The Life of Ludwig van Beethoven, Volume I

by Alexander Wheelock Thayer

In view of the relation in which Wegeler stood to the Breuning family, Beethoven might well have said more about “Steffen,” but not easily less. Even here something of patronizing condescension in the tone makes itself felt, which becomes far too pronounced when he speaks of him in the second letter—that of November. Reading these passages in connection with those unlucky sentences in the Amenda letter, which have been censured in another place, one feels that Breuning had been made sensible, to a painful degree, how great his friend had grown. Wegeler himself is struck by Breuning’s non-appearance at Beethoven’s private concert, and remarks: “He must have felt his disappointment with this old friend all the more, since Breuning had been developed by Father Ries from an amateur to a most admirable violinist, and had several times played in electoral concerts.”

The more thoroughly the character of Breuning is examined, not only in his subsequent relations to Beethoven but also in the light of all that is known of him as a public official, as a husband, father and friend, the higher he stands as a man. Under circumstances, in his office, fitted to try his patience beyond the ordinary limits of endurance, he never failed to bear himself nobly, as a man of high principle, ever ready to sacrifice private and personal considerations to the call of duty. In private life he was invariably just, generous, tenacious of the right. Whatever causes he may have had on divers occasions to complain of Beethoven, we learn nothing of them from his correspondence so far as it has been made public, unless a single passage cited by Wegeler be thought an exception; yet this is but the expression of heartfelt sorrow and compassion—not one word of anger. And we know that Beethoven, when in distress, never turned to him in vain for sympathy nor for such aid as was in his power to give. In the miserable years to come the reader will learn enough of Breuning, though by no means a prominent figure, to feel respect and admiration for his character, and to see for himself how unjust to him were those letters—written by Beethoven under the impulse of short-lived choler—which Ries has contributed to the “Notizen.” There is some temptation to think that Breuning was of those whom Beethoven “estimated at only what they were worth to him”; but let us trust that, should ever the blanks in the Amenda letter be filled from the autograph, his name will not be found—certainly not, if the conjecture as to the time of Amenda’s residence in Vienna prove correct. It is difficult to avoid saying either too much or too little on such a topic as this of Breuning and Beethoven—to strike the just medium in the strength of the language used; but the subject has been made the occasion of so much injudicious comment, it was not possible to pass it over.

VI. The “Intelligenz-Blatt” of Bonn, under date of November 30, 1784, announces the baptism, on the preceding day, of Ferdinand, son of Franz Ries.

Like many others who have become eminent musicians, his taste and capabilities manifested themselves very early; as, at five years old, he began his musical education under his father, and afterwards under Bernhard Romberg, the celebrated violoncello player.

The French invasion, the departure of Romberg in consequence (1794) from Bonn, and the pecuniary straits to which Franz Ries was reduced,

prevented much attention being, for some time, paid to the instruction of his son.... At last, when he was about thirteen (“he had reached the age of 13 years”, says the “Rheinischer Antiquarius”), a friend of his father took him to Arnsberg in Westphalia, for the purpose of learning thoroughbass and composition from an organ-player in that neighborhood.... The pupil proved so much the more able to teach of the two, that the organist was obliged to give the matter up at once and proposed to young Ries to teach him the violin instead. As a pis-aller, this was accepted; and Ries remained at Arnsberg about nine months, after which he returned home. Here he remained upwards of two years, improving himself in his art with great industry.... At length, in the year 1801, he went to Munich with the same friend who had formerly taken him to Arnsberg. Here he was thrown upon his own resources; and throughout the trying and dispiriting circumstances which, with slight exception, attended the next years of his life, he appears to have displayed a firmness, an energy, and an independence of mind, the more honorable, perhaps, from the very early age at which they were called into action. At Munich, Mr. Ries was left by his friend, with little money and but very slender prospects. He tried for some time to procure pupils, but was at last reduced to copy music at three-pence per sheet. With this scanty pittance, he not only continued to keep himself free from embarrassments, but saved a few ducats to take him to Vienna, where he had hopes of patronage and advancement from Beethoven.... He set out from Munich with only seven ducats and reached Vienna before they were exhausted!

The citations are from that noble musical journal the London “Harmonicon,” and belong to an article on Ries published in March, 1824. They correspond perfectly to a sketch of Ries’s life in the “Rheinischer Antiquarius,” although there are sufficient differences to show that the materials of the two articles were drawn from independent sources. The “Antiquarius” (Part III, Vol. II, p. 62), however, dates Ries’s arrival in Munich 1800, the “Harmonicon” giving it 1801. But the difference is rather apparent than real, since the winter of 1800-1801 includes them both, and is therefore of very little import. But when Ries, in the “Notizen” (p. 75), says: “On my arrival in Vienna in 1800,” the discrepancy is one not to be passed over without investigation; not that it is a matter of much interest in itself when a boy of fifteen or sixteen years became a pupil of Beethoven, but because of its bearing upon other and weightier questions in the chronology of the master’s life and works. Which, then, is correct?

Ayrton, the editor of the “Harmonicon,” could have obtained (in 1824) the date for his article only from Ries himself, as in fact the internal evidence proves him to have done. It was published after the announcement of Ries’s farewell concert in London, with the evident intention of aiding in securing its success, and must have been presented to Ries for revision before it was sent to press. Ries, therefore, must have erred by a lapse of memory, in 1824 as he admitted he may have done, or in December, 1837, when he wrote the “Notizen.” As for the writer, he has no hesitation in accepting September or October, 1801, as the date of Ries’s advent in Vienna. Thus the last of these errors—that of Wegeler in his date of the letter of June 29; that of Schindler (in his first editions) in the date of the “Christus am Ölberg”; and this of Ries—which had thrown all this period of Beethoven’s history into a confusion that seemed inextricable, is satisfactorily rectified, and the current of the narrative now flows as clear and unimpeded here as in any other part.

Let us return to it. The “Harmonicon” proceeds: