How are your young princes? Will you be at home this afternoon at 5 o’clock? Perhaps I’ll visit you together with my state burden.
Bad Conduct of Nephew Karl
Nephew Karl remained at Blöchlinger’s institute and continued to cause worry and anxiety to his uncle. Reports concerning his conduct and studies were variable from different persons and at different times. Blöchlinger complained that he needed constant supervision: “Had we not always been strict with him, he would not be where he is now.” A cleric declares that he was at heart not a bad child but had been harmed by bad examples. “Karl has little feeling and in spite of the knowledge for which he is praised he has no reasoning powers,” writes an unidentified person in the Conversation Book, surely not to the satisfaction of the uncle who was always setting forth his nephew’s exceptional talent. In June somebody else (this time it may have been Oliva) feels constrained to write: “The boy lies every time he opens his mouth.” The “terrible occurrence” which had almost crushed Beethoven in December, 1818, repeats itself, fortunately without such dire results to the too sympathetic uncle: In June, instead of coming to an oral examination, Karl ran away to his mother. Madame Blöchlinger had to take a coach and servant and bring him back to the school; and to get him away from Madame van Beethoven, who was disposed to keep him in concealment, had to promise to see to it that he should not be punished for his naughtiness. Now Blöchlinger, who says that the presence of Madame van Beethoven “poisons the air,” wants the woman excluded from his house and asks for a power of attorney to call in the help of the police every time that Karl shall go to his mother, whom he calls a “notorious strumpet,” of whose presence in his house he must needs be ashamed. All this was told to Beethoven by Bernard, who had learned it from Blöchlinger. Beethoven went for advice to Bach, who told his client that it was impracticable to get a judicial writ against the mother enjoining her from meeting her son, and impossible to prevent secret meetings and secret correspondence. The practical solution of the problem was to have Blöchlinger refuse to admit the woman to his institute and compel her to see Karl at his uncle’s home. This would serve the purpose to some extent, as the mother did not like to meet her brother-in-law.
The enthronization of Beethoven’s imperial pupil as Archbishop of Olmütz took place on March 20. The Mass which was to have been the composer’s tribute was still unfinished. The reader knows why, or at least has been provided with an opportunity to form an opinion as to the reason. It may have been for the purpose of offering an explanation to the new dignitary of the church, that Beethoven sought an audience as he states in a letter of April 3. The Archducal Archbishop had gone to Olmütz and Beethoven wants to know his plans for the immediate future. He had heard that H. I. H. was to return to Vienna in May, but also that he intended to be absent for a year and a half. If so, Beethoven deplores that he has made plans for himself which are unwise. He begs H. I. H. not to give credence to the false reports concerning himself (Beethoven) which might reach his ears: “If Y. I. H. calls me one of your most treasured objects, I can honestly say that Y. I. H. is to me one of the most treasured objects in the universe. Although I am no courtier, I believe that Y. I. H. has learned to know me well enough to know that no cold interest, but a sincere affection, has always attached me to yourself and inspired me; and I might well say that Blondel was found long ago, and if no Richard is to be found in the world for me, God will be my Richard.” He has evidently concerned himself about the music at the court in Olmütz: “It appears to me that my idea to maintain a quartet will certainly be the best thing to do. If there are already productions on a large scale in Olmütz, something admirable might arise in Moravia through a quartet.” He advises his pupil, in case it is his purpose to return in May, to keep his compositions till then so as to play them first to him; but if his stay is to be longer, he will receive the compositions with the greatest pleasure and seek to guide H. I. H. “to the highest peaks of Parnassus.”
A Punning Canon on Hofmann
A reference to himself as one who was at court yet not a courtier had been made by Beethoven in an earlier letter. This play on words seems to have been much in his head about this time and it is small wonder that when an opportunity offered for the employment of the pun in a canon it should have been embraced; in fact, it looks as if possibly he had strained for the occasion, unless it should appear from evidence yet to be found that “One who was named Hoffmann,” in Beethoven’s words, was, as was long believed, the redoubtable E. T. A. Hoffmann, who had surely deserved the tribute contained in a canon which Beethoven wrote at this time. In the Conversation Book used in March, 1820, a strange hand writes: “In the Phantasie-Stücke by Hoffmann, you are often spoken of. Hoffmann was musical director in Bamberg; he is now Government Councillor. Operas of his composition are performed in Berlin.” Beethoven remarks, in writing: “Hofmann du bist kein Hofmann.” Later in a conversation held at table, these words occur twice: “Hŏfmānn ÷ sei ja kein Hōfmănn—nein ÷ ÷ ÷ ich heisse Hŏfmānn und bin kein Hōfmănn.” These words are preceded by a measure of music, the beginning of the canon in question. Did Beethoven thus honor the fantastic poet, musician, novelist, essayist, singer, scene-painter and theatrical manager who had shown such keen critical appreciation of his symphonies? It was long a pleasure to believe so and natural, too, until Nottebohm came with his iconoclastic evidence to the contrary. On March 23 Beethoven had written a letter to Hoffmann, expressing his gratification at having won the good opinion of a man gifted with such excellent attributes as Hoffmann possessed. Had he written the canon at this time he would surely have enclosed it in this letter and then, since it was preserved among Hoffmann’s papers, it would have been found and given to the world with the letter. But Beethoven kept the canon in his mind or had a copy of it, and printed it in 1825, when B. Schott’s Sons in Mayence asked him for a contribution to their musical journal “Cäcilia,” which had been founded a year before. Now comes Nottebohm with his evidence in the case. A man named Gross was once the owner of the autograph and his son told Nottebohm that it had been written in the Matschaker Hof, a tavern at which Beethoven was dining at the time, and referred to a church musician named Vincenz Hoffmann, as the informant remembered the name. Nottebohm looked through the official lists of musicians in Vienna in the first decades of the century; he did not find a Vincenz, but did find a Joachim Hoffmann who might have been an acquaintance of Beethoven’s; and so he set him down as the recipient of the composer’s tribute.[29]
In the summer of 1820, Beethoven went to Mödling again, but he did not take the lodgings in the Harfner house for the very sufficient reason that the proprietor had served notice on him in 1819, that he could not have it longer on account of the noisy disturbances which had taken place there. He took a house instead in the Babenbergerstrasse and paid twelve florins extra for the use of a balcony which commanded a view which was essential to his happiness. He takes the baths and receives a visit from his nephew, who probably stays with him during his school vacation; at any rate, the boy does not return to Vienna until October 5, on which day the Giannatasios, making an excursion to Mödling, meet him with Karl driving to town. There is at this time considerable talk in the Conversation Book of publishing a complete edition of Beethoven’s works. Bernard, probably, tells him that Steiner is already counting on it and Schindler, who is enthusiastic over the project, gives it as his opinion that arrangements must be made with a Vienna publisher so as to avoid voluminous correspondence. Somebody remarks: “Eckstein will so arrange it that you will always get all the profits and will also publish your future works as your property. He thinks that every fourth or fifth piece should be a new one.” The plan appealed strongly to Beethoven, but nothing came of it at the time, though we shall hear of it later. It was the discussion of it, probably, by his friends which brought out a letter from Beethoven to Haslinger, “best of Adjutants,” asking him to decide a bet. Beethoven had wagered 10 florins that it was not true that the Steiners had been obliged to pay Artaria 2000 florins damages for having published Mozart’s works, which were reprinted universally.
Towards the end of October, Beethoven returned to Vienna and took lodgings at No. 244 Hauptstrasse in the Landstrasse, “the large house of the Augustinians” beside the church. There he was visited by Dr. W. Chr. Müller of Bremen, a philologist and musical amateur who had long admired Beethoven and, with the help of his “Family Concerts,” established in 1782, had created such a cult for Beethoven’s music as existed in no city in Germany in the second decade of the nineteenth century—according to Schindler. Müller’s daughter Elise played the sonatas exceptionally well and was largely instrumental with her father in creating this cult. Müller was making an Italian tour, visited Vienna in October and November and published an account of his meetings with Beethoven in the “Allg. Musik. Zeit.” in 1827. In this he tells of Beethoven’s freedom of speech at public eating-houses, where he would criticize the Austrian government, the morals of the aristocracy, the police, etc., without stint. The police paid no attention to his utterances, either because they looked upon him as a harmless fantastic or had an overwhelming respect for his artistic genius. “Hence,” says Dr. Müller, “his opinion that nowhere was speech freer than in Vienna; but his ideal of a political constitution was the English one.” It was through Dr. Müller that we know somewhat of Beethoven’s views on the subject of analytical programmes. Among the zealous promoters of the Beethoven cult in Bremen, was a young poet named Dr. Karl Iken, editor of the “Bremer Zeitung,” who, inspired by the Familien-Concerte, conceived the idea of helping the public to an understanding of Beethoven’s music by writing programmatic expositions of the symphonies for perusal before the concerts. Some of his lucubrations were sent to Beethoven by Dr. Müller, and aroused the composer’s ire. Schindler found four of these “programmes” among Beethoven’s papers, and he gave the world a specimen. In the Seventh Symphony, Dr. Iken professed to see a political revolution.
“Programme” for the Seventh Symphony
The sign of revolt is given; there is a rushing and running about of the multitude; an innocent man, or party, is surrounded, overpowered after a struggle and haled before a legal tribunal. Innocency weeps; the judge pronounces a harsh sentence; sympathetic voices mingle in laments and denunciations—they are those of widows and orphans; in the second part of the first movement the parties have become equal in numbers and the magistrates are now scarcely able to quiet the wild tumult. The uprising is suppressed, but the people are not quieted; hope smiles cheeringly and suddenly the voice of the people pronounces the decision in harmonious agreement.... But now, in the last movement, the classes and the masses mix in a variegated picture of unrestrained revelry. The quality still speak aloofly in the wind-instruments,—strange bacchantic madness in related chords—pauses, now here, now there—now on a sunny hill, anon on flowery meadow where in merry May all the jubilating children of nature vie with each other with joyful voices—float past the fancy.