Toward the end of February, 1815 (Schindler writes), I accepted an invitation to become tutor at Brünn. Scarcely arrived there, I was summoned before the police officials. I was questioned as to my relations with some of the tumultuaries of the Vienna University as also certain Italians in whose company I had often been seen in Vienna. As my identification papers, especially the statement concerning the different lectures which I had attended, were not in good order, the latter really faulty—through no fault of mine—I was detained, notwithstanding that a government officer of high standing offered to become my bondsman. After several weeks of correspondence back and forth it was learned that I was not a propagandist and was to be set at liberty. But a whole year of my academic career was lost.
Again returned to Vienna, I was invited by one of Beethoven’s intimate acquaintances to come to an appointed place, as the master wanted to hear the story of the Brünn happening from my own lips. During the relation, Beethoven manifested such sympathetic interest in my disagreeable experiences that I could not refrain from tears. He invited me to come often to the same place and at the same hour, 4 o’clock in the afternoon, where he was to be found nearly every day—reading the newspapers. A handgrasp said still more. The place was a somewhat remote room in the beer-house “Zum Rosenstock” in the Ballgässchen. I was there right often and came to know the place as a quasi-crypt of a number of Josephites of the first water, to whom our master presented no discordant note, for his republican creed had already received a considerable blow through a more intimate acquaintance with the English Constitution. A captain of the Emperor’s bodyguard and Herr Pinterics, widely known in musical Vienna, who played an important rôle in the life of Franz Schubert, were the closest companions of the master and, in the exchange of political views, his seconds actively and passively. From this place I soon began to accompany him on his walks.
But Schindler’s intimacy with Beethoven was not yet such as to save him from errors when writing of this time. Thus he gravely assures us that a concert which took place on the 25th of December “provided the impulse which led the Magistracy of Vienna to elect our master to honorary citizenship.” And yet the “solemn delivery” of the diploma is already an item of news in the Vienna newspapers of December 15. This concert, in the large Ridotto room, conducted by Beethoven was for the benefit of the Bürgerspitalfond (Citizens’ Hospital Fund) and the works performed were “an entirely new overture” (that in C, known as the “Namensfeier”); “a new chorus on Goethe’s poem ‘Die Meeresstille’”; “Christus am Ölberg.” Between the cantata and the oratorio, Franz Stauffer, “the twelve-year-old son of a citizen of Vienna,” played a “Rondo brillant” by Hummel.
The compositions which are known or, on good grounds, are supposed to belong to the year 1815 are:
1. “15 Scottish Songs, in the month of May,” arranged for Thomson; but they are not all Scottish.
2. Chorus: “Es ist vollbracht”; for Treitschke’s “Ehrenpforte.”
3. Two Sonatas for Pianoforte and Violoncello; C major and D major, Op. 102; in July and August.
4. Chorus with orchestra: “Meeresstille und glückliche Fahrt”; text by Goethe; Op. 112.
5. Song: “Das Geheimniss”; text by Weissenberg.