The Life of Ludwig van Beethoven, Volume II

by Alexander Wheelock Thayer

Please be so kind as to give this to the copyist to-morrow—it concerns the symphony as you see—in case he is not through with the quartet to-morrow, take it away and deliver it at the Industriecomptoir.... You may say to my brother that I shall certainly not write to him again. I know the cause, it is this, because he has lent me money and spent some on my account he is already concerned, I know my brothers, since I cannot yet pay it back to him, and the other probably who is filled with the spirit of revenge against me and him too—it were best if I were to collect the whole 1500 florins (from the Industriecomptoir) and pay him with it, then the matter will be at an end—heaven forefend that I should be obliged to receive benefactions from my brothers.[55]

Beethoven.

Of all the known letters of Beethoven, perhaps no one is so much to be regretted as this, written near the end of 1807, just when the contracts with the Kunst- und Industrie-Comptoir, and Simrock—he had received nothing as yet on the Clementi contract—made his pecuniary resources abundant, doubtless increased by a handsome honorarium out of the receipts of the Liebhaber Concerts. True, the letter was intended for Gleichenstein’s eye alone; still it is sad to know that even in a moment of spleen or anger and in the privacy of intimate friendship, the great master could so far forget his own dignity, and write thus abusively of his brother Johann, whose claim was just and whose future career was dependent upon its payment at this time.

The case, in few words, was this:—Eleonore Ordley, sole heir of her sister, Theresia Tiller, was, in the autumn of 1807, seeking a purchaser for the house and “registered apothecary shop” which, until 1872, still existed directly between the market-place and the bridge at Linz on the Danube, and was willing to dispose of them on such terms of payment, as to render it possible even for Johann van Beethoven with his slender means to become their owner. “I know my brothers,” writes Beethoven. His brothers also knew him; and Johann had every reason to fear that if he did not secure his debt now when his brother’s means were abundant, he might at the crisis of his negotiation find himself penniless. His demand was too just to be resisted and Gleichenstein evidently drew the money from the Kunst- und Industrie-Comptoir and paid it; for on the 13th of March, 1808, the contract of sale was signed at Vienna. By the terms of the contract which fixed the price at 25,000 florins, the vendee agreed to assume incumbrances on the property amounting to 12,600 florins, pay 10,400 florins in cash and 5% interest on 2,000 florins to the vendor during her life, and to be in Linz and take possession of the property on or before March 20, i. e., within a week after the signing of the contract.

The expenses incurred in the negotiations, in his journey to Linz, and in taking possession, left the indigent purchaser barely funds sufficient to make his first payment and ratify the contract; in fact, he had only 300 florins left. The profits of his shop and the rents of his house were so small, that Johann was almost at his wit’s end how to meet his next engagements. He sold the iron gratings of the windows—but they produced too little to carry him through. It was a comical piece of good luck for him that the jars and pots upon his shelves were of pure, solid English tin—a metal which Napoleon’s non-intercourse decrees fulminated against England had just then raised enormously in price. The cunning apothecary sold his tin, furnished his shop with earthenware, and met his payments with the profits of the transaction. But it is an ill wind that blows nobody any good; the reverses of the Austrian arms in April, 1809, opened the road for the French armies to Linz, and gave Apothecary Beethoven an opportunity to make large contracts for the supply of medicines to the enemy’s commissariat, which not only relieved him in his present necessities but laid the foundation for his subsequent moderate fortune.

This concise record of facts effectually disposes of the current errors, which are, first: that about 1802-3 Beethoven established his brother in Linz as apothecary, advancing to him the necessary capital; second: that, through his personal influence, he obtained for Johann profitable contracts with the Austrian Commissariat for medicines—which contracts were the basis of his subsequent prosperity; third: that consequently, in obtaining monies from his brother, Beethoven was only sharing in the profits on capital furnished by himself; and, fourth: that hence, Johann’s urgent request for payment in 1807 was an exhibition of vile selfishness and base ingratitude! All this is the exact reverse of the truth.

No other performances of Beethoven’s works at the Liebhaber Concerts, than those before enumerated, are reported; perhaps none were given, for reasons indicated in a letter from Stephan von Breuning to Wegeler, written in March, 1808: “Beethoven came near losing a finger by a Panaritium [felon], but he is again in good health. He escaped a great misfortune, which, added to his deafness, would have completely ruined his good humor, which, as it is, is of rare occurrence.”

The series of concerts closed with the famous one of March 27th, at which in honor of Haydn, whose 76th birthday fell on the 31st, his “Creation” with Carpani’s Italian text was given. It is pleasant to know that Beethoven was one of those who, “with members of the high nobility,” stood at the door of the hall of the university to receive the venerable guest on his arrival there in Prince Esterhazy’s coach, and who accompanied him as “sitting in an armchair he was carried, lifted high, and on his entrance into the hall was received with the sound of trumpets and drums by the numerous gathering and greeted with joyous shouts of ‘Long live Haydn!’”

Some pains have been taken in other chapters to show that the want of taste and appreciation so often alleged for the works of Beethoven at Vienna is a mistake. On the contrary, generally in the concerts of those years, whenever an orchestra equal to the task was engaged, few as his published orchestral compositions then were, they are as often to be found on the programmes as those of Mozart or even Haydn; none were more likely to fill the house. Thus, immediately after the close of the Liebhaber Concerts, Sebastian Meier’s annual benefit in the Theater-an-der-Wien opened with the “Sinfonia Eroica.” This was on Monday evening, April 11. Two days after (13th) the Charity Institute’s Concert in the Burg Theatre offered a programme of six numbers; No. 1 was Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony in B-flat; No. 5, one of his Pianoforte Concertos, played by Friedrich Stein; and No. 6, the “Coriolan” Overture—all directed by the composer; and, at a benefit concert in May, in the Augartensaal, occurred the first known public performance of the Triple Concerto, Op. 56.