There is a letter from Bonn, dated April 8, 1787, in “Cramer’s Magazine” (II, 1385), which contains a passing allusion to Beethoven. It affords another glimpse of the musical life there:
Our residence city is becoming more and more attractive for music-lovers through the gracious patronage of our beloved Elector. He has a large collection of the most beautiful music and is expending much every day to augment it. It is to him, too, that we owe the privilege of hearing often virtuosi on various instruments. Good singers come seldom. The love of music is increasing greatly among the inhabitants. The pianoforte is especially liked; there are here several Hammerclaviere by Stein of Augsburg, and other correspondingly good instruments.... The youthful Baron v. Gudenau plays the pianoforte right bravely, and besides young Beethoven, the children of the chapelmaster deserve to be mentioned because of their admirable and precociously developed talent. All of the sons of Herr v. Mastiaux play the clavier well, as you already know from earlier letters of mine.
“This young genius deserves support to enable him to travel,” wrote Neefe in 1783. In the springtime of 1787 the young “genius” was at length enabled to travel. Whence or how he obtained the means to defray the expenses of his journey, whether aided by the Elector or some other Mæcenas, or dependent upon the small savings from his salary and—hardly possible—from the savings from his music lessons painfully and carefully hoarded for the purpose, does not appear. The series of papers at Düsseldorf is at this point broken; so that not even the petition for leave of absence has been discovered. The few indications bearing on this point are that he had no farther aid from the Elector than the continued payment of his salary. What is certain is that the youth, now sixteen, but passing for a year or two younger, visited Vienna, where he received a few lessons from Mozart (Ries, in “Notizen,” page 86); that his stay was short, and that on his way home he was forced to borrow some money in Augsburg.
When he made the journey is equally doubtful. Schindler was told by some old acquaintances of Beethoven “that on the visit two persons only were deeply impressed upon the lifelong memory of the youth of sixteen years: the Emperor Joseph and Mozart.” If the young artist really had an interview with the Emperor it must have occurred before the 11th of April, or after the 30th of June, for those were the days which began and ended Joseph’s absence from Vienna upon his famous tour to the Crimea with the Russian Empress Catharine; if before that absence, then Beethoven was at least three months in the Austrian capital and had left Bonn before the date of Neefe’s letter to “Cramer’s Magazine”; in which case how could the writer in speaking of his young colleague have omitted all mention of the fact? How, too, could so important a circumstance have been unknown to or forgotten by Dr. Wegeler and have found no place in his “Notizen,” which moreover, were prepared under the eyes of both Franz Ries and Madame von Breuning? It will soon be seen that Beethoven was again in Bonn before July 17—a date which admits the bare possibility of the reported meeting with Joseph after his return from Russia.
If an opinion, which, indeed, is little more than a conjecture, may be hazarded in relation with this visit, it is this: that if at any time the missing archives of Maximilian’s court should come to light it will be found that not until after the busy week for organists and chapelmusicians ending with Easter was leave of absence granted to Beethoven; and that, too, with no farther pecuniary aid from the Elector than possibly a quarter or two of his salary in advance. In 1787, Easter Monday fell upon the 9th of April, the day after the date of Neefe’s letter. Making due allowance of time for the necessary preparations for so important a journey, as in those days it was from Bonn to Vienna, it may be reasonably conjectured that some time in May the youth reached the latter city.
Let another conjecture find place here: it is that Johann van Beethoven had not yet abandoned the hope of deriving pecuniary profit from the precocity of his son’s genius; that he still expected the boy, after replacing his hard organ-style of playing by one more suited to the character of the pianoforte, to make his dream of a wonder-child in some degree a reality. Hence—at what fearful cost to the father in his poverty we know not—Ludwig is sent to the most admirable pianist, the best teacher then living, Mozart.
Beethoven’s Introduction to Mozart
But enough of conjecture. The oft-repeated anecdote of Beethoven’s introduction to Mozart is stripped by Prof. Jahn of Seyfried’s superlatives and related in these terms:
Beethoven, who as a youth of great promise came to Vienna in 1786 (?)[35], but was obliged to return to Bonn after a brief sojourn, was taken to Mozart and at that musician’s request played something for him which he, taking it for granted that it was a show-piece prepared for the occasion, praised in a rather cool manner. Beethoven observing this, begged Mozart to give him a theme for improvization. He always played admirably when excited and now he was inspired, too, by the presence of the master whom he reverenced greatly; he played in such a style that Mozart, whose attention and interest grew more and more, finally went silently to some friends who were sitting in an adjoining room, and said, vivaciously, “Keep your eyes on him; some day he will give the world something to talk about.”
Ries (“Notizen,” p. 86) merely says: “During his visit to Vienna he received some instruction from Mozart, but the latter, as Beethoven lamented, never played for him.” Contrary to the conjecture above mentioned as to Johann van Beethoven’s object in sending his son to Vienna, it seems, from the connection in which Ries introduces this remark, that the instruction given by Mozart to the youth was confined to composition. The lessons given were few—a fact which accounts for the circumstance that no member of Mozart’s family in after years, when Beethoven had become world-renowned, has spoken of them.