The Story of a First Composition
About this time the English Ambassador to the Elector’s court, named Kressner, who had extended help to the Beethoven family, living scantily on a salary of 400 fl. [?], died. Louis composed a funeral cantata to his memory—his first composition. He handed his score to Lucchesi and asked him to correct the errors. Lucchesi gave it back with the remark that he could not understand it, and therefore could not comply with his request, but would have it performed. At the first rehearsal there was great astonishment at the originality of the composition, but approval was divided; after a few rehearsals the approbation grew and the piece was performed with general applause.
George Cressener came to Bonn in the autumn of 1755, and died there January 17, 1781, in the eighty-first year of his age. The “about this time” in Mäurer’s story agrees, therefore, well enough with that date; it is, however, a suspicious circumstance that Mäurer had left the service and returned to Cologne in the Spring of 1780 and, therefore, was not eye-witness to the fact; and another that the circumstance was not remembered by other members of the court chapel, not even by Franz Ries, nor by Neefe, who, though not then a member, was already in Bonn. “In 1780,” continues Mäurer, “Beethoven got acquainted with Zambona, who called his attention to his neglected education, gave him lessons daily in Latin, Louis continuing a year (in six weeks he read Cicero’s letters!)—also logic, French and Italian—until Zambona left Bonn in order to become bookkeeper for Bartholdy in Mühlheim.” In the “Geheime Staats-Conferenz Protocollen,” May 20, 1787, one reads: “Stephan Zambona prays to be appointed, Kammerportier, etc.,” to which is appended the remark: “the request not granted.” Zambona is a name, too, which, half a dozen years later, often appears in the Bonn “Intelligenzblatt,” as that of a shopkeeper in the Market Place of that town. If the story of the cantata be doubtful, that of these private studies on the part of a boy in Beethoven’s position, only in his tenth year and a schoolboy then if ever, like Hamlet’s possible dreams in the sleep of death, must “give us pause.”
Mother and son undertook a voyage to Holland in the beginning of the winter of 1781. The widow Karth, one of the Hertel family, born in 1780 and still living in Bonn in 1861, passed her childhood in the house No. 462 Wenzelgasse in the upper story of which the Beethovens then lived. One of her reminiscences is in place here. She distinctly remembered sitting, when a child, upon her own mother’s knee, and hearing Madame van Beethoven—“a quiet, suffering woman”—relate that when she went with her little boy Ludwig to Holland it was so cold on the boat that she had to hold his feet in her lap to prevent them from being frostbitten; and also that, while absent, Ludwig played a great deal in great houses, astonished people by his skill and received valuable presents. The circumstance of the cold feet warmed in the mother’s lap, is precisely one to fasten itself in the memory of a child and form a point around which other facts might cluster.[21]
Another incident related in connection with this journey to Holland—not as a fact, but as one which she had heard spoken of in her childhood—and one very difficult to comprehend, is, that some person, whether an envious boy or a heartless adult she could not tell, drew a knife across the fingers of Ludwig to disable him from playing!
Chapter IV
Beethoven a Pupil of Neefe—His Talent and Skill Put to Use—First Efforts at Composition—Johann van Beethoven’s Family—Domestic Tribulations.
Christian Gottlob Neefe succeeded the persons mentioned as Beethoven’s master in music. When this tutorship began and ended, and whether or not it be true that the Elector engaged and paid him for his services in this capacity, as affirmed by divers writers—here again positive evidence is wanting. Neefe came to Bonn in October, 1779; received the decree of succession to the position of Court Organist on February 15, 1781, and was thus permanently engaged in the Elector’s service. The unsatisfactory nature of the earlier instruction, as well as the high reputation of Neefe, placed in the strongest light before the Bonn public by those proceedings which had compelled him to remain there, would render it highly desirable to Johann van Beethoven to transfer his son to the latter’s care. It would create no surprise should proof hereafter come to light that this change was made even before the issue of the decree of February 15, 1781;—that even then the pupil was profiting by the lessons of the zealous Bachist. Whether this was so or not, it was more than ever necessary that the boy’s talents should be put to profitable use, for the father found his family still increasing. The baptism of a daughter named Anna Maria Franciska after her sponsors Anna Maria Klemmers, dicta Kochs, and Franz Rovantini, court musician, is recorded in the St. Remigius register February 23, 1779, and her death on the 27th of the same month. The baptism of August Franciscus Georgius van Beethoven—Franz Rovantini, Musicus Aulicus and Helene Averdonk, patrini, follows nearly two years later—January 17, 1781. There is no minister of State now to lend his name to a child of Johann van Beethoven, nor any lady abbess. Rovantini, one of the youngest members of the orchestra (relative and friend of the family), and a Frau Kochs, the young contralto, whose musical education the father had superintended, take their places—another indication that the head of the family is gradually sinking in social position.