Does one give it to them and when?
Breakfast?
Beethoven announced his intention to take his nephew to himself at the end of the current quarter in a letter to Giannatasio dated November 12, 1817. The step involved not only an increase in his expenses, but also an abandonment of his engagement with the London Philharmonic Society and of all the profits which might thence arise. Giannatasio, moved by his complaints of poverty, and probably also by a desire to aid him in the proposed visit to London, kindly offered to keep the boy at a much reduced rate of remuneration for board and instruction. Beethoven’s reply shows him to be still undecided as to his movements in the coming spring, and it is possible, could he have made ready the required symphonies, that he might have gone to England; but now the new Sonata had got possession of his imagination, and the symphonies must wait.
But one public appearance professionally of Beethoven is recorded this year. At the concert for the Hospital Fund on December 25, the first part was devoted to the Eighth Symphony, which was conducted by the composer. In the second part Seyfried produced C. P. E. Bach’s oratorio, “The Israelites in the Wilderness,” which he had revised, adding to the accompaniments, curtailing the airs, prefixing it with the well-known fugue on B-A-C-H (orchestrated by himself), and concluding it with the double chorus “Holy, holy, holy.” Nottebohm has shown that the sketches for the overture on the name of the great Leipsic cantor which Beethoven once thought of writing, belong to a later period; but it is yet possible, if not likely, that he conceived the idea at this concert. On November 15, Anton Halm gave a concert for the benefit of the poor in the Kärnthnerthor-Theater at which the Choral Fantasia was performed; but we know nothing of Beethoven’s participation in it in any way.
Fugues and Their Contents
It is probable that to this time is to be assigned a portrait in oils painted by Christoph Heckel, who was a student at the Royal Imperial Academy in Vienna from 1814 to 1818. Beethoven, it is said, made the acquaintance of the painter in Streicher’s pianoforte wareroom. There is but little to be added to what has been said about the compositions of this almost sterile year. The transcription of the Pianoforte Trio as a quintet (which was the largest work of the year), and the “Song of the Monks,” written on the death of Krumpholz, have been mentioned. Besides these we have a few short songs with pianoforte accompaniment. “Nord oder Süd” (also known as “So oder So”), the poem by Karl Lappe, was known and widely liked in a setting by K. Klage. “Resignation” (“Lisch aus mein Licht”), words by Count Paul von Haughwitz, was composed towards the end of the Summer, and the sketches show that Beethoven contemplated a setting for four voices. A Fugue in D major, for five stringed instruments, was completed on November 28, 1817, and was designed for the manuscript collection of Beethoven’s works projected by Haslinger, who published it soon after Beethoven’s death in 1827, as Op. 137. Beethoven was particularly interested in fugues at the time. “To make a fugue requires no particular skill,” he said later to Holz; “in my study days I made dozens of them. But the fancy wishes also to assert its privileges, and to-day a new and really poetical element must be introduced into the old traditional form.” The sketches for the conclusion of the Quintet fugue (Nottebohm, “Zweite Beethoveniana,” p. 350) are mixed with notes from Bach and others showing how zealous were his studies in the form at that time. The year also saw work done on the Pianoforte Sonata in B-flat, Op. 106, and the beginning of the Symphony in D minor.
The list of publications for the year is also very small:
1. Sonata for Pianoforte, A major, Op. 101; Steiner and Co.
2. Two Sonatas for Pianoforte and Violoncello, Op. 102, published, apparently in January, 1817, by Simrock in Bonn, and in 1819 by Artaria in Vienna.