The order to the exchequer followed on May 24th, and on June 15th, Franz Ries had the satisfaction of signing receipts—one for 25 thalers for January, February and March, and one for 50 thalers for the second quarter of the year; but from this time onward no hint has yet been discovered that Beethoven ever received anything from the Elector or had any resources but his own earnings and the generosity of newly-found friends in Vienna. These resources were soon needed. The remark that two florins of the payment towards the pianoforte were out of his own money proves that he possessed a small sum saved up by degrees from lesson-giving, from presents received and the like; but it could not have been a large amount, while the 25 ducats and the above recorded receipts of salary were all too small to have carried him through the summer of 1793. Here is the second of his monthly records of necessary and regular expenses in farther proof of this: “14 florins house-rent; 6 fl. 40 x, pianoforte; meals with wine, 15 fl. and a half;—(?), 3 florins; maid, 1,” the sum total being as added by himself “11 ducats and one-half florin.” And yet at the end of the year there are entries that show that he was not distressed for money. For instance: “the 24th October, i.e., reckoning from November 1st, 112 florins and 30 kreutzer”; “2 ducats for a seal; 1 florin, 25 kreutzers, copyist”; “Tuesday and Saturday from 7 to 8. Sunday from 11 to 12, 3 florins”; and the final entry not later in date than 1794 is: “3 carolins in gold, 4 carolins in crown thalers and 4 ducats make 7 carolins and 4 ducats and a lot of small change.”
In what manner Beethoven was already in 1794 able to remain “in Vienna without salary until recalled,” to quote the Elector’s words, will hereafter appear with some degree of certainty; but just now he claims attention as pupil of Haydn and Albrechtsberger. The citations made in a previous chapter from the letters of Neefe and Fischenich prove how strong an impression Beethoven’s powers, both as virtuoso and composer, had made upon Joseph Haydn immediately after his reaching Vienna; and no man then living was better able to judge on such points. But whether the famous chapelmaster, just returned from his English triumphs, himself a daring and successful innovator and now very busy with compositions in preparation for his second visit to London, was the man to guide the studies of a headstrong, self-willed and still more daring musical revolutionist was, a priori, a very doubtful question. The result proved that he was not.
Beethoven’s Studies With Haydn
The memorandum book has a few entries which relate to Haydn. On page 7, that which contains the 15 ducats on the 12th of October, 1792, there is a column of numerals, the first of which reads, “Haidn 8 groschen”; the other twelve, except a single “1,” all “2”; and on the two pages which happen to have the dates of October 24 and 29, 1793, are these two entries: “22 x, chocolate for Haidn and me”; “Coffee, 6 x for Haidn and me.” These notes simply confirm what was known from other sources, namely, that Beethoven began to study with Haydn very soon after reaching Vienna and continued to be his pupil until the end of the year 1793.[64] They indicate, also, that the scholar, whatever feelings he may have indulged towards the master in secret, kept on good terms with him, and that their private intercourse was not confined to the hours devoted to lessons in Haydn’s room in the Hamberger house, No. 992 on the (no longer existing) Wasserkunstbastei.
Concerning the course of study during that year, nothing can be added to the words of Nottebohm (“Allg. Mus. Zeitung,” 1863-1864), founded upon a most thorough examination of all the known manuscripts and authorities which bear upon this question. Of the manuscripts Nottebohm says: “They are exercises in simple counterpoint on six plain chants in the old modes.... He must have written more.” But what? On this point there are no indications to be found. It may be accepted with considerable certainty that the contrapuntal exercises were preceded by an introductory, though probably brief, study of the nature of consonances and dissonances. For this the last chapter of the first book of Fux’s “Gradus ad Parnassum” might have served.
But this (adds Nottebohm) would not have sufficed to fill the entire period. In view of Haydn’s predilection for Fux’s system it is not conceivable that there were preliminary exercises, say in the free style or in the modern keys; there remains, therefore, no alternative but to go back further and opine that the study with Haydn began with the theory of harmony and exercises in which the system of Philipp Emanuel Bach might have been used.
“It is certain,” says Schindler, “that Beethoven’s knowledge of the science of harmony at the time when he began his study with Haydn did not go beyond thoroughbass.” The correctness of this opinion of Schindler may be safely left to the judgment of the reader. The fact seems to be that Beethoven, conscious of the disadvantages attending the want of thorough systematic instruction, distrustful of himself and desirous of bringing to the test many of his novel and cherished ideas, had determined to accomplish a complete course of contrapuntal study, and thus renew, revise and reduce to order and system the great mass of his previous scientific acquirements. He would, at all events, thoroughly know and understand the regular that he might with confidence judge for himself how far to indulge in the irregular. To this view, long since adopted, the results of Nottebohm’s researches add credibility. It explains, also, how a young man, too confident in the soundness of his views to be willing to alter his productions because they contained passages and effects censured by those about him for being other than those of Mozart and Haydn, was yet willing, with the modesty of true genius, to shut them up in his writing-desk until, through study and observation, he could feel himself standing upon the firm basis of sound knowledge and then retain or exclude, according to the dictates of an enlightened judgment.
Beethoven, however, very soon discovered that also in Haydn, as a teacher, he had “not found that excellence which he supposed he had a right to expect.” Ries remembered a remark made by him on this point: “Haydn had wished that Beethoven might put the word, ‘Pupil of Haydn,’ on the title of his first works. Beethoven was unwilling to do so because, as he said, though he had had some instruction from Haydn he had never learned anything from him.” Still more in point is the oft-repeated story of Johann Schenk’s kindness to Beethoven, related by Seyfried in Gräfer’s and Schilling’s lexica and confirmed by Schindler, which, when divested of its errors in dates, may be related thus: Among Beethoven’s earliest acquaintances in Vienna was the Abbé Joseph Gelinek, one of the first virtuosos then in that city and an amazingly fruitful and popular composer of variations. It was upon him that Carl Maria von Weber, some years afterwards, wrote the epigram:
Kein Thema auf der Welt verschonte dein Genie,
Das simpelste allein—Dich selbst—variirst du nie!
“No theme on earth escaped your genius airy,—
The simplest one of all—yourself—you never vary.”