Fourteen of the forty-three musicians were soloists upon their several instruments; some half a dozen of them were already known as composers. Four years, at the least, of service in such an orchestra may well be considered of all schools the best in which Beethoven could have been placed. Let his works decide.
Our article shall close with some pictures photographed in the sunshine which gilded the closing years of Beethoven's Bonn life. They illustrate the character of the man and of the people with whom he lived and moved.
In 1791, in that beautiful season of the year in Central Europe, when the heats of summer are past and the autumn rains not yet set in, the Elector journeyed to Mergentheim, to hold, in his capacity of Grand Master, a convocation of the Teutonic Order. The leading singers of his Chapel, and some twenty members of the Orchestra, under Ries as director, followed in two large barges. Before, starting upon the expedition, the company assembled and elected a king. The dignity was conferred upon Joseph Lux, the bass singer and comic actor, who, in distributing the offices of his court, appointed Ludwig van Beethoven and Bernhard Romberg scullions!
A glorious time and a merry they had of it, following slowly the windings of the Rhine and the Main, now impelled by the wind, now drawn by horses, against the swift current, in this loveliest time of the year.
In those days, when steamboats were not, such a voyage was slow, and not seldom in a high degree tedious. With such a company the want of speed was a consideration of no importance, and the memory of this journey was in after years among Beethoven's brightest. Those who know the Rhine and the Main can easily conceive that this should be so. The route embraced the whole extent of the famous highlands of the former river, from the Drachenfels and Rolandseek to the heights of the Niederwald above Rüdesheim, and that lovely section of the latter which divides the hills of the Odenwald from those of Spessart. The voyagers passed a thousand points of local and historic interest. The old castles—among them Stolzenfels and the Brothers—looked down upon them from their rocky heights, as long afterwards upon the American, Paul Flemming, when he journeyed, sick at heart, along the Rhine, toward ancient Heidelberg. Quaint old cities—Andernach, with "the Christ," Coblentz, home of Beethoven's mother, Boppard, Bacharach, Bingen—welcomed them; Mainz, the Electoral city, and Frankfurt, seat of the Empire. And still beyond, on the banks of the Main, Offenbach, Hanau, Aschaffenburg, and so onward to Wertheim, where they left the Main and ascended the small river Tauber to their place of destination.
Among the places at which they landed and made merry upon the journey was the Niederwald. Here King Lux advanced Beethoven to a more honorable position in his court, and gave him a diploma, dated from the heights above Rüdesheim, attesting his appointment to the new dignity. To this important document was attached, by threads ravelled from a boat-sail, a huge seal of pitch, pressed into a small box-cover, which gave the instrument a right imposing look,—like the Golden Bull in the Römer-Saal at Frankfurt. This diploma from His Comic Majesty Beethoven carried with him to Vienna, where Wegeler saw it several years afterward carefully preserved.
At Aschaffenburg, the summer residence of the Electors of Mainz, Ries, Simrock, and the two Rombergs took Beethoven with them to call upon the great pianist, Sterkel. The master received the young men kindly, and gratified them with a specimen of his powers. His style was in the highest degree graceful and pleasing,—as Father Ries described it to Wegeler, "somewhat lady-like." While he played, Beethoven stood by, listening with the most eager attention, doubtless silently comparing the effects produced by the player with those belonging to his own style, which was rather rough and hard, owing to his constant practice upon the organ. It is said that this was his first opportunity of hearing any distinguished virtuoso upon the piano-forte,—a mistake, we think, for he must have heard Mozart in Vienna, as before remarked. Still, the delicacy of Sterkel's style may well have been a new revelation to him of the powers of the instrument. Upon leaving the piano-forte, the master invited his young visitor to take his place. Beethoven was naturally diffident, and was not to be prevailed with, until Sterkel intimated a doubt whether he could play his own very difficult variations upon the air, "Vieni, Amore," which had then just been published. Thus touched in a tender spot, the young author sat down and played such as he could remember,—no copy being at hand,—and then improvised several others, equally, if not more difficult, to the surprise both of Sterkel and his friends. "What raised our surprise to real astonishment," said Ries, as he related the story, "was, that the impromptu variations were in precisely that graceful, pleasing style which he had just heard for the first time."
Upon reaching Mergentheim, music, and ever music, became the order of the day for King Lux and his merry subjects. Most fortunately for the admirers of Beethoven, we have a minute account of two days (October 11 and 12) spent there, by a competent and trustworthy musical critic of that period,—a man not the less welcome to us for possessing something of the flunkeyism of old Diarist Pepys and Corsica Boswell. We shall quote somewhat at length from his letter, since it has hitherto come under the notice of none of the biographers, and yet gives us so lively a picture of young Beethoven and his friends.
"On the very first day," writes Junker, "I heard the small band which plays at dinner, during the stay of the Elector at Mergentheim. The instruments are two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, and two horns. These eight performers may well be called masters in their art. One can rarely hear music of the kind, distinguished by such perfect unity of effect and such sympathy with each other in the performers, and especially in which so high a degree of exactness and perfection of style is reached. This band appeared to me to differ from all others I have heard in this,—that it plays music of a higher order; on this occasion, for instance, it gave an arrangement of Mozart's overture to 'Don Juan.'"
It would be interesting to know what, if any, of the works of Beethoven for wind-instruments belong to this period of his life.