The Life of Ludwig van Beethoven, Volume I

by Alexander Wheelock Thayer

Beethoven attached absolutely no value to his autographs; after they had once been engraved they generally were piled on the floor in his living room or an anteroom among other pieces of music. I often brought order into his music, but when Beethoven hunted for anything, everything was sent flying in disorder. At that time I might have carried away the autograph manuscripts of all the pieces which had been printed, or had I asked him for them he would unquestionably have given them to me without a thought.

These words of Ries are confirmed by the small number of autographs of printed works in the auction catalogue of Beethoven’s posthumous papers—most of them having remained in the hands of the publishers or having been lost, destroyed or stolen.

Works Taken to Vienna From Bonn

Another author has endeavored to supply the vacuum by deducing the chronology of Beethoven’s works from their form, matter or general character as viewed by his eyes, referring all which seem to him below the standard of the composer at any particular period to an earlier one; and a very comical chronology he makes of it. His success certainly has not been such as to induce any attempt of the kind here; and yet that he is right in the general fact is the hypothesis which the following remarks are conceived to establish as truth. Schindler—who is often very positive on the ground that what he does not know cannot be true—in introducing his chronological table of Beethoven’s works, published from 1796 to 1800, remarks: “It may be asserted with positiveness that none of the works catalogued below were composed before 1794”; upon which point the assertion is ventured that Schindler is thoroughly mistaken and that many of the works published by Beethoven during the first dozen years of his Vienna life were taken thither from Bonn. They doubtless were more or less altered, amended, improved, corrected, but nevertheless belong as compositions to those years when “Beethoven played pianoforte concertos, and Herr Neefe accompanied at Court in the theatre and in concerts.” While the other young men were trying their strength upon works for the orchestra and stage, the performance of which would necessarily give them notoriety, the Court Pianist would naturally confine himself mostly to his own instrument and to chamber music—to works whose production before a small circle in the salons of the Elector, Countess Hatzfeld and others would excite little if any public notice. But here he struck out so new, and at that time so strange a path that no small degree of praise is due to the sagacity of Count Waldstein, who comprehended his aims, felt his greatness and encouraged him to trust to and be guided by his own instincts and genius.

That Beethoven also tried his powers in a wider field we know from the two cantatas, the airs in “Die schöne Schusterin” and the “Ritterballet.” Carl Haslinger in Vienna also possessed an orchestral introduction to the second act of an unnamed opera which may as well be referred to the Bonn period as to any other; and it is not by any means a wild suggestion that he had tried his strength in other concertos for pianoforte and full orchestra than that of 1784. As to the compositions for two, six or eight wind-instruments there was little if any danger of mistake in supposing them to have been written for the Elector’s “Harmonie-Musik.” But this is wandering from the point; to establish which the following remarks are in all humility submitted:

Creative Industry in Bonn

I. If a list be drawn up of Beethoven’s compositions published between 1795 and December, 1802, with the addition of other works known to have been composed in those years, the result will be nearly as follows (omitting single songs and other minor pieces): symphonies, 2; ballet (“Prometheus”), 1; sonatas (solo and duo), 32; romances (violin and orchestra), 2; serenade, 1; duos (clarinet and bassoon), 3; sets of variations, 15; sets of dances, 5; “Ah! perfido” and “Adelaide,” 2; pianoforte concertos, 3; trios (pianoforte and other instruments), 9; quartets, 6; quintets, 3; septet, 1; pianoforte rondos, 3; marches (for four hands), 3; oratorio (“Christus”), 1; an aggregate of 92 compositions in eight years or ninety-six months. And most of them such compositions! That Beethoven was a remarkable man all the world knows; but that he could produce at this rate, study operatic composition with Salieri, sustain, nay, increase his reputation as a pianoforte virtuoso, journey to Prague, Berlin and other places, correct proof-sheets for his publishers, give lessons and yet find time to write long letters to friends, to sleep, to eat, drink and be merry with companions of his own age—this is, to say the least, “a morsel difficult of digestion.” The more so from the fact that at the very time when he began to devote himself more exclusively to composition such marvellous fertility suddenly ceased. The inference is obvious.

II. When Neefe, in 1798, calls Beethoven “beyond controversy one of the foremost pianoforte players,” it excites no surprise. Ten years before he had played the most of Bach’s “Well-Tempered Clavichord” and had now long held the offices of Second Court Organist and Concerto Player; but what sufficient reason could Waldstein have had for his faith that this pianist, by study and perseverance, would yet be able to seize and hold the sceptre of Mozart? And upon what grounds, too, could Fischenich, on January 26, 1793, write as he did to Charlotte von Schiller from Bonn (see ante) and add, “I expect something perfect from him, for so far as I know him he is wholly devoted to the great and sublime.... Haydn has written here that he would soon put him at grand operas and soon be obliged to quit composing.”

Note the date of this—January 26, 1793. Haydn must have written some time before this, when Beethoven could not have been with him more than six or eight weeks. Did the master found his remark upon what he had seen in his pupil or upon the compositions which his pupil had placed before him? Wegeler has printed an undated and incomplete letter of Beethoven to Eleonore von Breuning, certainly, however, not later than the spring of 1794, which was accompanied by a set of variations and a rondo for pianoforte and violin. Do the following passages in this letter indicate anything?