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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 September 2019
Ferdinand Ries was one of Beethoven's most important piano pupils. In 1838 he published a book, together with Franz Wegeler, which contained a wealth of information on the composer. It comprised such topics as Beethoven's loss of hearing, his dealings with publishers, his working methods, and the genesis of some of his compositions. Today, Ries's book is still regarded as a crucial source for Beethoven scholarship.
1 Wegeler, Franz and Ries, Ferdinand, Biographische Notizen über Ludwig van Beethoven (Coblenz: Rädeker, 1838), 75–6Google Scholar.
2 Brandenburg, Sieghard, ed., Ludwig van Beethoven: Briefwechsel Gesamtausgabe, 7 vols (Munich: Henle, 1996–98), vol. 1, 78–81Google Scholar.
3 Wegeler and Ries, Biographische Notizen, 22–8.
4 The letter continued to trouble biographers long after its re-dating by Alexander Wheelock Thayer; see Brandenburg, , Beethoven: Briefwechsel, vol. 1, 81. In his dissertation Ferdinand Ries’ Jugendentwicklung (Bonn: Paul Rost & Co, 1915), 9–12Google Scholar, Ludwig Ueberfeldt conjectured that this re-dating was actually incorrect, maintaining that the letter had been written in 1800 and continuing: ‘After receipt … young Ries embarked on his trip, first to Munich, where he stayed from late autumn 1800 to summer 1801, to wander from there to Vienna.’
5 Thayer, Alexander Wheelock (rev. Deiters, Hermann and Riemann, Hugo), Ludwig van Beethovens Leben, 3rd edn, 5 vols, vol. 2 (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1922), 290–91Google Scholar.
6 A case in point is Lockwood, Lewis and Gosman, Alan, eds, Beethoven's ‘Eroica’ Sketchbook: A Critical Edition (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2013)Google Scholar. For the chronology of the sketchbook the editors adopted an external hypothesis about Ries's arrival date, which gave rise to much confusion; see for example comments on the sketchbook in Kurt Dorfmüller, Norbert Gertsch, and Ronge, Julia, Ludwig van Beethoven: Thematisch-bibliographisches Werkverzeichnis, 2 vols (Munich: Henle, 2014, hereafter LvBWV)Google Scholar, where it is dated with ‘approximately from June 1803 to April 1804’ (vol. 1, 296 and vol. 2, 563).
7 For instance, Unger, Max, ‘Beethovens letzte Briefe und Unterschriften’, Die Musik (1942): 154Google Scholar and Klein, Rudolf, Beethoven-Stätten in Österreich (Vienna: Verlag Elisabeth Lafite, 1970), 38Google Scholar.
8 Zanden, Jos van der, ‘Ferdinand Ries in Vienna: New Perspectives on the Notizen’, The Beethoven Journal 19/2 (2004): 51–65Google Scholar (German version: ‘Ferdinand Ries in Wien. Neue Perspektiven zu den Notizen’, Bonner Beethoven Studien 5 (2005): 191–212).
9 Kinderman, William, ‘“Beethoven the Pianist” by Tilman Skowroneck’, Performance Practice Review 16/1 (2011): 5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
10 Brauneis, Walther, ‘Der “Eroica”-Mythos und Döbling. Oder: Wo arbeitete Beethoven im Sommer 1803 an seiner Dritten Symphonie?’, in Beiträge zu Biographie und Schaffensprozess bei Beethoven, ed. Cadenbach, Rainer and May, Jürgen (Bonn: Verlag Beethoven-Haus, 2011), 28Google Scholar.
11 Stroh, Patricia, ‘Beethoven Auction Report (2015)’, The Beethoven Journal 30/2 (2015): 82Google Scholar.
12 Grigat, Friederike, ‘Die Sammlung Wegeler im Beethoven-Haus Bonn, Kritischer Katalog’, Bonner Beethoven-Studien 7 (Bonn: Verlag Beethoven-Haus, 2008), 58Google Scholar.
13 Albrecht, Theodore, ‘Time, Distance, Weather, Daily Routine, and Wordplay as Factors in Interpreting Beethoven's Conversation Books’, The Beethoven Journal 28/2 (2013): 64Google Scholar.
14 Syer, Katherine R., ‘A Peculiar Hybrid: The Structure and Chronology of the “Eroica” Sketchbook (Landsberg 6)’, Bonner Beethoven-Studien 5 (2006): 170Google Scholar.
15 Lockwood and Gosman, Beethoven's ‘Eroica’ Sketchbook, vol. 1, 7: ‘we attach considerable weight to Syer's view that Beethoven could have begun using this sketchbook, Landberg 6, before he had completely filled up Wielhorsky’. Elsewhere (53) Syer's hypothesis was called ‘broadly persuasive’, with compelling determinacy.
16 LvBWV, vol. 1, 184, 244 and 47, respectively. Confusion about Ries's arrival date has long caused uncertainty with regard to the gestation of the ‘Eroica’ Symphony. About a century ago it was even believed that there had been two separate compositional phases: ‘The year of origin for the second and final movements is 1801, the first and third movements are from 1803’; see Berger, Friedrich, ‘Kritische Bemerkungen zur Aufführung von Beethovens Dritter Symphonie’, Neue Musik-Zeitung (1926): 118Google Scholar.
17 Schindler, Anton, Biographie von Ludwig van Beethoven (Münster: Aschendorff, 1840), 11–15Google Scholar, 69–72, 118, 255–6, and 296 (for this last page, see also the 2nd edn (1845), Nachtrag II, 88–9). In Schindler's view, Ries had been ‘too young’ to understand Beethoven's personality; Biographie von Ludwig van Beethoven, 12. In the 1860 edition he asserted that Ries had come to Vienna ‘as a young man of 17 in the autumn of 1800’; see Biographie von Ludwig van Beethoven, 2 vols, vol. 1 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1860), 72. But elsewhere in this book (vol. 2, 253–4) he claimed that he had been with Beethoven ‘from his fifteenth to his twenty-first year’. Wilhelm von Lenz wrote that ‘the spirit of Ries's ‘Anekdotikon’ [Notizen]’ evidenced that teacher and pupil ‘had not the slightest in common’, adding a few pages later that ‘without this nationality [Ries's supposed Jewish descent] their relationship … would have been mutually much more intense’; see Lenz, Wilhelm von, Beethoven. Eine Kunststudie, vol. 1 (Cassel: Ernst Balde, 1855), 255Google Scholar and 257. This compromised Ries's reputation, especially in France. In his Beethoven, ses critiques et ses glossateurs (Leipzig: Gavelot, 1857), 57. Alexandre Oulibicheff commented that Ries ‘at only 15 years of age … predominantly saw and described what in the eyes of a child was most striking about his master's personality’ (a pein âgé de 15 ans … voit et décrit ce qui devait surtout frapper les yeux d'un enfant, dans la personne de son maître). Vincent d'Indy still parroted in 1928 that Ries had been ‘of the Jewish race, and could not penetrate into the inner life of the master's music, which was essentially Aryan. Also, Beethoven did not want to dedicate anything to Ries, nor to Moscheles, for the same reason’ (de race sémitique et ne pouvait pénétrer le sens intime de la musique du maître, essentiellement aryenne. Aussi Beethoven ne voulut-il rien dédier à Ries, pas plus qu’à Moscheles, et pour la même raison); d'Indy, Vincent, Beethoven (Paris: Henri Laurens, 1928), 63Google Scholar.
18 Schindler, Biographie von Ludwig van Beethoven, 1840, 296; Schindler, Biographie von Ludwig van Beethoven, 1860, vol. 1, x and 170, and vol. 2, 252–9.
19 Brandenburg, Beethoven: Briefwechsel, vol. 1, 84–91.
20 Brandenburg, Beethoven: Briefwechsel, vol. 1, 121–4.
21 Wegeler and Ries, Biographische Notizen, 100.
22 Brandenburg, Beethoven: Briefwechsel, vol. 1, 84–6. The first clear signs of his loss of hearing in 1801 drove Beethoven to despair.
23 According to Carl Czerny Beethoven decided in 1802 to cover new artistic ground; Czerny, Carl, Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben, ed. Kolneder, Walter (Strasbourg-Baden-Baden: Heitz, 1968), 43Google Scholar.
24 Brandenburg, Beethoven: Briefwechsel, vol. 1, 176. In the year of the ‘Eroica’ Symphony (1803) Beethoven toyed with the idea of travelling or even moving to Paris.
25 Wegeler and Ries, Biographische Notizen, 117.
26 Brandenburg, Beethoven: Briefwechsel, vol. 1, 115.
27 Wegeler and Ries, Biographische Notizen, 117.
28 Brandenburg, Beethoven: Briefwechsel, vol. 1, 115.
29 Wegeler and Ries, Biographische Notizen, 91.
30 Brandenburg, Beethoven: Briefwechsel, vol. 1, 132–3. ‘Breitkopf’, in this paper, alludes to the firm of Breitkopf & Härtel; actually all correspondence was with Gottfried Härtl, Christoph Breitkopf having died in 1800.
31 Brandenburg, Beethoven: Briefwechsel, vol. 1, 138.
32 Brandenburg, Beethoven: Briefwechsel, vol. 1, 139–40.
33 The Bureau des Arts et d'Industrie (Kunst- und Industrie-Comptoir) was in function since 26 May 1801. It was founded by Joseph Sonnleithner, Joseph Schreyvogel, Johann Siegmund Rizy, and Jakob Hohler and published products of art, music, and topographical maps. By the end of 1802 it was one of the few publishing houses in which Beethoven had full confidence. For details see Weinmann, Alexander, ‘Vollständiges Verlagsverzeichnis der Musikalien des Kunst- und Industrie Comptoirs in Wien’, Studien zur Musikwissenschaft (1955): 217–52Google Scholar.
34 Brandenburg, Beethoven: Briefwechsel, vol. 1, 141–2.
35 Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Digitalisierte Sammlungen, mus.ms. autogr. F. Ries, 133N. Unluckily, a library stamp partly obliterates Ries's dating, which caused Cecil Hill to read ‘1805’; Hill, Cecil, Ferdinand Ries: A Thematic Catalogue (Armidale: University of New England, 1977), 200Google Scholar. The reading ‘1803’ is beyond doubt, as was already noticed by Ueberfeldt at a time (1915) when the stamp was perhaps not yet there; see Ueberfeldt, Ferdinand Ries’ Jugendentwicklung, 23.
36 Puzzled about the date, Ueberfeldt hypothesized that Ries travelled from Vienna to Munich in 1803 with one of his patrons; Ueberfeldt, Ferdinand Ries’ Jugendentwicklung, 21.
37 Shortly after Haydn's death, in 1809, Griesinger was to publish a series of articles on Haydn in the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung and in Der Sammler, which were assembled later in Biographische Notizen über Joseph Haydn (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1810).
38 They were edited and annotated by Otto Biba in 1987 in ‘Eben komme ich von Haydn …’: Georg August Griesingers Korrespondenz mit Joseph Haydns Verleger Breitkopf & Härtel 1799–1819 (Zurich: Atlantis, 1987). An abridged version had been issued earlier by Edward Olleson with references to Beethoven largely surpassed’; see Olleson, ‘Georg August Griesinger's Correspondence with Breitkopf & Härtel’, in Das Haydn Jahrbuch (1965): 5–53,.
39 Biba, Eben komme ich von Haydn, 152.
40 Weigl was in charge of the k.k. Hoftheater-Musik-Verlag, and he seems to have had a penchant for publishing songs; see Slezak, Friedrich, Beethovens Wiener Originalverleger (Vienna: Deuticke, 1987): 52Google Scholar. In 1802–03 he maintained a correspondence with Nikolaus Simrock in Bonn which shows that he was interested in publishing Beethoven's songs op. 52; Beer, Axel, ‘Zur Geschichte der Veröffentlichung und zur Rezeption von Beethovens Liedern op. 52’, Die Musikforschung (1994): 161–3Google Scholar. He expected to acquire these but got the short end of the stick. Weigl distributed Simrock's reprints in Vienna, also by Beethoven. In a letter of 15 November 1803 (Stadtarchiv Bonn, Musikverlag Simrock No. 112, not in Beer, ‘Zur Geschichte’) he complained that as regards Beethoven works this was however no longer tolerated due to a government edict: ‘You know what quantity of Beethoven works I took from you. Well, imagine that Beethoven has been granted the prerogative by the government that no reprints of his works are allowed to be announced or retailed here. What do you say about that? – Is that not disadvantageous to me? What am I to do now with these works?’ (Sie wissen welche Quantitätt [sic] Beethovenscher Werke ich Ihnen abnahm? – Stellen Sie sich vor dass Beethoven von der Regierung den Vortheil erhalten hat dass keine Nachstiche seiner Werke hier angekündiget oder frey verkauft werden dürfen. Was sagen Sie dazu? – Ist das nicht ein Schaden für mich? Was thue ich nun mit diesen Werken?) No details are known about Beethoven's alleged injunction against the selling of reprints of his works. Had he and/or his brother Carl simply been bluffing?
41 Biba, Eben komme ich von Haydn, 174.
42 Biba, Eben komme ich von Haydn, 173–4. The songs were lauded in the AMZ on 24 August 1803 (col. 799–800). Beethoven had in his estate ‘3 u. 4 stimmige Gesänge von Haydn’ (in the category ‘Geschriebene Musikalien verschiedener Compositeurs’), and he may have possessed a handwritten copy of these very songs; see von Frimmel, Theodor, Beethoven Studien II. Bausteine zu einer Lebensgeschichte des Meisters (Munich and Leipzig: Georg Müller Verlag, 1906), 194Google Scholar, item No. 213.
43 Biba, Eben komme ich von Haydn, 159, 173, 204 and 175, respectively.
44 Biba, Eben komme ich von Haydn, 115.
45 LvBWV, vol. 1, 266.
46 Max Unger, ‘Beethoven, Der Graf Browne und Hofrat Johannes Büel, Baseler National-Zeitung, 4 March 1934.
47 Schmidt-Görg, Joseph, ‘Zur Entstehungszeit von Beethovens Gellert-Liedern’, Beethoven Jahrbuch (1966): 87–91Google Scholar. For the identification of the copyist see LvBWV, vol. 1, 266.
48 Clive, Peter, Beethoven and his World: A Biographical Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 208Google Scholar. In 1802, Beethoven had dedicated to her his Piano Sonata op. 27 No. 1. In 1805 he appealed to her to grant Ferdinand Ries financial assistance (in a letter not delivered to her by Ries).
49 In December 1801 Beethoven dedicated to Browne his Variations for Violoncello and Piano on Mozart's ‘Bei Männern, welche Liebe fühlen’ (WoO 46), of which Mollo's title page mentioned ‘à Son Excellence Monsieur / le COMTE de BROWNE / … par LOUIS van BEETHOVEN / a Vienne chez T. Mollo et Comp. / Le Ier Jenvier 1802’. The autograph of this work shows a similar watermark to that of the left-over autograph of the Gellert Lieder (only that of the songs Nos 5 and 6 has survived). This may serve as an additional clue for dating the work. See Maass, Ingeborg, ‘Korrekturen in den Autographen der Cellovariationen WoO 45 und 46’, in Brandenburg, Sieghard, Maass, Ingeborg and Osthoff, Wolfgang eds, Beethovens Werke für Klavier und Violoncello: Bericht über die Internationale Fachkonferenz Bonn, 18.-20. Juni 1998 (Bonn: Verlag Beethoven-Haus, 2004): 83–104Google Scholar, at 86.
50 On 7 November 1798 the AMZ (col. 83) had reported about Mozart: ‘These money-seeking gentlemen managed to get their hands on handwritten copies and unleashed their unbridled printing activities. One particular famous art dealer [further on identified with “A”] had made a large number of such deals … without asking the master’. Beethoven was well aware of the danger of circulating manuscripts, as is evidenced by his jotting on folio 15 of the Fischhof Miscellany (Berlin aut. 28): ‘The only condition I must impose upon you, is not to pass it on to anyone else’; see Klein, Hans-Günter, Ludwig van Beethoven: Autographe und Abschriften (Berlin: Merseburger, 1975): 99Google Scholar. By 1802, still another unpublished work circulated, the aria Ah! Perfido. The AMZ reported in May 1803 (col. 584; not mentioned in LvBWV) that this had been performed in the Gewandhaus: ‘an excellent, extended composition of the well-known scene by Metastasio Ah perfido with the aria Per pietá from Beethoven, very well performed by Miss. Schicht’ (eine treffliche, weitausgeführte Komposition der bekannten Scene von Metastasio: Ah perfido etc. mit der Arie: Per pietà, non dirmi addio etc. von Beethoven, die Mad. Schicht sehr gut vortrug). One wonders how musicians in Leipzig came into the possession of music that was to be issued only two years later by Hoffmeister & Kühnel.
51 Catalogued as C 48/30.
52 Biermann, Johanna Cobb, ‘Zyklische Anordnung in Beethovens Gellert-Liedern Opus 48’, Bonner Beethoven-Studien 2 (2001): 45–61Google Scholar.
53 Biermann, ‘Zyklische Anordnung’, 49.
54 LvBWV, vol. 1, 264.
55 Perhaps too much was made of the reversal of the last songs in the original edition, which inspired copious commentary; see, among others, Biermann, Joanna Cobb, ‘Cyclical Ordering in Beethoven's Gellert Lieder, Op. 48: A New Source’, Beethoven Forum (2004): 162–180Google Scholar; Ellison, Paul, ‘Affective Organization in Beethoven's Gellert Lieder, Opus 48: Affirming Joanna Cobb Biermann's Theory on Beethoven's Intended Order of the Songs’, The Beethoven Journal 25/1 (2010): 19–31Google Scholar; and Rumph, Stephen, Beethoven after Napoleon: Political Romanticism in the Late Works (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 37–52Google Scholar. One might speculate that Beethoven's decision to rearrange two songs was extrinsically motivated: practical considerations of copyright made a reordering of the legal print of 1803 readily discernible from the illegal earlier one. Critical opinion defies unanimity on the point whether op. 48 was designed as an actual song cycle. Biermann, for one, argues against it in ‘Beethoven Thinking about Cycles and Some Consequences’, in Beethoven – Studien und Interpretationen 4, ed. Myczyslaw Tomaszewski and Magdalena Chrenkoff (Kraców: Akademia Mus, 2009): 57–68, while Paul Reid takes this for granted; see Reid, Paul, The Beethoven Song Companion (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007), 154Google Scholar.
56 In a letter to Härtel of 5 December 1802 (Brandenburg, Beethoven: Briefwechsel, vol. 1, 139–40) brother Carl described Beethoven's system of handling commissions: ‘He who wants a work will pay a specified sum for the exclusive possession for a half or whole year, or even longer, and binds himself to give the manuscript to nobody else. After this period the author is free to do whatever he likes with it’. After the tribulations with op. 48 and 29 Beethoven seems to have largely abandoned this system.
57 Mollo and Artaria worked closely together; see LvBWV, vol. 2, 264, Brandenburg, Beethoven: Briefwechsel, vol. 1, 154, and Slezak, Beethovens Wiener Originalverleger, 70. In a letter to Breitkopf of 13 November 1802, Beethoven bluntly stated: ‘Indeed it is true that Mollo and Artaria already constitute only one firm, that is to say: a whole family of villains together’; see Brandenburg, Beethoven: Briefwechsel, vol. 1, 155. The fact that Beethoven even mistrusted Ries was clarified by the latter in a letter to Wegeler from 28 December 1837, in the aftermath of the completion of the Biographische Notizen. Ries asserted that brother Carl had conferred to Beethoven the rumour that he, Ries, had sold copies of some of the op. 45 Marches to Browne and had kept the money for himself. Hearing of this, Ries insisted that Beethoven should immediately contact Browne to be satisfied that Carl's insinuation was ‘a downright lie’ (Grigat, Sammlung Wegeler, 58). Both Grigat and Lockwood and Gosman date this story in 1802, relying on Ries who however confused dates; see Grigat, Sammlung Wegeler and Lockwood and Gosman, Beethoven's ‘Eroica’ Sketchbook, vol. 1, 7, note 7). It was no doubt this rumour by brother Carl that occasioned Beethoven to write the ominous undated letter to Ries discussed here – not in 1802 but in 1803.
58 Haydn had a complete collection of Gellert's poems in his library; see Hörwarthner, Maria, ‘Joseph Haydns Bibliothek – Versuch einer literarhistorischen Rekonstruktion’ in Joseph Haydn und die Literatur seiner Zeit, ed. Zeman, Herbert (Eisenstadt: Selbstverlag des Instituts für Österreichische Kulturgeschichte, 1976), 157–207Google Scholar. He availed himself of Gellert's words ‘Hin ist alle meine Kraft’ for his visiting card; Olleson, Griesinger's Correspondence, 51.
59 Solomon, Maynard, ‘The Quest for Faith’, Beethoven Essays (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988), 219Google Scholar.
60 Lodes, Birgit, ‘Probing the Sacred Genres: Beethoven's Religious Songs, Oratorio, and Masses’, in The Cambridge Companion to Beethoven, ed. Stanley, Glenn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 218Google Scholar. Such conjectures were already dismissed by Alan Tyson on firm grounds; see Alan Tyson, ‘Pictorial Beethoven’, The Musical Times (1970): 1000. Nor are there indications that Beethoven's choice for Gellert was instigated by his study of Oden und Lieder by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach; see Wolfshohl, Alexander, ‘Beethoven liest Autoren und Texte mit Bezug zu Religion und Theologie’, in Beethoven liest, ed. Appel, Bernhard and Ronge, Julia (Bonn: Verlag Beethoven-Haus, 2016): 105–41Google Scholar, at 112.
61 Brandenburg, Beethoven: Briefwechsel, vol. 1, 105–6. About the turn of the century, Beethoven seems to have been rather critical of Christianity. He eschewed Christian rituals (baptism, marriage, funeral) and nothing indicates that he ever entered a Vienna church. A work like Christus am Ölberge has in itself little explanatory power, for like the Gellert Songs this was simply an opportunity not to be missed.
62 Brauneis, Walther, ‘Der “Eroica”-Mythos und Döbling. Oder: Wo arbeitete Beethoven im Sommer 1803 an seiner Dritten Symphonie?’, in Beiträge zu Biographie und Schaffensprozess bei Beethoven, ed. Cadenbach, Rainer and May, Jürgen (Bonn: Verlag Beethoven-Haus, 2011), 27–34Google Scholar.
63 This letter was assigned to 1803 by Brandenburg, but in a footnote he wisely left other possibilities open; see Beethoven: Briefwechsel, vol. 1, 172.
64 Unger, Max, ‘Beethovens letzte Briefe und Unterschriften’, Die Musik (1942): 154Google Scholar: ‘It turned out with certainty that the Beethoven Haus in Döbling, which for many years has had a plate attached to it referring to the master's creation of the ‘Eroica’ there, has nothing whatsoever to do with this work.’
65 He resided there presumably between June and October 1804. In early May he was taken seriously ill, as Stephan von Breuning informed Wegeler on 14 October; see Grigat, Sammlung Wegeler, 133. Breuning cared for Beethoven until the latter's health was restored, after which he departed for the country. Late in October Breuning informed his mother: ‘Beethoven is currently taking his meals with me. When he is not here, as was the case during all summer – and which will likely be again soon, since he intends to go to Italy – I dine [alone]’ (ibid., 134). In the literature this letter is often erroneously dated with 1811.
66 Wegeler and Ries, Biographische Notizen, 77.
67 Raab, Armin, Beethoven. Neue Gesamtausgabe, Symphonien I (Munich: Henle, 1994), 167Google Scholar. Raab showed himself irritated by Ries's alleged lack of precision.
68 Cooper, Barry, Review of Lockwood and Gosman, , Beethoven's Eroica Sketchbook, in Nineteenth Century Music Review (2015): 131–5Google Scholar.
69 Early ideas can be found in the Wielhorsky Sketchbook of 1802. Beethoven evidently planned a finale based on the Piano Variations op. 35, a genesis conspicuously similar to the Violin Sonata op. 47 composed only shortly earlier; see Lockwood, Lewis, ‘The Earliest Sketches for the Eroica Symphony’, in Beethoven: Studies in the Creative Process, ed. Kinderman, William (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992), 134–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
70 Barry Cooper, in his review of Lockwood and Gosman, Beethoven's Eroica Sketchbook, surmised that the ‘Eroica’ sketches ‘neatly bypass’ the sketches for the marches, which would make it conceivable that these were entered ‘a little before’ the surrounding pages. He supposed a time gap of ‘a month or two’, dating the op. 45 sketches to May–June 1803.
71 Wegeler and Ries, Biographische Notizen, 87–9.
72 Ries used the word ‘Correctur’, but it was in fact the original edition.
73 As Ries specified (88), unauthentic bars had been inserted. In the literature these are generally interpreted as a headstrong intervention by Nägeli, who felt an ‘editor's instinct for the security of the conventional’; see Kramer, Richard, ‘“Sonate, Que me veux tu?”: Opus 30, Opus 31, and the Anxieties of Genre’, in The Beethoven Violin Sonatas, ed. Lockwood, Lewis and Kroll, Mark (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2004), 57Google Scholar. Barry Cooper suggested convincingly that Beethoven himself may have been the cause of the problem: his manuscript may have shown an ambiguous reading; see his Beethoven (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 127–8; also in The Creation of Beethoven's 35 Piano Sonatas (London: Routledge, 2017), 111.
74 Brandenburg, Beethoven: Briefwechsel, vol. 1, 190.
75 See Grigat, Sammlung Wegeler, 54–5.
76 This stresses the paramount importance of the original (1838) Rädeker edition over numerous later ones – certainly over translations, which inevitably give rise to misunderstandings.
77 The traditional dating of op. 31 to ‘1801–02’ in Kinsky, Georg and Halm, Hans, eds, Das Werk Beethovens: thematisch-bibliographisches Verzeichnis seiner sämtlichen vollendeten Kompositionen (Munich: Henle, 1955), 78Google Scholar, was challenged as early as 1967 by Ludwig Finscher, who suggested 1803 for the third sonata; see his ‘Beethovens Klaviersonate opus 31,3’ in Festschrift für Walter Wiora zum 30. Dezember 1966 (Kassel: Bärenreiter 1967), 385–396, at 387. The work is sketched at the beginning of the Wielhorsky sketchbook, which is difficult to date, however. Theodore Albrecht's suggestion that the book was used ‘probably as early as August, 1802, and surely by mid-September’ did not find universal approval; see Albrecht, Theodore, ‘The Fortnight Fallacy: A Revised Chronology for Beethoven's Christ on the Mount of Olives, Op. 85, and Wielhorsky Sketchbook’, Journal of Musicological Research (1991): 268Google Scholar. Cooper conjectured that ‘the sonatas were probably begun in June or July [1802], were more or less finished by the beginning of October, and were polished up in the autograph scores in the following month or two’; see his Creation of Beethoven's 35 Piano Sonatas, 101.
78 Wegeler and Ries, Biographische Notizen,Wegeler/Ries, 87. In a letter to Simrock from 6 May 1803 Ries wrote: ‘Charl[es] Beethoven is the greatest miser in the world. For a ducat he will go back on his pledged word fifty times over, and by doing so he creates the greatest enemies for this worthy brother’; see (Brandenburg, Beethoven: Briefwechselwechsel, vol. 1, 162). A correlation between this letter and the fight suggests itself and a date of early May 1803 for the row seems therefore plausible.
79 In the scenario sketched here, op. 31 No. 3 was not sent to Nägeli together with Nos 1 and 2. The dispatch (possibly also its completion) may have been impeded by the time-consuming legal problems concerning op. 48 and op. 29 that awaited Beethoven when he returned from Heiligenstadt. He may have put the sonata aside for a while, taking it up again after his Akademie. However, arguments can be brought forward against such a scenario. In a personal communication Barry Cooper suggested that all three were sent together, and that Ries (in the aforementioned first anecdote) confused the two publishers, with the dispute arising over whether Simrock or Breitkopf should receive the corrected version of the first two sonatas. According to Cooper ‘One needs to find a reason why Nägeli did not publish all three sonatas together. I wondered if the reason for its late publication lay with Nägeli. So I have checked his Repertoire des Clavecinistes to see what else it contained. Nägeli intended each volume to contain 8–10 Bogen, i.e. 32–40 pages (see AMZ, Intelligenz-Blatt 23 (August 1803), col. 100). The first 4 volumes contained 27, 37, 41 and 43 pages respectively, but Heft 5 is already 51 pages with just Op. 31 Nos. 1–2, and would have been 73 pages with all three sonatas. So I think it was Nägeli who decided to hold back the third, especially as he hoped to get a fourth, which he had asked for. When it did not arrive he paired No. 3 with the Pathétique in Heft 11, of 41 pages. None of volumes 6–10 had more than 48 pages, with the average being 37 (the same as vols. 1–4)’. I am grateful to Barry Cooper for bringing these suggestions to my attention. Perhaps it is relevant to add that on 23 November 1802 brother Carl offered three piano sonatas to André in Offenbach. If accepted, he wrote, these could not be obtained all at once ‘but in 5 or 6 week increments’; Brandenburg, Beethoven: Briefwechsel, vol. 1, 134. Was this perhaps to buy time because the third one was not yet ready? The problem is still unsettled.
80 Steblin, Rita, ‘Franz Xaver Kleinheinz, a Very Talented Pianist Who Measures Up to Beethoven’, Bonner Beethoven-Studien 12 (2016): 155Google Scholar.
81 According to a contract drawn up on 22 June, Büel was engaged for the education of Browne's five-year-old son Moritz, who had Ries as his piano tutor. Büel attempted to raise the child ‘in the Lord’, as he himself said. He had no sympathy for Voltaire, Frederic the Great, the ‘antichrist’ Napoleon or Goethe, but expressed an ardent admiration for the poems of Gellert (‘I read them every day, and when finished I start from the beginning. There is such pious strength in them, such admirable piety’; see Noll, Hans, Hofrat Johannes Büel vom Stein an Rhein – 1761–1830 (Frauenfeld und Leipzig: Huber & Co, 1930): 290Google Scholar.
82 Noll, Hofrat Johannes Büel vom Stein, 218–19.
83 Noll, Hofrat Johannes Büel vom Stein, 210 and 246.
84 Köhler, Karl-Heinz and others, eds, Ludwig van Beethovens Konversationshefte, 11 vols (Leipzig: Deutscher Verlag für Musik, 1968–2001), vol. 8, 133Google Scholar.
85 Wegeler and Ries, Biographische Notizen, 98–9. Ries had formerly related this story to Ludwig Rellstab, who published it in 1841. See Kopitz, Klaus Martin and Cadenbach, Rainer eds, Beethoven aus der Sicht seiner Zeitgenossen, 2 vols (Munich: Henle, 2009), vol. 2, 693–4Google Scholar.
86 Brandenburg, Beethoven: Briefwechsel, vol. 1, 122.
87 He seems to have been able to conceal this gloom, though. Referring to 1803, Ignaz von Seyfried wrote that Beethoven as a rule was merry, cheerful and high-spirited and that ‘no physical ailment had yet befallen him’ (noch hatte ihn kein phisisches Uebel heimgesucht). See ‘Recensionen’ (of op. 123, 125, and 131), Cäcelia (1828): 217–243, at 219.
88 Dahlhaus, Carl, Ludwig van Beethoven und seine Zeit (Laaber: Laaber Verlag, 1987): 37Google Scholar.