The Coming of Anselm Hüttenbrenner
To the few names which this year have appeared in our narrative, there is still to be added one worthy of a paragraph: that of a wealthy young man from Gratz, an amateur musician and composer of that class whose idol was Beethoven—Anselm Hüttenbrenner, who came to Vienna in 1815 to study with Salieri, and formed an intimate friendship with Franz Schubert. His enthusiasm for Beethoven was not abated when the present writer, in 1860, had the good fortune to enjoy a period of familiar intercourse with him, to learn his great and noble qualities of mind and heart, and to hear his reminiscences from his own lips. That these, in relation to Beethoven, were numerous, no one will expect; since no young man of twenty-two years, and a stranger, could at the period before us be much with the master except as a pupil—and he took none—or in the position lately occupied by Oliva and soon to be assumed by Schindler; which of course was all out of the question with Hüttenbrenner.
I learned to know Beethoven [he relates] through the kindness of Hrn. Dr. Joseph Eppinger, Israelite. The first time Beethoven was not at home; his housekeeper opened to us his living-room and study. There everything lay in confusion—scores, shirts, socks, books. The second time he was at home, locked in with two copyists. At the name “Eppinger” he opened the door and excused himself, having a great deal to do, and asked us to come at another time. But, seeing in my hand a roll of music—overture to Schiller’s “Robbers” and a vocal quartet with pianoforte accompaniment, text by Schiller—he took it, sat himself down to the pianoforte and turned all the leaves carefully. Thereupon he jumped up, pounded me on the right shoulder with all his might, and spoke to me the following words which humiliated me because I cannot yet explain them: “I am not worthy that you should visit me!” Was it humility? If so it was divine; if it was irony it was pardonable.
And again:
A few times a week Beethoven came to the publishing house of Steiner and Co. in the forenoon between 11 and 12 o’clock. Nearly every time there was held there a composers’ meeting to exchange musical opinions. Schubert frequently took me there. We regaled ourselves with the pithy, often sarcastic remarks of Beethoven particularly when the talk was about Italian music.
Hüttenbrenner remembered as a common remark in Vienna in those days that what first gave Beethoven his reputation on coming there twenty-four years before, was his superb playing of Bach’s “Well-Tempered Clavichord.”
Two or three minor notes will close the story of the year. In the concert for the Theatrical Poor Fund, in the Theater-an-der-Wien, September 8th, one of the finales to Beethoven’s “Prometheus” music was revived: “A glorious piece worked out in a masterly manner,” says a reporter; and the concert for the Hospital of St. Mark, on December 25, opened with his “Symphony in A, one difficult of execution, which was performed with the greatest precision under the direction of this brilliant composer.” More important was a proposition made early in the year by his old friend Hoffmeister in Leipsic, for a complete edition of his pianoforte works, which came to nothing and concerning which more in another connection. In July he received another series of songs from Thomson which, according to a letter in French to Thomson, dated January 18, 1817, he had already finished by the end of September.
Works Composed and Published in 1816
The works composed in 1816 are:
I. Pianoforte Sonata in A major, Op. 101, dedicated to Baroness Dorothea von Ertmann.[171] Nottebohm’s researches place all the sketches for the sonata in the years 1815 and 1816. (See, “Zweit. Beeth.,” pp. 340 and 552 et seq.)