The Composer’s Belgian Ancestry
At the beginning of the seventeenth century a family named van Beethoven lived in a village of Belgium near Louvain. A member of it removed to and settled in Antwerp about 1650. A son of this Beethoven, named William, a wine dealer, married, September 11, 1680, Catherine Grandjean and had issue, eight children. One of them, baptized September 8, 1683, in the parish of Notre Dame, now received the name Henry Adelard, his sponsors being Henry van Beethoven, acting for Adelard de Redincq, Baron de Rocquigny, and Jacqueline Grandjean. This Henry Adelard Beethoven, having arrived at man’s estate, took to wife Maria Catherine de Herdt, who bore him twelve children—the third named Louis, the twelfth named Louis Joseph. The latter, baptized December 9, 1728, married, November 3, 1773, Maria Theresa Schuerweghs, and died November 11, 1808, at Oosterwyck. The second daughter, named like her mother Maria Theresa, married, September 6, 1808, Joseph Michael Jacobs and became the mother of Jacob Jacobs, in the middle of the nineteenth century a professor of painting in Antwerp, who supplied in part the materials for these notices of the Antwerp Beethovens, although the principal credit is due to M. Léon de Burbure of that city.[5]
The certificate of baptism of Louis van Beethoven, third son of Henry Adelard, is to this effect:
Antwerp, December 23, 1712—Baptizatus, Ludovicus.
Parents: Henricus van Beethoven and Maria Catherine de Hert.
Sponsors: Petrus Bellmaert and Dymphona van Beethoven.
It is a family tradition—Prof. Jacobs heard it from his mother—that this Louis van Beethoven, owing to some domestic difficulties (according to M. Burbure they were financial), secretly left his father’s house at an early age and never saw it again, although in later years an epistolary correspondence seems to have been established between the fugitive and his parents. Gifted with a good voice and well educated musically, he went to Louvain and applied for a vacant position as tenor to the chapter ad Sanctum Petrum, receiving it on November 2, 1731.[6] A few days later the young man of 18 years was appointed substitute for three months for the singing master (Phonascus), who had fallen ill, as is attested by the minutes of the Chapter, under date November 2, 1731.[7]
The young singer does not seem to have filled the place beyond the prescribed time. By a decree of Elector Clemens August, dated March, 1733 (the month of Joseph Haydn’s birth), he became Court Musician in Bonn with a salary of 400 florins, a large one for those days, particularly in the case of a young man who only three months before had completed his 20th year. Allowing the usual year of probation to which candidates for the court chapel were subjected, Beethoven must have come to Bonn in 1732. This corresponds to the time spent at Louvain as well as to a petition of 1774, to be given hereafter, in which Johann speaks of his father’s “42 years of service.” There is another paper of date 1784 which makes the elder Beethoven to have served about 46 years, but this is from another hand and of less authority than that written by the son.
Other Beethoven Families in Bonn