Duport has consented to next Tuesday for the concert. For the Landständischen Saal, which I might have had for to-morrow, he again refuses to let me have the singers. He has also again referred me to the police; therefore please go there with the bill and learn if there is any objection to the second time. I would never have accepted the favors done me gratis and will not. As for friendship that is a difficult thing in your case. In no event would I like to entrust my welfare to you since you lack judgment and act arbitrarily, and I learned some time ago to know you from a side which is not to your credit; and so did others. I must confess that the purity of my character does not permit me to recompense mere favors with friendship, although I am ready willingly to serve your welfare.
B——n.
Financial Failure Repeated
A second concert had been contemplated from the outset, or at least since the opening of negotiations with Palfy. Schindler says that Duport offered to pay all expenses and guarantee 500 florins Convention Coin (1200 florins Vienna Standard) with the understanding that the profits should be divided equally between Beethoven and the exchequer of the theatre. But he wanted a change made in the programme. To this change, obviously designed as a concession to the popular taste, Beethoven seems to have given his consent. The concert took place on Sunday, May 23rd, at midday—half-past 12 o’clock. Of the missal hymns only one, the Kyrie, was performed; between the overture and it Beethoven’s trio, “Tremate, empj, tremate,” was sung by Madame Dardanelli and Signori Donzelli and Botticelli. The original solo singers sang in the Kyrie and the Symphony, which numbers were separated by Rossini’s “Di tanti palpiti” in a transposed key sung by the tenor David “almost throughout in a falsetto voice.” Schindler says that Sontag also sang her favorite aria di bravura by Mercadante, but of this number there is no mention on the affiche. The delightful weather lured the people into the open air, the house was not half full and there was, in consequence, a deficit of 800 florins. Nor was the popular demonstration of enthusiasm over the music so great as at the first concert, and Beethoven, who had not favored the repetition, was so disheartened that he was with difficulty persuaded to accept the 500 florins which Duport had guaranteed to him. He was also vexed to find his old trio announced as a novelty (it was composed more than twenty years before and had been performed in 1814), and so was Tobias Haslinger, who had bought but had not published it. Moreover, Haslinger had been overlooked in the distribution of complimentary tickets. Beethoven had to apologize to him for the oversight, which he protested was due to an inadvertence, and also to explain that the announcement of the trio as a new work was of Duport’s doing, not his.
Chapter VI
Incidents and Labors of 1824—Bernard’s Oratorio—Visitors at Baden—New Publishers—A Visitor from London—Beethoven’s Opinion of his Predecessors—The Quartet in E-flat, Op. 127.
At the end of the chapter preceding the last, which recorded the doings of the year 1823, Beethoven was left in his lodgings in the Ungargasse, occupied with work upon the Ninth Symphony, which was approaching completion, oppressed with anxiety concerning his health and worried about his brother’s domestic affairs. As the story of his life is resumed with the year 1824, there has been no serious change in his physical condition, but complaints of ill health are frequent in his communications with his friends. His eyes continue to trouble him till late in March; Schindler cautions him not to rub them, as that might increase the inflammation; Karl suggests buying a shade to protect them from the glare of the light; and when Count Brunswick wants to take him along with him to Hungary, Schindler advises him to take the trip, as it might be beneficial for his eyes.
Kind Interest in Karl’s Mother
For a moment we have a glimpse at the gentler side of the composer’s nature in a letter which he sends when the year is about a week old to the widow of his brother, the wicked mother of his adopted son, in lieu of the New Year’s call which they had been prevented by work from making. He should have come to wish her happiness for the year, he says, had he been able: “but I know that, nevertheless, you expect nothing but the best of good wishes for your welfare from me as well as Karl.” She had complained of being in need, and he says he would gladly have helped her, but had himself too many expenditures, debts and delayed receipts to prove his willingness at the moment; but he would now give it to her “in writing” that thenceforth she might retain the portion of her pension which had been set apart for her son. If, in the future, he could give her money to better her condition, he would willingly do so; moreover, he had long before assumed the debt of 280 florins and 20 kreutzers which she owed Steiner. Manifestly a truce had been established between the woman and her brother-in-law, and in the absence of any evidence that she was in any way concerned in an escapade of Karl’s later in the year, it would appear that she never violated it; it was not the woman whom Beethoven hated, but the youth whom he loved, who brought grief and an almost broken heart into his last days. Nevertheless, there is more than passive contentment exhibited in this letter; there is also an active magnanimity which finds even warmer expression in a letter which he seems to have written at an earlier date to his friend Bernard. Bernard[116] had been helpful to Beethoven in drawing up the memorial to the court in the matter of the guardianship and was among the friends whom Beethoven consulted about Karl’s education and bringing up. To him Beethoven writes: