The Life of Ludwig van Beethoven, Volume IThayer, Alexander Wheelock
History
The Life of Ludwig van Beethoven, Volume I
Thayer, Alexander Wheelock
Beethoven, Ludwig van, 1770-1827
Carl, Prince of Lichnowsky, Count Werdenberg, Dynast Granson, was
a very great patron, yes, a friend of Beethoven’s, who took him
into his house as a guest, where he remained at least a few years.
I found him there toward the end of the year 1794, and left him
there in the middle of 1796. Meanwhile, however, Beethoven had
almost always a home in the country.
The Prince was a great lover and connoisseur of music. He played
the pianoforte, and by studying Beethoven’s pieces and playing
them more or less well, sought to convince him that there was no
need of changing anything in his style of composition, though the
composer’s attention was often called to the difficulties of his
works. There were performances at his house every Friday morning,
participated in by four hired musicians--Schuppanzigh, Weiss,
Kraft and another (Link?), besides our friend; generally also an
amateur, Zmeskall. Beethoven always listened with pleasure to the
observations of these gentlemen. Thus, to cite a single instance,
the famous violoncellist Kraft in my presence called his attention
to a passage in the finale of the Trio, Op. 1, No. 3, to the fact
that it ought to be marked “sulla corda G,” and the indication 4-4
time which Beethoven had marked in the finale of the second Trio,
changed to 2-4. Here the new compositions of Beethoven, so far
as was feasible, were first performed. Here there were generally
present several great musicians and music-lovers. I, too, as long
as I lived in Vienna, was present, if not every time, at least
most of the time.
Here a Hungarian count once placed a difficult composition by
Bach in manuscript before him which he played _a vista_ exactly
as Bach would have played it, according to the testimony of
the owner. Here the Viennese author Förster once brought him a
quartet of which he had made a clean copy only that morning. In
the second portion of the first movement the violoncello got
out. Beethoven stood up, and still playing his own part sang the
bass accompaniment. When I spoke about it to him as a proof of
extraordinary acquirements, he replied with a smile: “The bass
part _had_ to be so, else the author would have known nothing
about composition.” To the remark that he had played a _presto_
which he had never seen before so rapidly that it must have been
impossible to see the individual notes, he answered: “Nor is
that necessary; if you read rapidly there may be a multitude of
typographical errors, but you neither see nor give heed to them,
so long as the language is a familiar one.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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