Brunswick did not come to Vienna, where Beethoven remained till the end of July, as we see from a note to Zmeskall after the return from Teplitz and a letter to Breitkopf and Härtel after he had been at the watering-place three weeks. Meanwhile Beethoven worked on the Scottish Songs for Thomson and announced their completion on July 20, in a letter in which he complains that, because the three copies of the 53 songs which he had previously sent to Thomson had not been received, he had been obliged practically to rewrite them from his sketches—which may have been a somewhat exaggerated statement of the facts. In it, furthermore, he says: “Your offer of 100 ducats in gold for the three sonatas is accepted for your sake and I am also willing to compose three quintets for 100 gold ducats; but for the dozen English songs my price is 60 ducats in gold (for four songs the price is 25 ducats). For the cantata on the naval battle in the Baltic sea, I ask 50 ducats; but on condition that the text contains no invectives against the Danes, otherwise I cannot undertake it....[85] I will not fail to send you the arrangements of my symphonies in a very short time, and will gladly undertake the composition of an oratorio if the words be noble and distinguished and the honorarium of 600 ducats in gold be agreeable to you.”
Beethoven arrived in Teplitz about August 1, possibly a day or two earlier, and for three weeks was chiefly concerned with his cure and the correction of proofs, as appears from a letter, dated on August 23, to Breitkopf and Härtel. In this, speaking about the “Christus am Ölberg,” he says:
Here and there the text must remain as in the original. I know that the text is extremely bad, but after one has conceived a unit out of even a bad text, it is difficult to avoid spoiling it by individual changes, and if great stress be laid upon a single word it must be left, and he is a bad composer who does not know how or try to make the best possible thing out of a bad text, and if this is the case a few changes will certainly not improve the whole.
He has words of approval for Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” and of dispraise for Italian musicians in general, as see:
The favorable reception of Mozart’s “Don Juan” rejoices me as much as if it were my own work. Although I know plenty of unprejudiced Italians who render justice to the German, the backwardness and easy-going disposition of the Italian musicians are no doubt responsible for the same deficiencies in the nation; but I have become acquainted with many Italian amateurs who prefer our music to their Paisiello, etc. (I have been more just to him than his own countrymen.)
Varnhagen von Ense, then a young man of 25 years and lieutenant in the Austrian service, came from Prague to Teplitz this summer to pass a few weeks with “The goddess of his heart’s most dear delight,” Rahel Levin. In his “Denkwürdigkeiten” we first meet Beethoven since his letter to Thomson—a solitary rambler in the Schlossgarten at Teplitz, whither, as Brunswick could not or would not accompany him, he had journeyed alone. Varnhagen was with Beethoven every day and came into more intimate relations with him through his eager desire to write texts for him for dramatic compositions or to revise such texts. With Tiedge and the Countess von der Recke, Beethoven formed a warm friendship. Varnhagen wrote to Rahel: “Only Oliva could I endure about me for any length of time; he was sympathetic, but deeply depressed because of violent altercations which he had with Beethoven.” From the source of these communications we also learn that Varnhagen was expected to adapt an opera text for Beethoven and to revise and improve another. In a letter of September 18, Varnhagen himself wrote to Rahel as follows on the subject: “I may translate a French piece as an opera for Beethoven; the other text might be written later, but this contains the entire scenic arrangement. It is entitled ‘Giafar’ and might bring me from 8 to 10 ducats.” But later, “Of Beethoven and Oliva I hear and see nothing; the latter must have been unable to make anything out of the opera which I was to make from a French melodrama and which, unfortunately, another had begun.”
Beethoven as Cupid’s Messenger
Soon after Beethoven’s arrival in Teplitz there must have occurred the incident of Beethoven’s visit to the grave of Seume, which was referred to in a previous chapter in connection with the C-sharp minor Sonata. Seume had died on June 13, 1810, at Teplitz. There were other visitors, not mentioned by Varnhagen, with whom Beethoven formed relations more or less cordial and intimate. One was the Royal Imperial Gubernialrath and Steyermärkischer Kammerprokurator Ritter von Varena of Gratz; another was Ludwig Loewe, the actor, just then engaged for the theatre at Prague. “Thereby hangs a tale.”
Loewe had an honorable love-affair with Therese, the daughter of the landlord of the inn “Zum Stern” in Teplitz. For “this reason,” as Loewe told this author’s informant, “he always came to the inn after the guests had departed; Beethoven, being hard of hearing and melancholy, for this reason always came later, so that he would meet nobody. The landlord, father of the girl, discovered their relations, took Loewe to task, and the latter voluntarily agreed to remain away in order to spare the girl, whom he dearly loved. After a time he met Beethoven in the Augarten, and the latter, who was warmly attached to him, asked him why he no longer came to the Stern. Loewe told him of his misfortune and asked the composer if he would carry a letter to Therese. Beethoven not only agreed in the friendliest manner to do so, but also offered to see that he got an answer, and thereafter cared for the correspondence.” Loewe did not know when Beethoven departed from Teplitz; he himself went to fill his engagement at Prague. “The lovers pledged each other to fidelity, but a few weeks later Loewe received intelligence of the death of his Therese.”
Another visitor at Teplitz was Prince Kinsky; and this gave the composer an opportunity to obtain the arrears of his annuity. On the still existing envelope of the contract of 1809 is written: “Kinsky am letzten August behoben.” Another was Amalie Sebald, who had come with Countess von der Recke from Berlin, a member of a family who for years had furnished members to Fasch’s Singakademie, where she had appeared as a solo singer. She was said to have “a fascinatingly lovely singing voice.” Among the friends of Carl Maria von Weber when he was in Berlin in 1812, were Amalie Sebald and her sister Auguste, also “highly musical” and a singer. For Amalie, Weber conceived a warm and deep affection; and now Beethoven was taken an unresisting captive by her charms. She is mentioned—the reader will note how familiarly—in this letter to Tiedge, dated Teplitz, September 6, 1811: