I must admit that the champagne went too much to my head also, yesterday, and that I was compelled again to make the experience that such things retard rather than promote my capacities; for easy as it generally is for me to meet a challenge on the instant, I do not at all remember what I wrote yesterday.
In handing over letter and canon to Holz for delivery he wrote to him that he had scarcely reached home before it occurred to him that he might have made a dreadful mess of it on the day before.
A Garrulous Parisian Publisher
Schlesinger, of Paris, son of the Berlin publisher, was a very insistent as well as persistent courtier, with an auspicious eye to business at all times. He wanted to purchase the two new quartets and did succeed in getting one of them, and he aroused Beethoven’s suspicions by the pertinacity with which he pleaded for permission to attend a rehearsal of the second; the pride of the composer revolted, evidently, at the thought that a publisher should ask to hear a work of his which he purposed buying. But Schlesinger, who had Nephew Karl as his advocate at court in all things, made it appear that he was eager only for the inestimable privilege of hearing the new works of the master, and put in a plea that he might also hear the Quartet which had already been sold to Schott and Sons. Holz discloses a distrust of him very plainly and misses no occasion to warn Beethoven against entangling alliances with the Parisian publisher. Schlesinger wins his way to a very familiar footing with Beethoven, going so far once as to ask him if a report which he had heard that Beethoven had wanted to marry the pianist, Cibbini, was true.[136] The old page does not tell us what answer Beethoven gave, but Schlesinger, who had disclosed his own heartwounds and railed against the fair sex because of his experiences, tells the composer that he shall be the first to make the bride’s acquaintance should he ever get married. Schlesinger appears desirous to become a sort of dealer en gros in Beethoven’s products; he would like the two new Quartets (in A minor and B-flat major); he will publish a Complete Edition and begin with the chamber pieces, to which ends he wants still another quartet and three quintets; he seeks to awaken a literary ambition in the writer of notes—the journal published by the Schlesingers in Berlin will be glad to republish whatever Beethoven may write to the Mayence journal about the joke on Haslinger, and Beethoven ought really to write some essays—on what a symphony and an overture ought to be and on the art of fugue, of which he was now the sole repository. He knows how to approach genius on its most susceptible side. Beethoven must go to England, where he is so greatly admired; he reports that Cherubini had said to his pupils at the Conservatoire in Paris: “The greatest musical minds that ever lived or ever will live, are Beethoven and Mozart.” At dinner, at the suggestion of the same garrulous talker, the company drink the healths of Goethe and Cherubini. Again Schlesinger urges Beethoven to go to London: “I repeat again that if you will go to England for three months I will engage that, deducting your travelling expenses, you will make 1000 pounds, or 25,000 florins W. W. at least, if you give only two concerts and produce some new music.... The Englishmen are proud enough to count themselves fortunate if Beethoven would only be satisfied with them.” When the toast to Cherubini is drunk, Schlesinger takes occasion to satisfy the curiosity of Beethoven touching the status of the composer whom he most admired among living men.
Cherubini has now received the title of Baron from the government as well as the order of the Legion of Honor. It is a proof of the recognition of his talent, for he did not seek it. Napoleon, who appreciated him highly, once found fault with one of his compositions and Cherubini retorted: “Your Majesty knows no more about it than I about a battle.” Napoleon’s conduct was contemptible. Because of the words that I have quoted he took away all of Cherubini’s offices and he had nothing to live on. Nevertheless, he did an infinite amount of good for popular culture. If Napoleon, instead of becoming an insatiable world-conqueror, had remained First Consul, he would have been one of the greatest men that ever existed.
Schlesinger had his way about hearing the new Quartet (in A minor, Op. 132), for it was rehearsed at his rooms on Wednesday, September 7, preparatory to the performance, which was to take place at the tavern “Zum wilden Mann” at noon on September 9. Beethoven wanted the players to come to him at Baden for the final rehearsal, but that was found to be impracticable. On the day after the meeting at Schlesinger’s, however, Holz went out to Beethoven to tell him all about it. He reported that Wolfmayr “at the Adagio wept like a child?” and that “Tobias scratched himself behind the ears when he heard the Quartet; he certainly regrets that the Jew Steiner did not take it.”
We have an account of the performance at the “Wilden Mann” from the English visitor whom Beethoven received at this time. This was Sir George Smart, who, in the summer of 1825, made a tour of Germany in company with Charles Kemble. He was with Mr. Kemble when that gentleman made the agreement with Weber for “Oberon,” but his “principal reason for the journey,” as he himself put it, “was to ascertain from Beethoven himself the exact times of the movements of his characteristic—and some of his other—Sinfonias.”[137] Sir George recorded the incidents of his meetings with Beethoven in his journal, from which the following excerpts are taken:
Sir George Smart’s Journal
On the 7th of September, at nine in the morning, I called on Mayseder, who received me most politely.... We conversed about Beethoven’s Choral Symphony; our opinion agrees about it. When it was performed here Umlauf conducted it and Kletrinsky and Schuppanzigh were the leaders. All the basses played in the recitative, but they had the story that it was written for Dragonetti only.