for performance throughout Austria and Germany—a remarkable proof of the general ignorance which prevailed concerning the works of the greatest oratorio composer; for two such monuments of arrogant presumption, of incompetency to comprehend his author and of a false and perverted taste, probably do not exist unless, perhaps, among the other six works which were not printed. One of Beethoven’s sarcasms, remembered by Carl Czerny, indicates his opinion of Mosel’s dilettantism. Reading a newspaper once at Artaria’s, he saw that Mosel “had been ennobled, particularly because of his services in behalf of music.” “The Mosel is muddy where it flows into the Rhine” (Der Mosel fliesst trÜb in den Rhein!), said Beethoven, laughingly. Kanne ranked with the best musical journalists of the day, and, to use the words of Hanslick, his labors and influence as a critic were considerable, especially because of his enthusiasm for Beethoven, is certain.

Taking 1821-1822 as a medium date, the leading political and literary journals in Vienna in those years were the “Wiener Zeitung,” Joseph Carl Bernard, editor; the “Beobachter,” Joseph Pilat, editor; the “Sammler,” Portenschlag and Ledermeyer, editors; the “Wiener Zeitschrift” (fashion journal), Johann Schickh, editor; and the “Theater-Zeitung,” Adolph BÄuerle, editor. Most of these editors were personal friends of Beethoven; and whoever performs the weary task of looking through their myriads of pages sees that all were his admirers and let no opportunity pass unimproved of adding a leaf to his laurels. Still, disappointment at the comparative paucity of matter relating to him follows such an examination. The cause, however, lay in himself; in the small number of his new compositions of high importance, and in the rarity of his appearance before the public. True, there were newspapers, and in divers languages, that took no note of Beethoven and his works because music and musicians were not within their scope; but not one of them was hostile. In short, whether the periodical press be considered as the exponent or the guide of public opinion, in either case its tone at Vienna during the ten years which remained of Beethoven’s life is ample refutation of the so oft asserted disregard for and contemptuous neglect of their great composer on the part of the Viennese. The correspondence of this and the next two or three years is very voluminous. Schindler says most pertinently of it:

There are few men of whom a most false and exaggerated picture may not be presented by grouping together their utterances, spoken or written at long intervals and in the most diverse moods and states of mind. Thomas Carlyle says: “Half or more of all the thick-plied perversions which distort the image of Cromwell will disappear if we honestly so much as try to represent them in sequence as they were, not in the lump as thrown down before us.” Hence, strict chronological order must not lightly be abandoned—never when distortion of the image is thereby produced. But there are series of letters covering comparatively short periods of time, which may be grouped and placed apart with no ill consequence. Such is the series to Steiner and Co.; and such to the Streichers and Zmeskall, which are too unimportant to place in the text.[173] An abstract or analysis of them would serve but a small purpose; but they should be read despite their triviality, for they show, better than any description would, the helplessness of their writer in all affairs of common life; also, by implication, the wretched prospect of any good result to his undertaking the supervision and education of a boy more than usually endowed with personal attractions and mental capacity, but whose character had already received a false bias from the equally indiscreet alternate indulgence and severity of his invalid and passionate father and of his froward and impure mother. Moreover, this undertaking rendered necessary a sudden and very great change in the domestic habits of a man nearly fifty years of age, who, even twenty years before, had not been able, when residing in the family of his MÆcenas, Lichnowsky, to bear the restraints imposed by common courtesy and propriety. It is obvious that there was but one course to be taken for the boy from which a good result might reasonably have been expected; and this was to send him at once to some institution far enough from Vienna to separate him entirely, vacations excepted, from both mother and uncle; to subject him there to rigid discipline and give him the stimulus of emulation with boys of his own age. When it was too late, as will be seen, this idea was entertained, but not sanctioned by the civil authorities. That such a course with the boy would have resulted well, subsequent events leave no doubt; for, passing over the question how far facts justify the harsh judgments recorded against him for more than half a century, each new writer bitterer than the last, we know this: that after his uncle’s death, although his bad tendencies of character had been strengthened and intensified by the lack of efficient, consistent, firm and resolute restraint from 1815 to 1827, yet a few years of strict military discipline made of him a good and peaceable citizen, a kind and affectionate husband and father. Had Beethoven’s wisdom and prudence equalled his boundless affection for his nephew, many painful pages in this work would have no place; many which, if the truth and justice to the dead and living permitted, one would gladly suppress. But it must not be forgotten that Beethoven, on his death-bed, as Schindler relates, expressed “his honest desire that whatever might some day be said of him, should adhere strictly to the truth in every respect, regardless of whether or not it might give pain to this or the other person or affect his own person.”

Let us again take up the thread of our narrative. We are still to imagine Beethoven living in the lofty, narrow house. No. 1055-6 SailerstÄtte, entered from the street, but its better rooms on the other side looking over the old city wall and moat and out across the Glacis and little river Wien to the suburb Landstrasse, where, fronting on the Glacis, stood the institute of Giannatasio in which his nephew was a pupil, having been placed there in February, 1816. There is no record, nor do the sketchbooks show, that in the first half of this year his mind was occupied with any important composition; on the contrary, his time and thoughts were given to the affairs of his nephew, to his purposed housekeeping and to quarrels with his servants, as the frequent letters to the Streichers and Zmeskall show ad nauseam. A curiously interesting picture of the man and his doings is disclosed by the letters referred to, Fanny Giannatasio’s records, and the jottings which that young woman wrote down in the form of a diary.[174]

At the beginning of the year 1817, Beethoven seems to have harbored a desire to take lodgings nearer the institute. Giannatasio offered to let him have one which was at his disposal, but Beethoven declined the offer with the words: “Gladly as I should like to make use of your kind offer that I live with you in the garden-house, it is for various reasons impossible.” In April he moved into rooms in the GÄrtnerstrasse near the Streichers and the institute. Meanwhile there had been a misunderstanding between him and Giannatasio. A fortnight later explanations had been made and peace restored; but when Nanni asked Beethoven if he was still angry he replied: “I think much too little of myself to get angry.” The nephew had been to blame and had disclosed new evidences of a thoughtlessness which had deeply pained his good uncle.

Chiefly from the letters written in this year, we learn a sequence of other happenings. Early in January, Beethoven sends copies of the song-cycle, “An die ferne Geliebte,” to Court Councillor Peters, tutor in the house of Prince Lobkowitz, for the new prince whose Christian name he does not know. In the same month he writes an autograph French communication to Thomson, in Edinburgh, stating that all the songs which he had commissioned in the previous July had been completed by the end of September, but had not been forwarded because of an illness from which he was not yet quite recovered. As to the folksongs of various nations he urges that prose versions of the texts be obtained as being preferable to the versified, a thing which he had suggested before, the prose being a better guide for him to the sentiment of the songs than rhymed lines. On January 30, he rebukes Zmeskall for having pained him by sending him a gift in acknowledgment of the dedication of the String Quartet, Op. 95, which had come from the press in December, 1816. “Although you are only a performing musician,” he writes, “you have several times exercised the power of imagination, and it seems to me that it has occasionally put unnecessary whims into your head—at least so it seemed to me from your letter after my dedication. Good as I am and much as I appreciate all the good in you, I am yet angry, angry, angry.” Other letters to Steiner at this time refer to the Pianoforte Sonata in A, Op. 101, which was then in the hands of the printers and appeared in February with a dedication to Baroness Ertmann. The suggestion had gone out that German composers substitute German terms in music in place of Italian. With characteristic impetuosity, Beethoven decided to begin the reform at once, although it seems to have involved the reËngraving of the title-page of the new Sonata. He wrote to Steiner in the military style with which we are already familiar:

Beethoven was in doubt as to the correctness of “Hammerclavier,” thinking that it might better be “HÄmmerclavier.” In another communication he says the matter must be referred to a philologist. At the same time he offers, if necessary, to pay for the engraving of a new title, adding that perhaps the old one might be utilized for another sonata. He bases his acceptance of the new word on the belief that the instrument itself was a German invention—a theory long ago disproved so far as the priority of the invention is concerned.

Baroness Ertmann now lived at St. PÖlten, where the command of her husband lay quartered, and thither Beethoven sent a copy of the “Hammerclavier” sonata accompanied by the following letter:

The picture of Beethoven’s domestic affairs will gain in vividness by imagining the following extracts from the so-called “Tagebuch” of the Fischoff Manuscript to be scattered through these preceding pages. Dates are nowhere given; but memoranda of letters to Brentano in April follow which prove these notes to belong to the previous months:

Beethoven’s mind was engrossed with the plans of travel indicated in these excerpts throughout the year; he considered a tour of some kind essential to the restoration of his health and the recovery of his creative powers. A remittance from the Kinsky estate falling due in April, he wrote a letter to Kanka asking him to make the collection for him and enclosed a receipt. He complains of still feeling the effects of an inflammatory catarrh with which he had been attacked in the previous October, and ends by asking what would be the consequence if he were to leave the Austrian Empire; would a signature sent from a foreign place be valid?—meaning, probably, would such a signature be looked upon as evidence of a violation of the contract which he was under to his noble patrons not to take up a residence outside the Austrian dominions. His chronic dissatisfaction with the conditions which surrounded him in Vienna, as well as the moody mind in which his illness had left him, also breathes through the following letter (written in German) to Charles Neate in London:

The Sonatas had been published three months before this letter was written, by Simrock in Bonn; a fact which Beethoven seems to have assumed was not known in London. The Frau v. Jenny mentioned was the Countess von Genney, through whose aid Beethoven hired a villa in Hetzendorf, from Baron von Pronay in 1823. Beethoven’s irascible outbreak against Neate must be read in the light of the latter’s letter of explanation and apology dated October 29, 1816, and printed in the preceding chapter.

The new lodgings in Georgi were occupied by Beethoven on April 24, 1817, but the contract of rent may have been temporary and conditional, for in July and again in September he wrote to Frau Streicher about lodgings in the GÄrtnergasse, and later in the year he changed his lodgings, for which he had little use during the summer because of his sojourn in the country.

Alois Fuchs, now a youth of nearly 18 years, had come to Vienna some months earlier to enter the university, dependent largely upon his musical talents and knowledge for his support. Here he appears to have studied the violin under Beethoven’s old friend, Krumpholz. Whether because the composer remembered him as the solo singer in his mass at Troppau, or through the intervention of Krumpholz, Fuchs has not informed us; but at any rate he had promised a contribution to the youngster’s album. On May 2nd Krumpholz died very suddenly of apoplexy while walking on the Glacis, and Beethoven commemorated the event by writing his “Gesang der MÖnche” (from Schiller’s “Tell”) for three male voices in Fuchs’s album with the superscription: “In memory of the sudden and unexpected death of our Krumpholz on May 3rd, 1817.” The date was not intended to record the time of composition, but of the death of the violinist; as such a record it was an error.

After the composer’s removal to the suburb Landstrasse, his mind was much occupied with a new matter between himself and the widow van Beethoven, namely, her bearing a share of the expenses of her son’s education. This was concluded by a contract signed by both parties on May 10, 1817, binding her to pay at once into court 2,000 florins for the lad’s education and support, and in the future to pay to the same tribunal every quarter at least one-half of the pension which the widow was to receive, as well as other contributions. Reference is had to this agreement in the following entries in the Fischoff “Tagebuch” in January or February of the next year:

This was the barren result of negotiations which had cost Beethoven, as to any important work, the first half of the year. In May, Beethoven took rooms in Heiligenstadt to try the baths for his obstinate catarrh, of which he speaks in a characteristic letter to Countess ErdÖdy, railing against his Italian physician (either Malfatti or Bertolini), whom he accuses of lacking both honesty and insight, and describing the treatment prescribed for him.

Christian Kuffner, a poet, afterwards Court Secretary, who (though Nottebohm questioned it) probably gave poetical form to the text for the Choral Fantasia, also spent some time in the summer of 1817 in Heiligenstadt, and, as he told Music Director Krenn, often went with Beethoven of an evening to Nussdorf for a fish supper in the tavern “Zur Rose.” On one of these occasions, when Beethoven was amiably disposed, Kuffner began:

Long years afterwards, in 1826, when Kuffner was negotiating with Beethoven for an oratorio text, he recalled the meetings in Nussdorf and wrote in Beethoven’s Conversation Book: “Do you remember the fisherman’s house in Nussdorf, where we sat till midnight in the light of the full moon on the terrace, before us the rushing brook and the swollen Danube? I was your guest.” Beethoven soon had his fish with less trouble; he moved to Nussdorf, perhaps in June (at least he was there in July, though he kept his lodging in the city), and in Nussdorf he remained till October, sending occasional notes to Frau Streicher, from which it appears that he was having his customary trouble with servants. Here, too, he received the following highly important letter from Ferdinand Ries, written in London on June 9, 1817:

Beethoven was prompt with his answer, but wishing to send a fair copy to Ries and having his own reasons for not wanting HÄring’s handwriting to appear in the correspondence he sent his letter to Zmeskall for transcription and posting. The letter, which was promptly forwarded to London, was as follows:

To this Beethoven appended an autograph postscript as follows:

These letters, as well as those which passed between Beethoven and Ries subsequently, ought to serve to indicate that the relationship between them at this time was, and remained, one of cordial friendship, Schindler’s statements to the contrary notwithstanding. That biographer’s list of grievances between the men may have had a small shadow of foundation, but after all it would be better to take them with a few grains of salt. It is very possible, as Czerny told Jahn, that Beethoven once complained to him that Ries imitated his style more than was agreeable to him; but this is far from saying, as Schindler says, that Ries, following a bent for brilliant technique, gradually lost his understanding of Beethoven’s works, took it upon himself to find fault with some of his daring innovations and made arbitrary changes in performing them. Nor does it seem likely that Ries should have been so indifferent to the success of Beethoven’s compositions in London as to withhold his help while reporting their great popularity to the composer in such enthusiastic words; yet Schindler intimates that it was this fact which, coming to the ears of Beethoven, provoked the latter to expressions of anger which in turn were reported to Ries. There is in all this, we fear, an undercurrent of prejudice which is not difficult of explanation; at any rate, if Ries cherished a feeling of ill-will against his master it found no expression in the “Notizen.”

Efforts of the widow van Beethoven to keep in touch with her son, and questions of discipline in his bringing-up and education, were matters which weighed heavily on Beethoven’s mind during the summer of 1817, and occasioned more misunderstandings between Giannatasio and the composer, as also much distress in the minds of the former’s daughters, especially the solicitous Fanny, as is evidenced by entries in her diary under dates June 25 and July 8 and 21. In an undated letter which seems to belong to this period, Beethoven explains to Giannatasio that the mother had expressly asked to see Karl at his, the composer’s, house and that certain evidences of indecision on his part which his correspondent had observed (and apparently held up to him) had not been due to any want of confidence, but to his antipathy to “inhuman conduct of any kind,” and the circumstance that it had been put out of the power of the woman to do the lad harm in any respect. On the subject of discipline he writes:

He requested that the letter be read to his nephew. Beethoven’s “antipathy to inhuman conduct of any kind” seems to have led him to make concessions to the widow of which he soon repented. In a letter to Zmeskall dated July 30, he says: “After all, it might pain Karl’s mother to be obliged to visit her son at the house of a stranger and, besides, there is more harshness in this affair than I like; therefore I shall permit her to come to me to-morrow”; and he urgently begs his friend to be a witness of the meeting. In a note to Giannatasio he informs him of his intention to take Karl to see his mother, because she was desirous to put herself in a better light before her neighbors, and this might help. But a fortnight after the letter to Zmeskall he has changed his mind, as witness a letter to Giannatasio dated August 14, in which he writes:

Notwithstanding the jeremiads in Beethoven’s letters this year, and the annoyance caused him by his sister-in-law, there are indications in plenty that he was not on the whole in that state of dejection which one might suppose. One of these indications is a work which amused him during the summer, the story of which the careful Dehn admitted into the “CÄcilia.” A musician, whose name is not mentioned, brought to Beethoven the Pianoforte Trio, Op. 1, No. 3, which he had arranged for string quintet (two violins, two violas and violoncello). Though the composer, no doubt, found much to criticize in the transcription it seems to have interested him sufficiently to lead him to undertake a thorough remodelling of the score, on the cover of which he wrote the whimsical title:

The score of the arrangement is in the handwriting of a copyist with corrections by Beethoven; the title, however, is his autograph. It is preserved in the Royal Library at Berlin. The work was published by Artaria in February, 1819, as Op. 104. Beethoven evidently attached considerable importance to it. He referred to it in letters to Frau von Streicher, Zmeskall and Ries; it was performed at a musical entertainment of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna on December 13, 1818.

Beethoven having obtained possession of his nephew and placed him in Giannatasio’s institute, very naturally took measures that he should have systematic instruction in music; to this end he employed Carl Czerny as teacher, and to him we now turn for information on this point.[176] Czerny writes:

No animadversion upon the venerable Carl Czerny is intended in again remarking that both in his memoirs and in the language in which he has sometimes recorded them there is occasionally a very disturbing inexactness. In the citations above the date 1815 for 1816, the loose expression “from that time I saw him almost daily,” “Beethoven was almost always present” in the Sunday music meetings, which can have been true only of the first months, and the words “he improvised many times,” must not be understood too literally. Schindler, in whose hands Jahn placed Czerny’s notes and other manuscripts for examination and remark, observes touching this improvising: “Only twice; the first time when Frau von Ertmann played one of his sonatas, the other time when Czerny performed Op. 106, which he had repeatedly gone through with him. In the year 1818, and those that followed, Beethoven never improvised outside of his own dwelling.” Schindler is certainly mistaken upon this last point, and, very possibly, upon the other. It is not a matter of much importance in any aspect, but it offers an opportunity for remarking upon errors in his dates which have long been and still are an abundant source of confusion in this part of Beethoven’s life, like those of Wegeler and Ries in his youth and early manhood. More than one recent writer speaks of his “intimate association with the composer from the year 1814 onward”; one has even learned that “he lived ten years in the same house with Beethoven, devoting all the time at his command to him.” Nothing is more common than to find circumstances accepted as undoubted facts on Schindler’s authority. The present writer[177] discussed at length Schindler’s character as a biographer with Otto Jahn, both of us having known him personally. Our opinions coincided perfectly. We held him to be honest and sincere in his statements, but afflicted with a treacherous memory and a proneness to accept impressions and later formed convictions as facts of former personal knowledge, and to publish them as such without carefully verifying them. In justice to him it must be remembered that when, at Frankfort-on-the-Main, he rewrote his book in the form in which it appeared in 1860, he had no longer the means of doing this, for the Conversation Books which would have prevented his more glaring errors had, since 1845, been in the Royal Library in Berlin. Therefore, whoever studies his life of the master and his numberless contributions to the periodical press during the long period of thirty years—all abounding in biographical matter of great value—must be continually upon his guard. When one seeks precise information upon Beethoven’s life during the years 1816-1820 in Schindler’s writings, his notices are found to be so meagre and vague, and to exhibit occasionally such inconsistencies and errors, as to awaken the suspicion that he, as to those years, did not always write from personal knowledge, and that his memory served him ill.

If he had had the Conversation Books still in his possession he could not have written: “About 1817, Oliva left the Imperial City forever,” for there he would have seen that Oliva was still in his old relation with Beethoven in 1820. Again: “Already in 1816 he [Beethoven] found himself involved in circumstances which compelled him to do a vast amount of writing. Dr. Bach, in whose office I worked several hours every day, advised him to confide everything to me; thus I became Beethoven’s private secretary—without pay.” Later we read in connection with the topic of Beethoven’s nobility, and the transfer of his suit with the mother of Karl to the Vienna magistracy: “There it was possible to achieve something advantageous to Beethoven only by dismissing his representative and pitting an entirely different person against his opponent. His choice fell upon Dr. Johann Baptist Bach, who had just entered the ranks of the court and trial advocates.” Finally: “When Dr. Bach took his case in hand he declared that thenceforward his client must present himself with the title of Chapelmaster, because the gentlemen magistrates were chiefly Boeotians, and a composer was as good as nothing in their eyes, etc.” Now, a document of the Landrecht dated November 29, 1815, contains these words: “Ludwig van Beethoven (Royal Imperial Chapelmaster and Music Composer).” Dr. Bach may have continued to use this title, but how could he have introduced it? Again: “Dr. Bach took the oath as advocate on January 21, 1817.” How then could Schindler in 1816 have “worked several hours every day” in an office not yet in existence? Still again: the decree of the Landrecht transferring Beethoven’s case to the Magistracy is dated December 18, 1818, and Schindler is correct in making this the cause of the employment of Dr. Bach in 1819; how then could he have been the composer’s “private secretary” on Bach’s recommendation during the two years preceding?

The unavoidable conclusion is this: Although there is no reason to doubt that Schindler was upon excellent terms with Beethoven, and often visited him in 1817-1819, the “intimate association” above-noted and in the sense there intended, could not have begun before 1819; and even then, for Oliva was still in Vienna, did not extend beyond aiding in correspondence and like duties. The earliest Conversation Book preserved by Schindler is from April, 1819, in which both he and Dr. Bach write; and from this time onward these books show that the association grew more intimate and of course his records become more trustworthy. Returning to the trivial matter which led to this digression, the accuracy of Schindler’s statement that Beethoven improvised but twice at Czerny’s Sunday concerts may well be doubted. Czerny’s testimony is the weightier.

We resume an account of the events of the year. In August and September the after-effects of the attack of catarrh and the state of Beethoven’s health generally are so distressing and so depressing upon his spirits that he seems to be on the verge of despair. A letter which Zmeskall notes as received by him on August 21, says: “God have pity on me! I look upon myself as good as lost. This servant steals. My health calls for meals at home. If my condition does not improve I shall not be in London next year—perhaps in my grave. Thank God, the part is nearly played.” On September 9, he writes to the same friend: “I am trying every day to near my grave, without music.” Only two days later he is able to report to Zmeskall that the reply to his letter had been received from the London Philharmonic Society (on September 10). There is no tone of elation in his note; it merely mentions the arrival of the letter and a request for the name of some one who could translate it for him, it being in English. As might have been expected the Philharmonic Society rejected the new terms demanded by him, but, as the Society’s records show, repeated the old. These were now at once accepted by Beethoven.

And did he now sit himself down zealously and perseveringly to work on a ninth and tenth symphony? Not at all. His thoughts had become engaged upon a new pianoforte sonata (in B-flat, Op. 106), and so far as is yet discovered, he did not even resume his work on the Ninth Symphony, some parts of which were already sketched. That “indecision in many things,” noted by Breuning a dozen years before, was only aggravated by the lapse of time; and this now was his bane. There was really nothing to prevent his departing at once except that the new symphonies were still to be written. If his nephew must remain in or near Vienna, he could nowhere be so well placed as in the school and family of the excellent Giannatasios, who had all the necessary legal power to save the boy from the bad influence of his mother. The effects of such a journey; of a stay of some months in England; of the intercourse of cultivated people; of the enthusiastic admiration which awaited him there, and of the great pecuniary rewards for his labors which were certain, could only have been propitious in the highest degree to both his physical and mental health. There was, too, just now a new and powerful motive for accepting and fulfilling this engagement.

Though the depreciation of the redemption certificates never quite touched the point feared by him in his letter to Ries in 1815, it did once amount to 4 for 1; and the Government was again forced to repudiate its obligations in part. It founded that National Bank (seven shares in which Beethoven soon afterwards purchased), and made a contract with a new institution by which the bank assumed the obligation of redeeming the redemption certificates at the rate of 2½ for 1. It went into full operation July 15, 1817, and thenceforth Beethoven’s annuity remained instead of 3,400 florins in that paper, 1,360 florins in silver. But this fatal indecision! Could he have but resolutely taken up any two of the many new symphonies which he had planned, as the sketchbooks show, and once fairly engaged himself upon them, he could not have rested until they were finished; he could, and doubtless would, then have redeemed his promises; and like Handel, Haydn and many other German musicians of far less note, have secured from an admiring and generous London public an ample sufficiency for the future. The standard of excellence was high and catholic in London and musical taste pure and exalted. True, at the first trial of the C minor Symphony by the Philharmonic Society a part of it only was played, for the leader of the violins—really the conductor, as the orchestras were then constituted—declared it “rubbish.” But this leader was a German—our old Bonn acquaintance J. P. Salomon. He, however, repented and made amends. At another trial of it, two or three years afterwards, after the first movement, Salomon laid his violin upon the pianoforte, walked to the front and, turning to the orchestra said (through his nose): “Gentlemen, some years ago I called this symphony rubbish; I wish to retract every word I then said, as I now consider it one of the greatest compositions I ever heard!”

We have had occasion heretofore to refer to several young British Beethoven enthusiasts; another is now added to the list—Cipriani Potter—who came just at this time to Vienna, bringing letters to the composer from Neate, Ries, Rode, Dragonetti and others. He heard so much of Beethoven’s rudeness of manners and moroseness of disposition, and so often noticed how people shook their heads when he or his music was mentioned, that he hesitated to visit him. Two weeks had thus passed when one day, at Streicher’s, he was asked if he had seen Beethoven and if he had letters to him. He therefore explained why he had not seen him. He was told this was all nonsense; Beethoven would receive him kindly. He exclaimed: “I will go out at once!” which he did, namely, to MÖdling.[178] He presented a letter or two, one of the first being that of Dragonetti. Upon opening that Beethoven also opened his heart to his visitor and demanded immediately to see some of his compositions. Potter showed him an overture—probably one that had been commissioned and played by the London Philharmonic Society in 1816. Beethoven looked through it so hurriedly that Potter thought he had only glanced at it out of politeness and was greatly astonished when Beethoven pointed to a deep F-sharp in the bassoon part and said it was not practicable. He made other observations of a similar nature and advised him to go to a teacher; he himself gave no lessons but would look through all his compositions. In answer to Potter’s question as to whom he would recommend, Beethoven replied: “I have lost my Albrechtsberger and have no confidence in anybody else”; nevertheless, on Beethoven’s recommendation Potter became a pupil of Aloys FÖrster, with whom he studied a long time until one day the teacher said to him that he had now studied sufficiently and needed only to practise himself in composition. This brought out the remark from Beethoven that no one ought ever to stop studying; he himself had not studied enough: “Tell FÖrster that he is an old flatterer!” Potter did so, but FÖrster only laughed. Beethoven never complimented Potter to his face; he would say: “Very good, very good,” but never give unequivocal praise. Yet at Streicher’s he praised him and expressed his surprise that Potter did not visit him at MÖdling.[179] Once Beethoven advised him never to compose sitting in a room in which there was a pianoforte, in order not to be tempted to consult the instrument; after a work was finished he might try it over on the instrument, because an orchestra was not always to be had.

Beethoven used to walk across the fields to Vienna very often and sometimes Potter took the walk with him. Beethoven would stop, look around and give expression to his love for nature. One day Potter asked: “Who is the greatest living composer, yourself excepted?” Beethoven seemed puzzled for a moment, then exclaimed “Cherubini.” Potter went on: “And of dead authors?” Beethoven answered that he had always considered Mozart as such, but since he had been made acquainted with Handel he had put him at the head. The first day that Potter was with Beethoven the latter rushed into politics and called the Austrian government all sorts of names.[180] He was full of going to England and said his desire was to see the House of Commons. “You have heads upon your shoulders in England,” he remarked. One day Potter asked him his opinion of one of the principal pianists then in Vienna (Moscheles). “Don’t ever talk to me again about mere passage players,” came the answer. At another time Beethoven declared that John Cramer had given him more satisfaction than anybody else. According to the same informant, Beethoven spoke Italian fluently but French with less ease. It was in Italian that Potter conversed with him, making himself heard by using his hands as a speaking-trumpet; Beethoven did not always hear everything, but was content when he caught the meaning. Potter considered “Fidelio” the greatest of all operas and once remarked to Beethoven that he had heard it in Vienna, which brought out the remark that he had not heard it, as the singers then at the opera-house were not able to sing it. He was asked if he did not intend to write another opera. “Yes,” replied Beethoven, “I am now composing ‘Romulus’;[181] but the poets are all such fools; I will not compose silly rubbish.” Potter told him of the deep impression made upon him by the Septet when first he heard it; Beethoven replied in effect that when he wrote the piece he did not know how to compose; he knew now, he thought, and, either then or at another time, he said, “I am writing something better now.” Soon after, the Pianoforte Sonata in B-flat (Op. 106) was published.

Another visitor now, and probably occasionally during the winter following, was Heinrich Marschner, who had come from Carlsbad to Vienna on the invitation of Count AmadÉe. He was 21 years old, ambitious and eager to get Beethoven’s judgment on some of his compositions, which he carried to the great master in manuscript. Beethoven received him, glanced through the music hurriedly, handed it back with a muttered “Hm,” in a tone more of satisfaction than dispraise, and the words: “I haven’t much time—do not come often—bring me something again.” The young man was grievously disappointed; he had expected so much more. He did not understand Beethoven’s sententious manner, and not until he told the story of his reception to his patron and Prof. Klein of Pressburg, did he recall that Beethoven had looked kindly upon him when he spoke the words and had given him his hand at parting. He had gone to his lodgings in a passion of despondency, torn up the manuscripts, packed his trunk with the resolve to abandon music and return to Leipsic to continue his studies for the profession for which he had been designed. But now, on the advice of his friends, he took a different view of Beethoven’s actions, and continued his intercourse with him. The great man was always gracious, and even occasionally let fall a word of encouragement; but an intimacy never sprang up between them.

Beethoven’s intercourse with a third new acquaintance was, doubtless, far more delightful than any other; but not at all of the nature assumed by Schindler, who has attributed to it a very exaggerated and, indeed, ludicrous importance. This visitor was Frau Marie Pachler-Koschak, of Gratz, whom Anselm HÜttenbrenner described as the most beautiful maiden and for several years the most beautiful woman in her native town, who was called “heaven’s daughter,” and who “glowed with admiration for Jean Paul, Goethe, Schiller, Beethoven, Mozart and Schubert.” Beethoven had already heard from Prof. Schneller, whose pupil she had been, of her extraordinary beauty, talents, intellectual culture and refinement, and of her genius for music. He had unconsciously the year before borne testimony to this last in this wise: Her brother-in-law, Anton Pachler, Dr. jur. in Vienna, had at her request showed him for an opinion a fantasia composed by her, but without disclosing the author’s identity. Beethoven looked at the piece carefully and said that it was a good deal from one who had not studied composition, and if the composer were present he would point out the faults in it; it would take too much time to do this in writing and the composer would find them out for himself if he studied diligently. The lady was 24 years old and had been married a little over a year. She had never been in Vienna, Beethoven never in Gratz, and they, of course, had never met. But when they did, it could not be as strangers; for his music had been to her like a new divine revelation, and such noble mental and personal qualities as distinguished her always awakened in him feelings akin to worship. Unfortunately, absolutely nothing is known of their personal association except that Dr. Anton Pachler introduced her to him, that she wrote ten years later that “they were often in each other’s company,” and that Beethoven wrote her two notes “in pencil”—one utterly illegible, the other in terms placing her as a player of his pianoforte music even higher than Frau von Ertmann. He wrote:

Her son has so fully exploded Schindler’s assumption that she was the object of Beethoven’s “autumnal love” that no words need be wasted upon it. It was, no doubt, upon seeing in Beethoven’s papers the letter “M”[182] in this outburst of feeling:

A consideration of the dates given in Dr. Pachler’s pamphlet proves conclusively, however, that this “M” cannot refer to Marie Pachler, for its writer could never have seen her “drive past” on any 27th of July!

There are few unmarried men of highly sensitive nature who have not had the bitter experience of a hopeless passion, who have not felt how doubly grateful at such times is intercourse with a glorious creature like Madame Pachler, and how beneficial in preventing the thoughts from continually dwelling on the impossible, and thus aiding reason and conscience to gain the victory over the heart and fancy. Now it happens that one of Beethoven’s transient but intense passions for a married woman, known to have occurred in this period of his life, has its precise date fixed by these passages in the so-called “Tagebuch” from the years 1816 and 1817. “In the case of T. there is nothing to do but to leave it to God, never to go where one might do a wrong through weakness—to Him, to the all-knowing God, be all this committed.” And again: “But as kind as possible to T. her attachment deserves never to be forgotten even if the results could never prove advantageous to you.” Let the reader recall the passages in his letters showing a strong desire to leave Vienna and read again: “Work during the summer for the journey, only thus can you carry out the great task for your poor nephew, afterwards wander through Italy, Sicily, with a few artists—make plans and be of good cheer for the sake of C....” The last initial is uncertain. Other copies have “L.”; what the original was in Beethoven’s handwriting is not now to be determined. No instance, however, is known of his writing his nephew’s name with a C, and this “C” or “L” was probably T. As the family name of this lady, whose husband was a man of high position and distinction though not noble by birth, is known, it is certain that the T in the above citations is not Therese Malfatti, now Baroness Drosdick; but as her baptismal names have eluded search one can only hint the possibility that the “T” and “M” may indicate the same person, and that this last cry of anguish was written a year or two afterwards when the sight of “M” again, for a moment, tore open a half-healed wound.

In numbers 5 to 8 inclusive of the “Neue Musik-Zeitung” appeared, from the pen of J. Kandler, a long article containing historical notices of various attempts to produce a satisfactory instrument for measuring time in music, and closing with an account, taken from the English, of MÄlzel’s metronome. To No. 25 (June 19) of the same journal, Gottfried Weber contributed a paper “On a chronometric tempo designation which makes MÄlzel’s metronome, as well as all other chronometric instruments, unnecessary,” in which he repeated his idea, already put forth in the Leipsic “Musikzeitung” in 1813, that the simplest and most correct chronometer is a simple pendulum, a bit of thread with a bullet at the end, whose oscillations would mark the duration of measures according to the length of the thread. This article pleased Beethoven, and in one of his variations on the theme of pens he commends it to his “clarissime amice” Zmeskall, as the best invention yet made. Zmeskall took up the subject with interest and in two articles in the same journal called attention to the fact that Neate, in London, had described a time measurer of the same kind which was known in England, but had not remained long in use—“a little ball hanging at the end of a thread and below it a line divided into a scale of inches.” Zmeskall approved of Weber’s suggestion in principle but improved upon it by proposing that the oscillations of the pendulum indicate the duration of a note instead of a measure, and that the varying lengths of the pendulum be marked by knots in the thread. Beethoven, to whom Zmeskall seems to have sent his contrivance, was interested and lauded its simplicity, playfully wondering whether or not it might be used in measuring from time to eternity.

Music had already come from the press with MÄlzel’s tempo marks, and Weber, who seems to have had no kindly feeling for him, prints an article, in the number of the journal following Zmeskall’s, entitled “MÄlzel’s Metronome to be had gratis everywhere,” and gives a table showing the lengths of a pendulum in Rhenish inches and French centimetres corresponding to all the numbers on the metronome. As the months passed, the metronome had come largely into use in England, France and the United States, but not in Germany and Austria. It was of high importance to the manufacturers of the instruments to obtain the countenance and good will of the composers in those countries also—Salieri, Weigl, Beethoven, etc.—and MÄlzel came back to Vienna to try the effect of personal effort, taking the risk of any serious consequences arising from the lawsuit between him and Beethoven. But there were none. The matter was amicably adjusted, each party paying half of the legal expenses which had been incurred. This would be incredible had Beethoven had any substantial grounds for the action; for his sanction of the metronome was of such value that MÄlzel would readily have conceded much to obtain it; and the whole tone of the composer’s correspondence in this period, so far as relates to his pecuniary affairs, shows how little likely he was to sacrifice any just claim.

Beethoven was at first not well disposed to the instrument, notwithstanding he had joined Salieri and the other composers in strongly recommending the “chronometer” in 1813, which certificate had been used in England a fortiori for the new metronome. In a letter[183] Mr. Joseph J. Mickley, of Philadelphia, writes: “Mr. MÄlzel, with whom I was well acquainted, told me that he had been particularly anxious Beethoven should mark his music by his metronome, and to get his recommendation; that he (B) refused and became quite indignant, saying: ‘It is silly stuff; one must feel the tempos’”; but Beethoven soon yielded to the obvious considerations in favor of the invention. These were presented to the public together with the objections to Weber’s and Zmeskall’s pendulums, clearly, explicitly and cunningly by Mosel in an article in Steiner’s “Musik-Zeitung” on November 27, which put an end to controversy on the topic.

Meanwhile, Beethoven had prepared a table of tempos for his eight symphonies which was printed in the Leipsic “Allgemeine Musik-Zeitung” on December 17 (copied, says Nottebohm, from a little pamphlet published by Steiner and Co. in which also tempos of the Septet were included), and followed this up with a general metronomizing of his works. On the autograph of his song, “Nord oder SÜd,” he wrote: “100 according to MÄlzel; but this must be held applicable to only the first measures, for feeling also has its tempo and this cannot entirely be expressed in this figure (i.e., 100).”[184]

If the picture of MÄlzel drawn by Schindler and his copyists is true, even the most Christian and forgiving spirit could scarcely have demanded more of Beethoven than this public acknowledgement of the value of the metronome by way of heaping coals of fire upon his head; but he did more, by writing to Mosel this very valuable and for us very interesting letter:

I am heartily rejoiced that you agree with me in the opinion touching the time designations which date back to the barbarous period in music, for what, for instance, can be more nonsensical than Allegro, which always means merry and how often are we so far from this conception of time that the piece says the very opposite of the designation. As regards these 4 chief speeds (Hauptbewegungen), which by no means have the correctness or truthfulness of the chief winds, we gladly allow that they be put aside, it is a different matter with the words used to designate the character of the composition, these we cannot give up, since time is really more the body while these have reference to the spirit. So far as I am concerned I have long thought of giving up the nonsensical designations Allegro, Andante, Adagio, Presto; MÄlzel’s metronome gives us the best opportunity to do this. I give you my word that I shall never use them again in my new compositions—it is another question if we shall thereby accomplish the necessary universal use of the instrument—I do not think so. But I do not doubt that we shall be decried as taskmasters, if the cause might thus be served it would still be better than to be accused of feudalism—I therefore think that it would be best, especially in our countries where music has become a national need and every village schoolmaster ought to use the metronome, that MÄlzel try to dispose of a certain number of metronomes by subscription at higher prices, and that as soon as his expenses are thus covered he will be in a position to furnish the needed metronome for the national need so cheaply that the greatest universality and widest distribution may be expected. It is self-evident that somebody must take the initiative in this matter so that zeal be aroused. As for me you may count on me and I await with pleasure the post of duty to which you will assign me.