Here we have a key to the identity of so many of Ries’s and Czerny’s facts and anecdotes of those years, written out by them independently; the latter, as he assures us, having first become acquainted with the “Notizen” through the quotations of Court Councillor Lenz. The two brilliant boys, thrown so much together, would never weary of talking of their famous master. The stories of his oddities and eccentricities, minute facts relating to his compositions, were, therefore, common property; and it is clear that some which in this manner became known to Ries at last assumed in his memory the aspect of personal experiences and, as such, are related in the “Notizen.” The author of this work once introduced an incident into something that he was writing, under the full conviction of having been an actor in it, which he now knows was only related to him by his brother. Yet only some six or seven years had elapsed, whereas Ries wrote of a period which ended thirty-five years before.
Another remark of Czerny’s is as follows:
When the French were in Vienna for the first time, in 1805, Beethoven visited a number of officers and generals who were musical and for whom he played Gluck’s “Iphigenia in Tauris” from the score, to which they sang the choruses and songs not at all ill. I begged the score from him and at home wrote out the pianoforte score as I had heard him play it. I still have this arrangement (November, 1852). From that time I date my style of arranging orchestral works, and he was always wholly satisfied with my arrangements of his symphonies, etc.
A lad who, though not yet fifteen years old, was able to write a pianoforte score of such an opera after a single hearing, certainly deserved the testimonial to his talent which, though written by another hand, was signed at the time by Beethoven and sealed. The testimonial, in the possession of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna, runs as follows:
We, the undersigned, cannot withhold from the lad Carl Czerny, who has made such extraordinary progress on the pianoforte, far surpassing what might be expected from a boy of fourteen years, that for this reason, and also because of his marvelous memory, he is deserving of all possible support, the more since his parents have expended their fortune in the education of this promising son.
Ludwig van Beethoven. (Seal)
Vienna, December 7, 1805.
The master had early and wisely warned him against a too free use of his extraordinary memory. “My musical memory,” Czerny writes,
enabled me to play the Beethovenian works by heart without exception, and during the years 1801-1805 I was obliged to play these works in this manner at Prince Lichnowsky’s once or twice a week, he calling out only the desired opus number. Beethoven, who was present a few times, was not pleased. “Even if he plays correctly on the whole,” he remarked, “he will forget in this manner the quick survey, the a vista-playing and, occasionally, the correct expression.”
Very neat is the anecdote which Czerny relates in the “Wiener Musikzeitung” of September 28th, 1845, how, after he had outgrown his studies, he was deservedly reprimanded for a few additions which he made on his own account in one of his master’s works.