In a letter written nearly a year later Beethoven asks his friend not to lend the quartet, as he had revised it. A letter written, evidently, about the time of Amenda’s departure from Vienna indicated that Beethoven was oppressed at this period with another grief than that caused by the loss of his friend’s companionship. Beethoven speaks of his “already lacerated heart,” says that “the worst of the storm is over” and mentions an invitation to Poland—which he had accepted. Nothing came of this Polish enterprise. Dr. A. C. Kalischer suspected that the lacerated heart was due to the composer’s unrequited love for Magdalena Willmann, a singer then in Vienna to whom he made a proposal of marriage which was never answered.
Friendship with Count Lichnowsky
Count Moritz Lichnowsky, brother of Prince Carl, of whom we shall not lose sight entirely until the closing scene, was another of the friends of those years. He had been a pupil of Mozart, played the pianoforte with much skill and was an influential member of the party which defended the novelty and felt the grandeur of his friend’s compositions. Schindler saw much of him during Beethoven’s last years, and eulogizes the “noble Count” in very strong terms.
Another of that circle of young dilettanti, and one of the first players of Beethoven’s compositions, was a young Jewish violinist, Heinrich Eppinger. He played at a charity concert in Vienna, making his first appearance there in 1789. “He became, in after years,” says a correspondent of the time, “a dilettante of the most excellent reputation, lived modestly on a small fortune and devoted himself entirely to music.” At the period before us Eppinger was one of Beethoven’s first violins at the private concerts of the nobility. Häring, who became a distinguished merchant and banker, belonged now to this circle of young amateur musicians, and in 1795 had the reputation of being at the head of the amateur violinists. The youthful friendship between him and the composer was not interrupted as they advanced into life, and twenty years later was of great advantage to Beethoven.
But a more interesting person for us is the instructor under whom Beethoven in Vienna resumed his study of the violin (a fact happily preserved by Ries)—Wenzel Krumpholz. He was a brother of the very celebrated Bohemian harp player who drowned himself in the Seine in 1790. In his youth Krumpholz had been for a period of three years a pupil of Haydn at Esterhaz and had played first violin in the orchestra there. He left Esterhaz to enter the service of Prince Kinsky, but came to Vienna in 1795 to join the operatic orchestra, and at once became noted as a performer in Haydn’s quartets. He was (says Eugene Eiserle in Glöggl’s “Neue Wiener Musik-Zeitung” of August 13, 1857),
a highly sensitive art-enthusiast, and one of the first of those who foresaw and recognized Beethoven’s greatness. He attached himself to Beethoven with such pertinacity and self-sacrifice that the latter, though he always called him “his fool,” accepted him as “a most intimate friend,” made him acquainted with all his plans for compositions and generally reposed the utmost confidence in him. Krumpholz formed also an exceedingly close friendship with his countryman Wenzel Czerny, a music-teacher living in the Leopoldstadt, and from 1797 onward spent most of his leisure evenings with the Czerny family, and thus the little son Karl, in his eighth and ninth years, learned almost daily what works Beethoven had in hand, and, like Krumpholz, became filled with enthusiasm for the tone-hero.
Krumpholz was a virtuoso on the mandolin, and hence, probably, that page of sketches by Beethoven in the Artaria Collection headed “Sonatine für Mandolin u. P. F.” Among the Zmeskall papers in the Royal Imperial Library in Vienna there is a half-sheet of coarse foolscap paper upon which is written with lead-pencil in huge letters by the hand of Beethoven,
The Music Count is dismissed with infamy to-day.—
The First Violin will be exiled to the misery of Siberia.
The Baron is forbidden for a whole month to ask questions and never again to be overhasty, and he must concern himself with nothing but his ipse miserum.