Vienna, January 28, 1812.
As a punishment for your absolute silence I charge you with the immediate delivery of these two letters; a windbag of a Livonian promised to look after a letter to K. for me, but probably, the Livonians like the Russians being windbags and braggarts, he did nothing of the sort, although he gave himself out to be a great friend of his.... If the 3 songs by Goethe are not yet printed hurry with them; I should like soon to present them to Princess Kynsky, one of the handsomest, stoutest women in Vienna—and the songs from Egmont, why are they not yet out, in fact why not out, out, out with the whole of E?—do you perhaps want a close tacked on to an entreacte here and there, that might be, but have it done by a Leipsic Corrector of the Music. Zeitung, that kind of thing they understand like a slap in the face. Please charge the postage to me—it seems to me, I hear a whisper, that you are looking out for a new wife, to this I ascribe all the confusion mentioned above. I wish you a Xantippe like the wife of the holy Greek Socrates, so that I might see a German Verleger, which is saying a great deal, verlegen, ja recht in Verlegenheit.[91]
Among the sufferers by the Finanz-Patent were the Ursuline nuns at Graz, whose institution, since 1802, had at no time less than 50 wards and always more than 350 pupils. At this juncture they were excessively poor and in debt. In the hope of gaining them some substantial aid Beethoven’s new friend, Varena, now wrote to him offering to pay him properly for the use of some of his compositions in a concert for their benefit to be given on Easter Sunday, March 29. Beethoven at once presented two of his new compositions to the Art Society of Graz for gratuitous use at charity concerts. At the concert on Easter Sunday there were eight numbers, Beethoven being represented by the overture to “King Stephen,” the march with chorus from “The Ruins of Athens,” the overture to “Egmont,” and the Septet. The nuns gained on the occasion the handsome sum of 1836 fl. 24k. Vienna Standard.
Passing of Old Friends, Coming of New
Walter Scott somewhere remarks: “It is seldom that the same circle of personages, who have surrounded an individual at his first outset in life, continue to have an interest in his career till his fate comes to a crisis. On the contrary, and more especially if the events of his life be of a varied character and worth communicating to others, or to the world, the hero’s later connections are usually totally separated from those with whom he began the voyage, but whom the individual has outsailed, or who have drifted astray, or foundered on the passage.”
A few years more and this will begin to be very true of Beethoven. The old familiar names will rapidly disappear and new ones take their places; some half a dozen perhaps will remain to the end. But this is not yet. The old friends, Lichnowsky, Rasoumowsky, Erdödy and that class, Streicher, Zizius, Breuning and their class, are his friends still. We see less of them, because Beethoven is no longer the great pianist performing in the saloons of the nobles, or playing his new compositions in the lodgings of his untitled admirers. His astonishing playing in the concert of December, 1808—which completed full thirty years since his appearance in Cologne as a prodigy—proved to be, as it happened, the splendid close of his career as a virtuoso. He had surely earned the right to retire and leave that field to his pupils, of whom Baroness Ertmann and Carl Czerny were preëminent as performers of his music. In the more private concerts he had already long given place to the Baroness; and now Czerny began to take it before the public, even to the extent of introducing his last new composition for pianoforte and orchestra. Theodor Körner, lately arrived in Vienna, writes home under date February 15:
On Wednesday, for the benefit of the Society of Noble Ladies for Charity, a concert and tableaux, representing three pictures by Raphael, Poussin and Troyes as described by Goethe in his “Elective Affinities,” were given. The pictures offered a glorious treat, a new pianoforte concerto by Beethoven failed.
Castelli’s “Thalia” gives the reason, why this noble work on this, its first public performance in Vienna, was so coldly received:
If this composition, which formed the concert which had been announced, failed to receive the applause which it deserved, the reason is to be sought partly in the subjective character of the work, partly in the objective nature of the listeners. Beethoven, full of proud confidence in himself, never writes for the multitude; he demands understanding and feeling, and because of the intentional difficulties, he can receive these only at the hands of the knowing, a majority of whom is not to be found on such occasions, etc.
That was precisely the truth. The work was out of place. The warblings of Fräulein Sessi and Herr Siboni, and Mayseder’s variations on the march in “Aline,” were suited to the occasion and the audience. Instead of Beethoven’s majestic work, Chapelmaster Himmel, who had recently been in Vienna, should have been engaged to remain and exhibit his brilliant finger gymnastics.