My nephew, so dear to me, is in one of the best institutions in Vienna, displays great talent, but all this goes to my expense and the Retz affair might enable me to spend a few hundred florins more on the education of my dear nephew. I embrace you as one of my dearest friends.
A little cantata, written in honor of Prince Lobkowitz, belongs to this month of December. An autograph copy was given some forty years afterwards to Dr. Ottokar Zeithammer, of Prague, by the aged widow of Beethoven’s friend Peters, who gives this account of its origin:
The copy of a little cantata which he (Beethoven) wrote for me to be performed on the birthday of the Prince, now long dead, and which—as he himself says—reached me after his death, was in reality written by him and most daintily tied together with blue ribbon.... The cantata consists only of a few reiterated words, we can hardly say composed by himself, and originated when he heard of the approaching birthday festival of the Prince when visiting us. “And is there to be no celebration?” he asked, and I answered him, “No.” “That will not do,” he replied; “I’ll hurriedly write you a cantata, which you must sing for him.” But the performance was never reached.[170]
The intended performance never took place, because Lobkowitz, born on December 7, 1772, died on December 16, 1816. And so he, too, disappears from our history. The foregoing receives all needful confirmation in this letter:
(To Peters.)
January 8, 1816.
[Should be 1817.]
Only yesterday did I hear from Hrn. von Bernard, who met me, that you are here and therefore I send you these two copies, which unfortunately were not finished until just at the time when the death of our dear Prince Lobkowitz was reported. Do me the favor to hand them to His Serene Highness, the first-born Prince Lobkowitz, together with this writing, it was just to-day, I intended to look up the cashier to ask him to undertake its delivery in Bohemia, not having, in truth, believed anyone here.
I, if I may speak of myself, am in a state of tolerably good health and wish you the same. I dare not ask you to come to me for I should be obliged to tell you why, and that I should not presume to do as little as why you would not or would not desire to come. I beg you to write the inscription to the Prince as I do not know his given name—the 3rd copy please keep for your wife.