To the point of Beethoven’s susceptibility to the tender passion let Wegeler again be cited:
The truth as I learned to know it, and also my brother-in-law Stephan von Breuning, Ferdinand Ries, and Bernhard Romberg, is that there was never a time when Beethoven was not in love, and that in the highest degree. These passions, for the Misses d’Honrath and Westerhold, fell in his transition period from youth to manhood, and left impressions as little deep as were those made upon the beauties who had caused them. In Vienna, at all events so long as I lived there, Beethoven was always in love and occasionally made a conquest which would have been very difficult if not impossible for many an Adonis.
A review of some of the last pages shows that for the most part after 1789 the life of Beethoven was a busy one, but that the frequent absences of the Elector, as recorded in the newspapers of the day, left many a period of considerable duration during which, except for the meetings of the orchestra for rehearsal and study, he had full command of his time. Thus he had plenty of leisure hours and weeks to devote to composition, to instruction in music, for social intercourse, for visits to Kerpen and other neighboring places, for the indulgence of his strong propensity to ramble in the fields and among the mountains, for the cultivation in that beautiful Rhine region of his warm passion for nature.
The new relations to his father and brothers, as virtual head of the family, were such as to relieve his mind from anxiety on their account. His position in society, too, had become one of which he might justly be proud, owing, as it was, to no adventitious circumstances, but simply to his genius and high personal character. Of illness in those years we hear nothing, except Wegeler’s remark (“Notizen,” 11): “When the famous organist Abbé Vogler played in Bonn (1790 or 1791) I sat beside Beethoven’s sickbed”; a mere passing attack, or Wegeler would have vouchsafed it a more extended notice in his subsequent remarks upon his friend’s health. Thus these were evidently happy years, in spite of certain characteristic and gloomy expressions of Beethoven in letters hereafter to be given, and years of active intellectual, artistic and moral development.
The Suggestion of Haydn as Teacher
The probability that in July, 1792, it had been proposed to Haydn to take Beethoven as a pupil has been mentioned; but it is pretty certain that the suggestion did not come from the Elector, who, there is little doubt, was in Frankfort at the coronation of his nephew Emperor Franz (July 14) at the time of Haydn’s visit. The indefatigable Karajan[46] is unable to determine precisely when the composer left London or reached Vienna; but it is known he was in the former city after July 1st and in the latter before August 4th. Whatever arrangements may have been made between the pupil and master, they were subject to the will of the Elector, and here Waldstein may well have exerted himself to his protégé’s advantage. At all events, the result was favorable and the journey determined upon. Perhaps, had Haydn found Maximilian in Bonn, he might have taken the young man with him; as it was, some months elapsed before his pupil could follow.
Some little space must be devoted to the question, whence the pecuniary resources for so expensive a journey to and sojourn in Vienna were derived. The good-hearted Neefe did not forget to record the event in very flattering terms when he wrote next year in Spazier’s “Berliner Musik-Zeitung”:
In November of last year Ludwig van Beethoven, assistant court organist and unquestionably now one of the foremost pianoforte players, went to Vienna at the expense of our Elector to Haydn in order to perfect himself under his direction more fully in the art of composition.