Thomas Appleby, father of Samuel Appleby, collector of valuable papers referring to the violinist Bridgetower, was a leader in the musical world of Manchester, England, and a principal director of concerts there. When these quartets came out in London, Clementi sent a copy of them to him. They were opened and thrown upon the pianoforte. Next day Felix Radicati and his wife, Mme. Bertinotti, called and presented letters, they being upon a concert tour. During the conversation the Italian went to the pianoforte, took up the quartets and seeing what they were, exclaimed (in substance): “Have you got these here! Ha! Beethoven, as the world says, and as I believe, is music-mad;—for these are not music. He submitted them to me in manuscript and, at his request, I fingered them for him. I said to him, that he surely did not consider these works to be music?—to which he replied, ‘Oh, they are not for you, but for a later age!’”
Young Appleby believed in them, in spite of Radicati, and after he had studied his part thoroughly, his father invited players of the other instruments to his house and the first in F was tried. The first movement was declared by all except Appleby to be “crazy music.” At the end of the violoncello solo on one note, they all burst out laughing; the next four bars all agreed were beautiful. Ludlow, an organist, who played the bass, found so much to admire and so much to condemn in the half of this second movement, which they succeeded in playing, as to call it “patchwork by a madman.” They gave up the attempt to play it, and not until 1813, in London, did the young man succeed in hearing the three Quartets entire, and finding them, as he had believed, worthy of their author.
The Year’s Publications
The Symphony in B-flat, Op. 60, was the great work of this summer season. Sketches prove that its successor, the fifth in C minor, had been commenced, and was laid aside to give place to this. Nothing more is known of the history of its composition except what is imparted by the author’s inscription on the manuscript: “Sinfonia 4ta 1806. L. v. Bthvn.”
In singular contrast to these grand works and contemporary with their completion, as if written for amusement and recreation after the fatigue of severer studies, are the thirty-two Variations for Pianoforte in C minor. They belong to this Autumn, and are among the compositions which their author would gladly have seen pass into oblivion. Jahn’s notes contain an anecdote in point. “Beethoven once found Streicher’s daughter practising these Variations. After he had listened for a while he asked her: “By whom is that?” “By you.” “Such nonsense by me? O Beethoven, what an ass you were!””
Although the composer did not succeed in bringing his new Symphony and Concerto to public performance this year, an opportunity offered itself for him to give the general public as fine a taste of his quality as composer for the violin, as he had just given to the frequenters of Rasoumowsky’s quartet parties in the Op. 59, namely, Op. 61, the work superscribed by its author: Concerto par Clemenza pour Clement, primo Violino e Direttore al Theatro a Vienne, dal L. v. Bthvn., 1806;—or, as it stands on Franz Clement’s concert programme of December 23 in the Theater-an-der-Wien: “2. A new Violin Concerto by Hrn. Ludwig van Beethoven, played by Hrn. Clement.” It was preceded by an overture by Méhul, and followed by selections from Mozart, Cherubini and Handel, closing with a fantasia by the concert-giver. When Dr. Bertolini told Jahn that “Beethoven as a rule never finished commissioned works until the last minute,” he named this Concerto as an instance in point; and another contemporary notes that Clement played the solo a vista, without previous rehearsal. The list of publications this year is short:
LIme Sonata pour le Pianoforte, F major, advertised April 9 in the “Wiener Zeitung” by the Kunst- und Industrie-Comptoir. There is no tradition that Beethoven ever explained why he called this his fifty-first, or the F minor his fifty-fourth Sonata. The best that Czerny could suggest is that “perhaps he sketched that number in manuscript and then destroyed them or used them in another form.” Others have made lists of all the works in sonata-form, including the symphonies; but none has been so probably right as to produce conviction.
Grand Trio pour deux Hautbois et un Cor Anglais, C major, advertised by Artaria and Co., April 12, without opus number. At a later date it was called Op. 87. The same work for two violins and viola, and as a sonata for pianoforte and violin, was advertised at the same time. “Andante” (Favori) in F major, for Pianoforte. This was originally the second movement of the Sonata, Op. 53—according to the anecdote before given from Ries’s “Notizen.”
“Sinfonia eroica,” Op. 55, dedicated to Prince Lobkowitz, advertised by the Kunst- und Industrie-Comptoir on October 29.
Besides these works, Johann Traeg advertised on June 18 “6 Grands Trios pour le Pianoforte, violon obligé et violoncello ad lib.,” Op. 60, Nos. 1 and 2. These are arrangements of the Quartets, Op. 18. Also “3 Grands Trios pour le Pianoforte, Violon et Violoncello,” Op. 61, No. 1; arrangements of the Trios, Op. 9. Before February, 1807, the other numbers of the two works had been completed and had left the press. The opus numbers were not recognized by Beethoven, for, as is seen above, 60 and 61 belong to original works of a very different order.