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
As the whole opera was to be gone through, we went directly to
work. Princess L. played on the grand piano the great score of the
opera and Clement, sitting in a corner of the room, accompanied
with his violin the whole opera by heart, playing all the solos
of the different instruments. The extraordinary memory of Clement
having been universally known, nobody was astonished by it, except
myself. Meyer and I made ourselves useful, by singing as well as
we could, he (basso) the lower, I the higher parts of the opera.
Though the friends of Beethoven were fully prepared for the
impending battle, they had never seen him in ~that~ excitement
before, and without the prayers and entreaties of the very delicate
and invalid princess, who was a second mother to Beethoven and
acknowledged by himself as such, his united friends were not likely
to have succeeded in this, even to themselves, very doubtful
enterprise. But when after their united endeavors from seven
till after one o’clock, the sacrifice of the three numbers was
accomplished, and when we, exhausted, hungry and thirsty, went to
restore ourselves by a splendid supper--then, none was happier and
gayer than Beethoven. Had I seen him before in his fury, I saw him
now in his frolics. When he saw me, opposite to him, so intently
occupied with a French dish, and asked me what I was eating, and I
answered: “I don’t know!” with his lion-voice he roared out: “He
eats like a wolf--without knowing what! Ha, ha, ha!”
The condemned three numbers were:
1. A great aria with chorus of ~Pizarro~;
2. A comic duo between ~Leonore~ (~Fidelio~) and ~Marcelline~, with
violin and violoncello solo;
3. A comic terzetto between ~Marcelline~, ~Jacquino~ and ~Rocco~.
Many years after, Mr. Schindler found the scores of these three
pieces amongst the rubbish of Beethoven’s music, and got them as a
present from him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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