through the Viennese musician Andreas Streicher, collected by Streicher and Count Fries. At the same time the famous Viennese composer Herr van Beethoven declares that he will publish one of his newest works solely for the benefit of the daughter of Bach ... so that the good old lady may derive the benefit of it from time to time. Therefore he nobly urges that the publication be hastened as much as possible lest the daughter of Bach die before his object be attained.
Whether or not any such work was published is not known. Unsupported conjectures as to the names left blank in the letter to Amenda when originally printed in the “Signale” are of no use, and if made might hereafter expose the conjecturer to just ridicule; there remain, then, but two topics which require a word of comment—the year omitted in the date, and the friend of his youth of whom Beethoven speaks in such strong terms of affection—both of which, however, may better be disposed of, in what is to be said upon the letter to Wegeler of June 29th.
This long, important and very interesting paper affords an illustration of the readiness with which a conjecture may be accepted as a truth, until one is compelled to subject it to rigid examination. Thus, in using this letter for a particular purpose,[116] Wegeler’s date “most probably 1800” was accepted, as it had universally been for forty years, without question; but the moment it became necessary to subject its entire contents to careful scrutiny, for the purposes of this biography, the error became at once so apparent as really to awaken a feeling of mortification for the temporary blindness that allowed it to pass unquestioned. The allusions to Susanna Bach (“You see it is very convenient, etc.”), to his change of lodgings, to the publication of his portrait by Artaria, and (in the second letter) to the change of his physicians, are all more or less indicative of the true date, 1801, while the mention of Breuning’s return to Vienna is proof positive. Finally, the similarity, almost identity, of passages in the Amenda letter to portions of this, shows that the two belong to the same June. Thus we at last have the gratification of seeing these two valuable documents fall easily and naturally into their true place in Beethoven’s history. It is worth noting that this Wegeler letter offers—at the least, appears to offer—an example of Beethoven’s occasional loose way of making statements; as in the letter to Breitkopf and Härtel he writes as if he had half a dozen unpublished concertos on hand, so now he speaks of having “already given several” Akademien; and yet the most careful research has failed to show that his concerts were at this time more than three in number in all; or that he had ever even given more than one public concert in Vienna. Perhaps, however, he may have included those given in Prague in his “several.” As nothing can be added to his account of his bad health and incipient deafness, we pass to the passages upon Breuning and Ries.
Arrival in Vienna of Anton Reicha
IV. The opinion was before expressed, that the “man” spoken of in the Amenda letter as having come to Vienna, to Beethoven’s comfort, was Anton Reicha.[117] They were alike in age—Reicha being but a few months the elder—and alike in tastes and pursuits. Reicha was superior in the culture of schools and in what is called musical learning; Beethoven in genius and originality as a composer and in skill as a pianist. The talents of each commanded the respect of the other. Both were aspiring, ambitious, yet diverged sufficiently in their views of art to prevent all invidious rivalry. Reicha gained a reputation which, in process of time, secured him the high position which he held during the last twenty years of his life—that of Méhul’s successor in the Paris Conservatoire.
To Beethoven, who was still digesting plans for musical tours, the experience of his friend must have been of great value; not less to Reicha the experience of Beethoven in Vienna. But he was by no means dependent upon Beethoven for an introduction into the highest musical circles of the capital. It has been shown in a previous chapter how freely the salons were opened to every talented young musician, but beyond this he bore a well-known name and the veteran Haydn kindly remembered him as one of the promising young men who had paid him their respects in Bonn. His opera “Ubaldi” was performed in Prince Lobkowitz’s palace, and this probably led to his introduction to the Empress Maria Theresia, who gave him an Italian libretto, “Argene Regina di Granata,” for composition, in which the Empress herself sang a part at the private performance in the palace.
Thus Beethoven and Reicha again met and lived on equal terms. “We spent fourteen years together,”[118] said the latter, “as closely united as Orestes and Pylades, and were always together in our youth. After an eight years’ separation we met each other again in Vienna and confided all our experiences to each other.”
Beethoven and Stephan von Breuning
V. When Wegeler says of Stephan von Breuning, “But he had, with short interruptions, spent his life in closest association with Beethoven from his tenth year to his death,” he says too much; and too little when he writes that Beethoven “had once broken for a considerable space with Breuning (and with what friend did he not?)” For besides the quarrel, which Ries describes, there came at last so decided a separation that Breuning’s name disappears from our history for a period of eight to ten years—and that, too, not from his fault.
It was impossible that the two should have met in 1801 on such terms as those on which they had parted in 1796. Breuning had passed this interval of five years in a small provincial town, Mergentheim, in the monotonous routine of a petty office, in the service of a semi-military, semi-religious institution which had so sunk in grandeur and power as to be little more than a venerable name—a relic of the past. In the same service he had now returned to Vienna. How Beethoven had been employed, and how he had risen, we have seen. Thus, their relative positions in society had completely changed. Beethoven now moved familiarly in circles to which Breuning could have access only by his or some other friend’s protection.