I therefore again beg of you humbly to take care of these letters—and with the letter to Goethe[82] to send the Egmont (score), but not in the customary way with here and there a piece wanting, etc., but properly, this cannot be postponed longer, I have pledged my word and am the more particular to have the pledge redeemed when I can compel somebody else, like you, to do it—ha, ha, ha! You deserve that I employ such language towards you, towards such a sinner who if I had my way would walk in a hairy shirt of penance for all the flagitiousness practised on my works.
Beethoven had had the intention of sending the score of the “Egmont” music to Goethe from the moment he began on it, as appears from a memorandum on the autograph manuscript of the Quartet in E-flat, Op. 74, written in 1809: “Score of Egmont to Goethe at once.”
On the 28th of February, Beethoven sent his friend Mähler an invitation to a concert. Mähler accepted the invitation and received a ticket “extra-ordinaire,” signed “Br. de Neuwirth,” admitting him free to three midday concerts on Thursdays, February 28, March 14 and 28. Beethoven’s elasticity of temperament therefore was doing him good service in enabling him to recover from the crushing blow of the preceding year; he was now able not only to find diversion and amusement in society, the theatre and the concertroom, but the spirit of composition was again awakened. In three weeks—March 3rd to the 26th—he produced the glorious B-flat Trio, Op. 97, which had been sketched in 1810.
There were now, or soon to be, in the hands of Breitkopf and Härtel’s engravers the Pianoforte Concerto, Op. 73, the Fantasia, Op. 80, the Sonate “Les Adieux,” Op. 81a, the Ariettes and Songs, Op. 82 and 83, and the “Christus am Ölberg.” The revision of these works for the press, with the correction of the proofs and his duties to the Archduke, are all the professional labors of Beethoven in these months of which we find any trace. Hence, that high appreciation of his greatness, which induced his admirers and friends even then to attach such value to the most trivial written communications from him as to secure their preservation, now does us excellent service; for—the dates of the Trio excepted—his correspondence furnishes the only materials for the history of the first half of this year. To this we turn.
The Pianoforte Trio in B-flat
There is a note, which may be dated about the end of March, apologizing to the Archduke for his absence, on the ground of having been for two weeks again with his “tormenting headache.” “During the festivities for the Princess of Baden (March 5-12), and because of the sore finger of Your Imp. Highness,” he adds, “I began to work somewhat industriously, of which, among other things, a new Trio for the piano is a fruit.” Soon after he sends the new Trio to the Archduke to have it copied, “but only in your palace, as otherwise one is never safe from theft.” He proceeds thus:
I am improving and in a few days I shall again have the honor to wait upon you for the purpose of making up for lost time. I am always anxiously concerned when I cannot be as zealously and as often as I should wish with Your Imperial Highness. It is surely true when I say that it causes me much suffering, but I am not likely to have so bad an attack again soon. Keep me graciously in your memory. Times will come when I shall show you two and threefold that I am worthy of it.
These professions may well excite a smile; for “it is surely true” when we say, that his duties to the Archduke had already become extremely irksome; and that the necessity of sacrificing in some small degree to them his previous independence grew daily more annoying and vexatious; so much so that, in fact, he availed himself of any and every excuse to avoid them. The Archduke made a point of adding a complete collection of Beethoven’s music to his library; and the master lent his aid in this both by presenting all his new productions in manuscript and in giving titles of older printed works—gaining thereby a secure depository for his compositions, where they were ever at his service. Thus (May 18) he sends for the Sonata “Das Lebewohl, etc.,” “as I haven’t it myself and must send the corrections”; some time after for the Scottish songs, “as two numbers, one in my handwriting, have been lost and they must be copied again so that they may be sent away.”[83]
Here is the place for a letter to Breitkopf and Härtel:
Vienna, May 6th.