Requiescat in pace.—I thank you in especial, my honored friend, for the happiness which you have given me in sending me your essay. I have always counted myself among the greatest admirers of Mozart and will remain such till my last breath.
Reverend Sir, your blessing soon.[151]
The concluding supplication recalls an anecdote related by Castelli in his memoirs: Beethoven and Abbé Stadler once met at Steiner’s. About to depart, Beethoven kneeled before the Abbé and said: “Reverend Sir, give me your blessing.” Stadler, not at all embarrassed, made the sign of the cross over the kneeling man and, as if mumbling a prayer, said: “Hilft’s nix, schadt’s nix” (“If it does no good, ’twill do no harm”). Beethoven thereupon kissed his hand amid the laughter of the bystanders. Jahn heard the same story from Fischoff.[152]
A remark in a Conversation Book of 1826 indicates that Stadler had urged Beethoven to write a mass. Holz says: “If Stadler tells you to write a mass it is certain that something will be done for it. He knows best of anybody which way the wind blows.—He has Dietrichstein and Eybler in his pocket.—You are well cared for if Stadler favors it.” The conversations of Holz also provide a fleeting glimpse of Schubert in this year. Holz tells Beethoven that he had seen the young composer with either Artaria or Mosel (the allusion is vague) and that the two were reading a Handel score together. “He (Schubert) was very amiable and thanked me for the pleasure which Mylord’s [Schuppanzigh’s] Quartets gave him; he was always present.—He has a great gift for songs.—Do you know the ‘Erlking’? He spoke very mystically, always.”
Beethoven and Friedrich Wieck
Friedrich Wieck, father of Clara Schumann, spent three hours with Beethoven in May, having been presented by Andreas Stein, the pianoforte maker. He told about the visit long afterward in a letter to his second wife which was reprinted in the “Signale” No. 57, in December, 1873, from the “Dresdener Nachrichten.” Beethoven gave his guest wine (to which Wieck was not accustomed), improvised for him over an hour and talked voluminously about
musical conditions in Leipsic—Rochlitz—Schicht—Gewandhaus—his housekeeper—his many lodgings, none of which suited him—his promenades—Hietzing—Schönbrunn—his brother—various stupid people in Vienna—aristocracy—democracy—revolution—Napoleon—Mara—Catalani—Malibran—Fodor—the excellent Italian singers Lablache, Donzelli, Rubini and others, the perfection of Italian opera (German opera could never be so perfect because of the language and because the Germans did not learn to sing as beautifully as the Italians)—my views on pianoforte playing—Archduke Rudolph—Fuchs in Vienna, at the time a famous musical personality—my improved method of pianoforte teaching, etc.
Wieck says the meeting was in Hietzing, and that Beethoven played upon the pianoforte “presented to him by the city of London”—three obvious mistakes, since Beethoven was not in Hietzing in May, but in Vienna, and the Broadwood pianoforte, which was not presented to him by the city of London but by Thomas Broadwood, was in the hands of Graf for repairs in May.
After Karl’s attempt to end his ill-spent life, with its crushing effect upon the composer, the friends, Holz in particular, made many efforts to divert Beethoven’s mind from his disappointment and grief. They accompanied him on brief excursions into the country which he loved so passionately and which had been closed to him, for the customary happy season, by his nephew’s act. Again did his brother offer him a haven at Gneixendorf in August, only to receive the curt answer: “I will not come. Your brother??????!!!! Ludwig.” His nephew was lying in the hospital. He could not leave him then nor did he go until it had become necessary to find an asylum for Karl as well as a resting-place for himself. His brother came to the city late in September; it was necessary that Karl should remain out of Vienna until he could join a regiment of soldiery, and so Beethoven accepted Johann’s renewed invitation to make a sojourn at Gneixendorf. Meanwhile he was far from idle. He had begun a new quartet, in F major, and Schlesinger, père, who had come from Berlin, negotiated with him for its publication. He had the new finale for the B-flat Quartet on his mind and, as will appear later, several other works occupied him. With Schlesinger he talked about the Complete Edition and some military marches which the King of Prussia was to pay for, as they were to be written for the Royal Band. The chief obstacle to Beethoven’s acceptance of his brother’s repeated invitations to visit him at Gneixendorf came from the presence there of the brother’s wife. Her scandalous conduct had begotten an intense hatred in Beethoven’s mind. Urged on by his brother, Johann had once planned to put her away, but there was an obstacle in the shape of a marriage contract, which gave her half of his property, and though she was willing to surrender the contract at one time, she was not content to be turned out upon the world with neither character nor means of subsistence. Besides, Johann was loath to take the drastic methods which alone were open to him. He was inclined, much to the indignation of his brother, to be complaisant; he needed a housekeeper and for that she would serve. “I go my way and let her go hers,” he said, and he told his brother when trying to persuade him to spend his summers, perhaps eventually all his time, at Gneixendorf, that he need pay no heed whatever to his sister-in-law. Much of the ill-feeling was due to the fact that Beethoven wanted to insure his brother’s fortune for Karl. The nephew did eventually become his sole heir and inherited 42,000 florins from him.
Beethoven at Gneixendorf