“Yes, if he is studied, and for that there is now no time.”
I took the liberty of writing: “As you yourself, a peerless artist in the art of music, exalt the merits of Handel so highly above all, you must certainly own the scores of his principal works.”
“I? How should I, a poor devil, have gotten them? Yes, the scores of ‘The Messiah’ and ‘Alexander’s Feast’ went through my hands.”
If it is possible for a blind man to help a cripple, and the two attain an end which would be impossible to either one unaided, why might not in the present case a similar result be effected by a similar coöperation? At that moment I made a secret vow: Beethoven, you shall have the works for which your heart is longing if they are anywhere to be found.
Stumpff relates that Beethoven’s brother, who came into the room during his visit, seemed glad to greet him and begged him most amiably to call on him, as he desired to talk with him about a number of things. In saying farewell Beethoven accompanied him to the door and said: “That is my brother—have nothing to do with him—he is not an honest man. You will hear me accused of many wrong actions of which he has been guilty.” Stumpff returned to London on December 6. He fulfilled his vow touching the gift of Handel’s works two years later.
On November 17, 1824, as the autograph attests, Beethoven wrote a four-part canon on the words “Schwenke dich ohne Schwänke,” which he sent to Schott and Sons for publication in the “Cäcilia,” where it appeared in April, 1825. There the title is “Canon on one who was called Schwenke.” The person whose name has thus been perpetuated was Carl Schwenke, son of Christian Friedrich Gottlieb Schwenke, Director of Church Music and Cantor at the Johanneum in Hamburg. Of the acquaintanceship between Beethoven and him, the canon is the only relic.
In the latter part of the summer Beethoven accepted a commission from Diabelli for “a Sonata in F for pianoforte, four hands.” The project seems to have originated with the publisher, who asked for such a composition and specified the key in a letter dated August 7, 1824. Beethoven waited a fortnight before replying and then agreed to compose the work for a fee of 80 ducats in gold, although a sonata for four hands was not in his line. He mentioned the composition and the fee which he was to receive for it in the draft for a letter to Schlesinger next year, but never wrote the work; nor have any certain traces of it been found in the sketchbooks.
The Quartet in E-flat, Op. 127
There is only one other work which calls for attention as having largely occupied Beethoven’s mind this year. It is the Quartet for Strings in E-flat, Op. 127. When Beethoven in January, 1823, accepted the invitation of Prince Galitzin to write three quartets for him, he had for some time been contemplating a return to the field which he had cultivated so successfully but had permitted to lie fallow after the completion of the quartet in F minor, Op. 95, in October, 1810. He had held out a promise for speedy delivery of a quartet to Peters on June 5, 1822, but Peters declined the work in his next letter. Galitzin sent the stipulated fee of 50 ducats promptly to his bankers in Vienna, but subsequently yielded to Beethoven’s request and permitted the money to be applied to his subscription for the Mass. On March 10, 1824, Beethoven offered “a new quartet” to Schott and Sons for 50 ducats and the publishers promptly notified their acceptance of the offer to him. Neate was informed by a letter dated March 19 that the Quartet was finished; but, as usual, the word was used in a Pickwickian sense. The correspondence with Schott and Sons sings the same tune with respect to the Quartet that it does regarding Mass and Symphony. On May 20 Beethoven cannot positively promise it; on July 3 he is sure that the publishers will receive it in six weeks; on September 17 the time of delivery is postponed to the middle of October; in November to the beginning of December; and on December 17 he says there is still something to be written on it. All the works which Schott and Sons have bought are to be delivered at one time, yet when they receive the Mass and Symphony on January 16, 1825, the Quartet is withheld but promised in another week, and, after a month has passed, in still another week. The Quartet is performed for the first time by Schuppanzigh on March 6, 1825. At last Beethoven writes to Schott and Sons on May 7, 1825: “You will have received the Quartet by this time—it is the one promised to you.” In March, 1826, its publication is announced in the “Cäcilia.” The autograph of the first movement is dated “1824” and no doubt the bulk of the work upon it was done in the latter part of the year, though it must have existed at least in a fragmentary form in Beethoven’s head when he wrote to Neate in March that it was finished.
At the close of the year Beethoven’s nephew Karl is still pursuing his philological studies at the university and living with his uncle. During the summer his holidays are spent in the country with Beethoven, to whom he is the cause of no little anxiety, especially when towards the end of the year he repeats his youthful escapade of running away from home. Beethoven, thinking of his foster-child’s welfare and apparently made ill at ease by symptoms which made him apprehend that he was likely to die suddenly of an apoplectic stroke (“like my good grandfather, whom I resemble,” he wrote), sent a letter to Dr. Bach on August 1, begging him to draw up a formal will and reiterating his intention to make his nephew inheritor of all his property. He also directed: “As it is customary to make a bequest to relatives even if they are in no wise related,” that his French pianoforte be given to his brother. “As regards Steiner, let him be content with the assurance that he shall be paid in full by the end of September—for if anything comes of the Mayence business it will not be before then and the first 600 florins must go to two of the noblest of mankind who, when I was almost helpless, most kindly and disinterestedly came to my assistance with this sum.” No doubt the Brentanos were meant; Steiner had evidently been dunning him for the old debt.