The book of “The Victory of the Cross” was based upon the ancient story of the apparition of the cross and the legend “In hoc signo vinces” to Constantine the Great. Constantine has crossed the Alps into Italy and lies encamped confronting his enemy Maxentius before Rome. His daughter Julia, who is represented as wife to Maxentius, attempts to avert the battle, but the vision strengthens Constantine’s resolve. Julia hears the angelic canticles which accompany the apparition and is converted to the true faith, persisting in it to martyrdom, to which she is condemned by her husband. Maxentius also hears the voices, but his augurs (allegorical figures representing Hate and Discord) interpret them to his advantage, whereas similar figures (Faith, Hope and Charity) inspire the Christian army. Pious canticles on the one hand, harsh songs on the other, precede the battle, the progress of which is related by a solo voice. Constantine promises to raise the cross on the forum in Rome; the victory is won and celebrated with Christian hymns, “Hosanna!” and “Glory to God!” Beethoven’s copy of the libretto has been preserved, and in it there are indications that he made some heroic excisions. He permitted Faith, Hope and Charity to remain, but banished Hate and Discord. It is pretty plain that Beethoven found nothing inspiring in the work. Holz told Jahn that he said to him, “How could I get up any enthusiasm about it?” Schindler says that Beethoven’s failure to set the book caused a rupture of the friendship which existed between him and Bernard. The directors of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde dropped the matter, neither importuning Beethoven more nor taking any steps to recover the money paid on account.
One outcome of the concerts of May was the appearance of a new portrait of Beethoven. It was a lithographic reproduction of a crayon drawing made by Stephen Decker and was printed as a supplement to the “Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung” edited by F. A. Kanne, on June 6, 1824. In this and two subsequent numbers of the journal (June 9 and 16) Kanne reviewed the concerts with discriminating appreciation, ending with an enthusiastic encomium of the composer. In 1827 Steinmüller made a plate of Decker’s drawing for Artaria. Schindler and Frimmel agree in saying that the well-known portrait by Kriehuber is an imitation of Decker’s drawing, which was made, as Kanne’s journal stated, “a few days after his great concert in May, 1824.”[117]
During the preparations for the concerts, thought was also given to the usual summer sojourn, and various places—Grinzing, Heiligenstadt, Penzing, Breitensee, Hietzing, Hetzendorf—were canvassed in consultation with Beethoven by his friends. His brother had again offered him a home on his estate and it was expected that Count Brunswick would come for the concert and take Beethoven back with him to Hungary. In all of the excursions which were made in the vicinity of Schönbrunn in search of a summer home, Schindler accompanied the composer to see, to advise, to negotiate. The choice fell upon Penzing, where an apartment was found in the first storey of the house numbered 43 belonging to a tailor in Vienna named Johann Hörr, who was rejoiced to have so distinguished a tenant. Beethoven took it for the summer beginning on May 1, for a rental of 180 florins, C. M. The receipt is in existence, with a characteristic memorial of Beethoven’s violent and abrupt change of mind concerning men and things. The lodgings were in all things adapted to his needs and Beethoven, entirely satisfied, moved into them soon after the second concert. An old couple lived in the parterre, but otherwise he was the only tenant of the house. But the house lay close to a foot-bridge over the little stream called the Wien Fluss and people crossing it frequently stopped to gaze into his rooms. He could have saved himself the annoyance by drawing the curtains, but instead he flew into a rage, quarrelled with his landlord, against whom he recorded his anger by scrawling the epithet “Schurke” (rogue, wretch, scoundrel, etc.) under his name on the receipt, and removing to Baden (Gutenbrunn). He had been in the house six weeks; in Baden he staid from about the 1st of August till some time in November; and thus was again paying rent for three lodgings at the same time.
Two New Offers of the Mass in D
The matter of the subscriptions for the Mass being disposed of (except so far as the deliveries of some of the scores was concerned), and the Symphony completed, Beethoven now had time, while getting ready for their performance, to think also of their publication. As he had promised to deliver the Mass to Simrock long before, so also he had contracted to give exclusive possession of the Symphony for eighteen months to the Philharmonic Society of London, in March, 1823. It was eleven months after that date that the score was finished and thirteen months before it was placed in the hands of the Philharmonic Society’s agent in Vienna. Hogarth in his history of the Philharmonic Society is only technically correct when he says that it was not “received” by the society until “after it had been performed at Vienna.” It was handed to Ries’s representative on April 26 or 27, 1824; the first concert took place on May 7th. When Beethoven took up the matter of publication again he ignored Simrock, Peters, Schlesinger and the Vienna publishers and turned to Schott and Sons of Mayence and H. A. Probst of Leipsic. Schott and Sons had sent him their journal “Cäcilia” with the request that he recommend a correspondent in the Austrian capital, and also send them some compositions for publication. He answered on March 10, 1824, that he would gladly serve the paper if it were not that he felt it to be a higher and more natural calling to manifest himself through his musical compositions; but he had instigated a search for a fit man to act as Viennese reviewer. Of his compositions he offered “a new Grand Mass with solo and chorus and full orchestra” which he considered his “greatest work,” and a new Grand Symphony with a finale in the style of his Pianoforte Fantasia with chorus “but on a much larger scale”; also a new quartet for strings.[118] The fees demanded were 1000 florins C. M. for the Mass, 600 florins for the Symphony and 50 ducats for the Quartet. “This business only to oblige you.” On the same day he wrote to H. A. Probst offering the Mass and Symphony at the same prices but stipulating that the latter should not be published before July, 1825, though, to recompense the publisher for the delay, he would let him have the pianoforte arrangement gratis. Only a portion of this letter has been preserved, but the contents of the lost fragment can be gathered from Probst’s answer under date March 22, in which he promises to deposit at once with Joseph Loydl and Co. 100 imperial ducats to Beethoven’s account, to be paid over on delivery of three songs with pianoforte accompaniment (two of them to have parts for other instruments, the third to be an arietta), six bagatelles for pianoforte solo, and a grand overture with pianoforte arrangement for 2 and 4 hands. What these works were may easily be guessed. After this business had been arranged to the satisfaction of both parties, Probst said, he would communicate his decision respecting the Mass. Beethoven wrote, probably on July 3, explaining his delay on the score that the compositions “had just been finished” but were now ready for delivery at any moment to Herrn Glöggl, to whom he requested that the money be sent. On August 9, Probst informed Beethoven that the 100 ducats had already been sent to Loydl and Co., in Vienna. A letter written by Beethoven on the same day has been lost, but a portion of its contents can be deduced from Probst’s reply a week later—August 16. The Leipsic publisher admitted that his action in depositing the money to be delivered in exchange for the manuscripts had been due to reports which had reached him touching difficulties which another publisher had had with the composer. In purchasing manuscripts without examination he was departing from his established rule of action and he trusted to the admiration which he felt for the composer’s genius that the latter had set apart works of excellence for him. He would gladly have published the Symphony, but was deterred by the danger of piracy which was peculiarly great in Austria. He promised a speedy and handsome publication of the works purchased. A memorandum by Beethoven indicates that he answered this letter, but the nature of his reply is not known. It is to be presumed that he withdrew his offer of the Symphony. The correspondence with Probst ended and the negotiations, which had again reached the point of a deposit of the fee against the delivery of the manuscripts, came to nothing; Schott and Sons secured not only the Mass, Symphony and Quartet, but the smaller pieces also. Schott and Sons Buy the Mass The firm accepted the offer of the Quartet at once, but asked either a reduction of the fees for the Symphony and Mass, or permission to pay the money in installments at intervals of six months. Subsequently the firm offered to provide a guaranty for the deferred payments and to consider any proposition which Beethoven had to make. The two letters, dated respectively March 24 and April 10, remaining unanswered, Schott and Sons again wrote on April 19 and still again on April 27; introducing with the former letter Christian Rummel, Chapelmaster of the Duke of Nassau, and asking a contribution to “Cäcilia” in the latter. In the midst of his preparations for the concert, Beethoven replied and repeated his offer of the Mass and Symphony, but held the matter of the Quartet in abeyance. He asked that payment for the other works be made by bills drawn on a Vienna bank payable 600 florins in one month, 500 florins in two months and 600 florins in four months. On July 3 he also conceded the Quartet, which he promised to deliver inside of six weeks. With this the business was concluded and, as an undated letter of Beethoven’s shows, much to his gratification; the business methods of Schott and Sons were extremely satisfactory to him. But the year came to an end, and the Mayence publishers were still waiting for their manuscripts, while Beethoven was kept busy writing explanations in answer to their questions and requests. On September 17 Beethoven says he will attend to the copying of the works as soon as he has returned to Vienna, and send the Quartet by the middle of October; in November he is obliged to give two lessons a day to Archduke Rudolph and has no time to look after the matter; on December 5 the works are most certainly to be delivered to Fries and Co. within the current week; on December 17 it will be another week before the works can be delivered—the Archduke has but gone and he must look through the copy of the score several times—and he begs his correspondents not to think ill of him, for he had “never done anything wrong,” intimating that a certain publisher in Vienna was trying to seduce him from the Mayence firm and to that end was seeking to make them suspicious, etc.; meanwhile he offers for publication the overture which had been performed at his concert, six bagatelles and three songs in behalf of his brother to whom they belong, the price 130 ducats in gold. These were the works which Probst had agreed to purchase for 100 ducats and the money for which had been sent to Vienna. Schott agreed to buy them for 130 ducats and Beethoven wrote to his brother in Gneixendorf on December 24: “I inform you that Mayence will give 130 ducats in gold for your works: if Herr Probst will not pay as much, give them to Mayence, who will at once send you a cheque; these are really honest, not mean, business men.” Johann promptly put himself in communication with Schott and Sons and graciously confirmed the sale of the works at 130 florins, “out of respect” for his brother.
Peters, who had been informed of the state of affairs concerning the Mass, evidently sent a complaint, or protest, to Beethoven, for on December 12, 1824, the latter informs the publisher that the case has been closed by his promise of the work to another publisher. He (Peters) should have received a quartet had the publishers who took the Mass not made the Quartet a condition of his acceptance. But he should surely have another quartet soon, or he was ready to make him a proposition for a larger work, in which case the sum which had been paid might be deducted from the new fee. Let Peters but be patient and he should be completely satisfied. Then follows this rebuke:
You did wrong to yourself and to me, and you are still doing the latter in, as I hear, accusing me of having sent you inferior works. Did you not yourself ask for songs and bagatelles? Afterward it occurred to you that the fee was too large and that a larger work might have been had for it. That you showed yourself to be a poor judge of art in this is proved by the fact that several of these works have been and will be published, and such a thing never happened to me before.[119] As soon as I can I will liquidate my indebtedness to you, and meanwhile I remain, etc.
In September of this year the interest of Beethoven’s old friend Andreas Streicher, whose wife was a visitor at Baden, seems to have been awakened in a marked degree, and he gave himself to the devising of plans to ameliorate the composer’s financial position. He revived the project for a complete edition of the compositions which, as he outlines it, he thinks might yield a profit of 10,000 florins, good money; proposes six high-class subscription concerts in the approaching winter, which, with 600 subscribers, would yield 4,800 florins; finally he suggests that manuscript copies of the Mass in D with pianoforte or organ accompaniment be sold to a number of singing societies. Though this project had in a measure been attempted in the case of the Singverein of Berlin and achieved in that of the Cäcilienverein of Frankfort, Beethoven seems to have authorized Streicher to make an effort in the direction proposed, for two copies of a letter evidently written to be communicated to singing societies or representative members have been found. In the letter Beethoven suggests that owing to the cost of copying, etc., the price be 50 ducats—just as much as he had asked of his royal subscribers for the full orchestral score. None of the projects came to execution, though the first, which lay close to Beethoven’s heart, came up for attention at a later date.
Praise for England and the English
Towards the end of September, Johann Stumpff, a native of Thuringia but a resident of London, was among the visitors at Baden who were admitted to intimate association with Beethoven. This was another Stumpff, not the one who came to Vienna in 1818 with a letter from Thomas Broadwood, and who tuned the new English pianoforte. He was a manufacturer of harps and an enthusiastic admirer of Beethoven’s music. Anticipating a meeting with the composer, he had provided himself with a letter of introduction to Haslinger, whose help to that end he asked. He had also gotten a letter from Streicher, whose acquaintance he had made in London. He accomplished his end and wrote a long and enthusiastic account of his intercourse with Beethoven at Baden, whither Haslinger had accompanied him on his first visit.[120] He was received by Beethoven with extraordinary cordiality. The composer accepted an invitation to dinner, entertained his host at dinner in return, played for him on his Broadwood pianoforte (after Stein, at Stumpff’s request, had restored its ruins), and at parting gave him a print of one of his portraits and promised to alight at his house if ever he came to London. Much of his conversation, which Stumpff records, is devoted to a condemnation of the frivolity and bad musical taste of the Viennese, and excessive laudation of everything English. “Beethoven,” Stumpff remarks, “had an exaggerated opinion of London and its highly cultured inhabitants,” and he quotes Beethoven as saying: “England stands high in culture. In London everybody knows something and knows it well; but the man of Vienna can only talk of eating and drinking, and sings and pounds away at music of little significance or of his own making.” He spoke a great deal about sending his nephew to London to make a man of him, asked questions about the cost of living there and, in short, gave proof that an English visit was filling a large part of his thoughts. The incidents of the conclusion of the dinner which he gave to Stumpff may be told in the latter’s words: