On the whole he was pleased with my performance of his works ... but he scolded me for every blunder with a kind freedom which I shall never forget. When once, for instance, I played the Quintet with Wind-Instruments with Schuppanzigh, I permitted myself, in a spirit of youthful carelessness, many changes, in the way of adding difficulties to the music, the use of the higher octave, etc.—Beethoven took me severely to task in the presence of Schuppanzigh, Linke and the other players. The next day I received the following letter from him, which I copy carefully from the original draft:
“Dear Czerny:
“To-day I cannot see you, but to-morrow I will call on you myself to have a talk with you. I burst forth so yesterday that I was sorry after it had happened; but you must pardon that in an author who would have preferred to hear his work exactly as he wrote it, no matter how beautifully you played in general. I will make loud amends at the Violoncello Sonata (I was to play his Violoncello Sonata with Linke the next week). Be assured that as an artist I have the greatest wishes for your success and will always try to show myself,
Your
true Friend
Beethoven.”
This letter did more than anything else to cure me of the desire to make any changes in the performance of his works, and I wish that it might have the same influence on all pianists.
Chapter XXI
Beethoven’s Love-Affairs—The Letter to the “Immortal Beloved”—Giulietta Guicciardi—Therese Brunswick—Countess Erdödy—Therese Malfatti—Confused Chronologies—Many Contradictory Theories and Speculations.
In the letter dated November 16, Beethoven’s strong expressions of desire and intention to exhibit his powers as pianist and composer in other cities, are striking and worthy of the reader’s attention, yet need no comment; but a new topic there introduced must be treated at some length, not because it is of very great importance in itself, but as an episode in the master’s life which has employed so many pens and upon which biographer and novelist seem to have contended which could make the most of it and paint it in the highest romantic colors.[120]
The sentences referred to are: “I am living more pleasantly since. I live more amongst men.... This change has been wrought by a dear fascinating girl, etc.” Notwithstanding all that has been written on this text there is little reason to think that Beethoven’s passion for this particularly fascinating girl was more engrossing or lasting than at other periods for others, although peculiar circumstances subsequently kept it more alive in his memory. The testimony of Wegeler, Breuning, Romberg, Ries, has been cited to the point that Beethoven “was never without a love, and generally deeply engrossed in it.”