The Life of Ludwig van Beethoven, Volume IIThayer, Alexander Wheelock
History
The Life of Ludwig van Beethoven, Volume II
Thayer, Alexander Wheelock
Beethoven, Ludwig van, 1770-1827
Add to the above the subsequent notices of a few songs and the Quartet,
Op. 95, and the meagre history of Beethoven as ~composer~ for 1810
is exhausted; what remains is of purely private and personal nature.
Kinsky’s active service in the campaign of 1809 and his subsequent
duties in Bohemia had prevented him hitherto from discharging his
obligations under the annuity contract; but the Archduke, perhaps
Lobkowitz also, was promptly meeting his; and these payments, together
with the honorable remuneration granted by Breitkopf and Härtel for
manuscripts, supplied Beethoven with ample means for comfort, even for
luxury. He had at this time no grounds for complaint upon that score.
It was in 1810 that Beethoven received from Clementi and Co. the
long-deferred honorarium for the British copyrights bought in April,
1807. Exactly when this money was received by Beethoven cannot be
determined from the existing evidence, but it seems to have been before
February 4, 1810, on which date Beethoven wrote to Breitkopf and Härtel
offering them the compositions from Op. 73 to 83 (exclusive of 75),
and remarking that he was about to send the same works to London. He
would scarcely have had such a purpose in mind unless he had had a
settlement with his London publishers. Additional evidence, though of
little weight, is provided by the circumstance that at the same time he
was contemplating a change of lodgings, as a letter to Professor Loeb,
written on February 8, shows; it was to his old home in the house of
Baron Pasqualati, which he had occupied two years before and which he
now took again at an annual rental of 500 florins.
[Sidenote: THOUGHTS HYMENEAL AND SARTORIAL]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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