“An die ferne Geliebte”
That brilliant youth Alois Jeitteles of Brünn, now a student of medicine at Vienna, wrote when hardly twenty-one years of age the beautiful series of songs “An die ferne Geliebte,” so exquisitely set to music by Beethoven. Schindler states, that the composer thanked the young poet for the happy inspiration; but whether he had found them in a handbook, which is probable, or received them in manuscript, does not appear. But no one can hear them adequately sung without feeling that there is something more in that music than the mere inspiration of the poetry. It was completed not many weeks before, in his letter to Ries (May 8), he wrote: “I found only one whom I shall doubtless never possess”; and but six months before the above conversation with Giannatasio. Just five years had now elapsed since he became acquainted with Amalie von Sebald: was she not the real inspiration of “An die ferne Geliebte”?[168]
Peter Joseph Simrock of Bonn, then 24 years of age, was now in Vienna. He was often with Beethoven, in Baden, in his lodging in the Sailerstätte and in the inn “Zur goldenen Birn,” where he often dined after the removal of Giannatasio to that quarter. Mr. Simrock also told the writer that he had no difficulty in making Beethoven understand him if he spoke into his left ear; but anything private or confidential must be communicated in writing. On one occasion the composer handed him paper and pencil, remarking that his servant was an eavesdropper, etc. A few days afterwards when Simrock called again, “Now,” said Beethoven, “we can talk, for I have given my servant 5 florins, a kick in the rear and sent him to the devil.”
Everywhere in public, said Simrock, Beethoven railed at Emperor Franz because of the reduction of the paper money. “Such a rascal ought to be hanged to the first tree,” said he. But he was known and the police officials let him do what he pleased. He ate a great deal at the tavern because he ordered haphazard and sent away what was not to his taste.
Another of Beethoven’s visitors just now was Alexander Kyd. This gentleman, since July 25, 1810, a Major-General in the East India Company’s Engineer Corps, paid the usual tribute to the climate, and, broken down in health, came to Vienna to put himself under the treatment of Malfatti. He thus made the acquaintance of Dr. Bertolini, who gave to Jahn and the present writer the following details:
An English Commission Rejected
Kyd was a great lover of music, and, after his long residence in India, enjoyed to the utmost his present opportunities of hearing it. Bertolini took him to Czerny, who during several visits played to him all the pianoforte works of Beethoven then in print. The General was ravished with these compositions, asked for a complete thematic catalogue of the composer’s works, and besought Bertolini to introduce him to their author. This took place on the 28th of September “in the house next to the Colorado Palace,” said Bertolini. They found him shaving and looking shockingly, his ruddy face browned by the Baden sun variegated by razor cuts, bits of paper, and soap. As Kyd seated himself crash! went the chair. In the course of the interview, the General, showing the common belief of Beethoven’s poverty, proposed to him through the Doctor, to compose a symphony for which he would pay him 200 ducats (£100), and secure its performance by the London Philharmonic Society, not doubting that the profits of the work to the composer would thus amount to £1000. He offered also to take him himself to London. To Beethoven’s leaving Vienna just now there really seems to have been no serious impediment, other than his nephew; and the boy was certainly in the best of hands so long as he remained with Giannatasio. However, he did not accept the proposition, nor even the order for the Symphony; because Kyd desired to have it rather like the earlier, than the later ones—that is, somewhat shorter, simpler, and more easy of comprehension than these last. The conclusion of the story as told in the Fischoff MS. corresponds entirely with the Doctor’s relation:
When Bertolini related all this to his friend with sympathetic joy the latter received it in an entirely different spirit. He declared that he would receive dictation from no one; he needed no money, despised it and would not submit himself to the whim of another man for half the world, still less compose anything which was not according to his liking, to his individuality. From that time he was also cool toward Bertolini and remained so.
When he afterwards quarrelled with and insulted Malfatti he broke entirely with Bertolini; but both those gentlemen were too honorable ever to disclose the details of this breach. Simrock writes in an autograph notice for this work:
When I visited Beethoven in Vienna on September 29, 1816, he told me that he had had a visit on the day before from an Englishman who on behalf of the London Philharmonic Society had asked him to compose a symphony for that institution in the style of the first and second symphonies, regardless of cost.... As an artist he felt himself deeply offended at such an offer and indignantly refused it and thus closed the interview with the intermediary. In his excitement he expressed himself very angrily and with deep displeasure towards a nation which by such an offer had manifested so low an opinion of an artist and art, which he looked upon as a great insult. When we were passing Haslinger’s publishing house in the Graben in the afternoon he stopped suddenly and pointing to a large, powerfully built man who had just entered, cried out: “There’s the man whom I threw down stairs yesterday!”