The director of the business affairs of the Russian Embassy, von Obreskow, had made inquiry as to how the fee was to be paid. Beethoven wrote to Schindler to tell Obreskow to pay the bearer on delivery of a receipt; to say (if it became opportune) that the King of France had done so; and admonished him always to remember that such personages represented “Majesty itself”; also to “say nothing about the Mass not being finished, which is not true, for the new pieces are only additions.” Impatience at the non-delivery of the Mass at the expected time must have been expressed by the Russian Embassy, for in a note which Schindler dates “in the winter of 1824,” Beethoven says:

Prince Galitzin, who had already expressed his delight in the new work and who had also been invited to subscribe, suggested that the Mass be published by popular subscription at four or five ducats, as there were not many amateurs who could afford to pay 50 ducats for a written copy. “All that I can do,” the Prince writes in conclusion, “is to beg you to put me down among your subscribers and to send me a copy as soon as possible so that I may produce it at a concert for the benefit of the widows of musicians which takes place annually near Christmas.” Plainly, this was a subscription in the existing category; there was no other, and Beethoven, in view of the invitation to the courts, could not at once entertain the subject of a popular subscription for a printed edition. Galitzin also accedes to a request which had obviously been made to him when the invitation was extended, that the 50 ducats already deposited in Vienna by him for a quartet be applied to the account of the Mass. He writes on September 23 (October 3): “I have just received your letter of the 17th and hasten to answer that I have instructed the house of Henikstein to pay you immediately the 50 ducats which I fancied had long ago been placed at your disposal.” The bankers Henikstein sent the Prince Beethoven’s receipt for the 50 ducats “which we paid to him on the order and account of Your Highness as fee for the Mass which we have forwarded through the High State Chancellary.” The score was in the hands of Prince Galitzin on November 29, but the performance which he had projected did not take place until April 6, 1824. It was the first performance of the Mass anywhere, and Galitzin wrote an enthusiastic account of it to Beethoven under date of April 8.[76]

A special invitation to subscribe to the Mass was not extended to the Austrian court for reasons which, no doubt, were understood between Beethoven and Archduke Rudolph and which may have been connected with efforts which were making at the time to secure a court appointment for the composer. At the request of Artaria, however, an invitation was sent to Prince Paul Esterhazy. Beethoven had little confidence in the successful outcome of the appeal, probably with a recollection in his mind of the Prince’s attitude toward him on the occasion of the production of the Mass in C in 1807, to which he seems to refer in a letter to Schindler dated June 1:[77]

Beethoven’s suspicious nature had other food. On the outside of this letter he wrote:

Beethoven’s lack of faith in the enterprise was justified; Esterhazy did not subscribe.

No invitation was sent to the English court, probably because Beethoven cherished a grudge in that quarter; but subscriptions were asked of two large singing societies—the Singakademie of Berlin and the Cäcilien-Verein of Frankfort. Zelter was director of the Singakademie, and to him Beethoven wrote on February 8 as follows, after the introductory compliments and reflections:

He informs Zelter that an appeal has been sent to the King of Prussia and that he has asked the intercession in its behalf of Prince Radziwill. He then continues:

The letter will be seen, on comparison with that written on the same day to Goethe, to be either a draft for the latter in part or an echo of it. There is the same pun on “geschrieben” and “erschrieben,” the same lament about having to keep his eyes on the ground while desirous to keep them fixed on higher things, the same reference to the value of the Mass for concert purposes in behalf of charity. As this last point is one which would naturally occur to the writer in addressing a musician and not at all naturally in an appeal to a poet, it is safe to say that the Zelter letter was written first. It is an unpleasant duty to call attention to a very significant difference between this letter and the invitation issued to the courts as well as the letter to Goethe. In the latter he distinctly says that the Mass will not be published in the ordinary way “for the present,” thus reserving the privilege of printing it at a future time. To Zelter, and presumably to the Frankfort society, he plainly intimates that there is to be no publication in the ordinary way at all. It is not a violent presumption that Zelter may have observed this discrepancy, which was of vital moment to his society, and that this may have caused the termination of the negotiations, which began auspiciously enough in a letter written by Zelter on February 22 in reply to Beethoven’s. In this letter he said he was ready to purchase the Mass for the Singakademie at his own risk, provided Beethoven would adapt it to the use of the society—that is, arrange it for performance practically without instruments—a proceeding, he explained, which would make it practicable for all similar concert institutions. To this letter Beethoven replied on March 25:

There the matter ended, so far as is known. The negotiations with the Frankfort society were more successful. On May 19, 1823, J. N. Schelble, director, wrote saying:

There were, therefore, as appears from this account and the list of names sent in November, 1825, to the publishers of the Mass, ten subscribers, namely: the Czar of Russia, the Kings of Prussia, Saxony, France and Denmark, the Grand Dukes of Tuscany and Hesse-Darmstadt, Princes Galitzin and Radziwill and the Cäcilia Society of Frankfort. Beethoven’s receipts, 500 ducats (£250 or about $1200), were very materially reduced, how much we can not say, by the costs of copying. In this work his principal helper was a professional copyist named Schlemmer, who could best decipher his manuscript. But Schlemmer was sickly and died before the year was over; his successor was named Rampel, and seems to have caused Beethoven a great deal of annoyance; he probably was made to bear a great deal of the blame for the tardiness of the work, for which, also, the composer’s frequent alterations were in part responsible. One of the numerous letters to Schindler from this period throws a little light on this subject:

Beethoven’s thoughts in connection with the Mass were not all engrossed during 1823 with the finishing touches on the composition and the subscription; he was still thinking of the publication of the work. His thoughts went to London, as a letter to Ries shows. The Mass also came up in his dealings with Diabelli in Vienna. There were, probably, other negotiations, of which we are not advised. An agreement had been reached with Diabelli concerning the Variations, Op. 120 (on the Diabelli waltz theme), and the Mass had also been mentioned. Whatever the nature of the negotiations may have been, Diabelli now seems to have been insisting on conditions which Beethoven could not accept without breach of contract with his subscribers or revoking the subscriptions. In March Diabelli called Schindler into his shop and had a talk with him which is detailed in a Conversation Book. It is Schindler who is speaking:

Beethoven appears to have doubts or scruples on the score of the invitations sent to the sovereigns.

It appears, now, that Diabelli wants to publish the three supplementary pieces also; but Beethoven still hesitates:

Later (there has plainly been another consultation between Schindler and Diabelli):

And in April:

Later, August 1 and September 1 are mentioned. Beethoven was firm in his determination to keep faith with his subscribers. He writes to Schindler: “There are only two courses as regards the Mass, namely, that the publisher delay the publication a year and a day; or, if not, we can not accept a subscription.” Later he writes: “Nothing is to be changed in the Diabelli contract except that the time when he is to receive the Mass from me be left undetermined.” The contract in question which was thus to be amended concerned the Variations, but presumably the Mass also. Beethoven writes:

Either this disagreement or some other in a matter in which Schindler acted as Beethoven’s agent brought out a letter from the latter to the former in which he expresses a belief that the business, “so disagreeable to you,” might be brought to a conclusion soon: “moreover I was not, unfortunately, entirely wrong in not wholly trusting Diab.” Schindler, in a gloss on this note, says that the disagreeable business concerned the Mass. Diabelli had made plans which were not only harmful to the work but humiliating as well to Beethoven. Schindler pointed this out and Diabelli became violent and declared that since the contract was as good as closed he would summon Schindler before a court of law if it were not kept. “But,” says Schindler, “the threat did no good; he had to take back the document.” The numerous notes to Schindler about this period are undated and the times at which they were written have been only approximately fixed by Schindler; there is also some vagueness touching the time and order of the written conversations, but the evidence thus far presented, together with a significant remark in a billet to Schindler, to the effect that he had thought of a project which would “act like a pistol-shot on this fellow,” would seem to justify the assumption that Beethoven had entered into the same kind of obligation with Diabelli as he had with Simrock and Peters so far as the Mass was concerned, and that before the execution of a formal contract, which seems to have been considered necessary in this case, which was to include the Variations on the Diabelli Waltz theme, Beethoven had embarked on his enterprise with the sovereigns, which made the speedy publication of the Mass in the ordinary way impossible with honor; further, that a threat to withhold the Variations had been used to bring the irate publisher to terms. In the April Conversation Book Schindler says: “Won’t Diabelli make wry faces when your brother demands the document back almost as soon as he has received it!”

To the commercialized mind of to-day it is possible that the picture which has just been presented here of a superlatively great artist hawking his creations in the courts of Europe, appealing to his friends and patrons among the great to act as his go-betweens, railing against the tardy and permitting those who were prompt in payment to wait unconscionable periods for their property, may seem to present as little of the aspect of debasement of genius and its products as it did at a time when great musicians were menials in the households of the highborn, and thrift could only follow fawning. But Beethoven had done much to exalt art and emancipate the artist, and what would have caused little comment in the case of his predecessors amongst court musicians was scarcely venial in him who preached a new ethic as well as artistic evangel. And so, to minds untainted by trade and attuned to a love of moral as well as æsthetic beauty, the spectacle which Beethoven presents in 1823 must be quite as saddening as that disclosed by his dealings with the publishers in the years immediately preceding. A greater measure of commiseration goes out to him now, however, because of the evidence that the new phase cost him greater qualms of conscience and that the exigencies which impelled him were more pressing. His physical ailments were increasing; his deafness had put a stop to his appearances in public as an artist; his eyes were troubling him; there was no lessening of his concern about his ward, but an increase in the cost of his maintenance; his income was continually dwindling because of his lessening productivity, notwithstanding that the fees which he could command for new works (and even the remnants of his youthful activity) had reached dimensions of which he had never dreamed in the heyday of his powers; he felt the oppressive burden of his debts more and more as his unreasoning love for his foster-son prompted him to make provision against the future. The royal subscription was, no doubt, a welcome scheme which, if not suggested by his advisers, was certainly encouraged by them; but it must have cost his proud soul no little humiliation to have his application rejected after he had so deeply bent “the pregnant hinges of the knee.” The publishers gave him less concern. They were his natural enemies and he theirs—“hellhounds who licked and gnawed his brains,” as he expressed it in a letter to Holz in 1825; yet he knew that he would need them, and he knew also that as soon as he went to them, and the mass appeared in print, the manuscript copies which he had sold would be all but worthless. But this may have troubled him little, as he, in all likelihood, shared Schindler’s conviction that there was no permanency of interest in the work on the part of the crowned heads and that they would not be troubled by the appearance of the work in print. Patronage of art is part of the obligation which rests upon royalty, and it would have been little less than a crime to withhold the Mass from the public; but what of the exclusiveness of right which was implied, if not expressed, in the letter to Zelter and presumably also in that to the Cæcilia Society of Frankfort? He had informed the kings, who might not even deign to glance at the Mass, that he had no “present” intention to print the work, leaving them to gather that he would do so later; but he plainly gives Zelter to understand that it is to remain a manuscript. Here, too, the advice of his friends, who could see his need but did not feel the moral responsibility which he may, or ought to, have felt, must have been persuasive and also comforting.[79] The world has too long enjoyed the great work to distress itself about the circumstances of its creation and publication; but the historian and moralist may yet as deeply deplore them as pity the conditions which compelled the composer to yield to them.

Preliminary to the narrative of the other varied incidents of the year 1823, let us set down a brief mention of the fact that on January 20 Beethoven wrote a little piece for voice and pianoforte in the album of Countess Wimpfen, née Eskeles, on the words of Goethe: “Der edle Mensch sei hülfreich und gut,” [sic] which was published in facsimile in the “Allgemeine Wiener Musikzeitung” on November 23, 1843. Having traversed the year in our search for material relating to the Mass in D, the next most significant subject is that which concerned the Symphony in D minor, on which he worked industriously and which had been the subject of correspondence between himself and Ries (in London) for some time before the year opened. On April 6, 1822, Beethoven had inquired of his old pupil: “What would the Philharmonic Society be likely to offer me for a symphony?” Ries, evidently, laid the matter before the directors of the society who, at a meeting on November 10, “resolved to offer Beethoven fifty pounds for a MS. symphony.”[80] Ries conveyed the information to Beethoven in a letter dated November 15 and in a reply dated December 20, Beethoven, although he protested that the remuneration was not to be compared with what other nations might give, accepted the offer, adding:

A glimpse into the occupations, cares and perplexities which beset Beethoven at this period is given by the first letter in the series written in the new year—on February 5, which Ries, in his “Notizen,” gives only in part:

What justification Beethoven had, or imagined he had, for imputing a dishonorable act to his brother, cannot be said; it is noteworthy, however, that he does not even mention him in a letter written twenty days later which reiterates much that had already been set forth, and offers to send the Symphony at once on receiving word from Ries accompanied by a draft. He also intends to send six Bagatelles and asks Ries to traffic, as best he can, with them and two sonatas. Had he received a dedication from Ries, he says, he would at once have inscribed the Overture to him. Not long afterward Beethoven wrote again to Ries. The letter, which has been preserved only in part, is printed with a few omissions and changes in the “Notizen” (p. 154). Its significant remark about the new Symphony is that it is to bear a dedication to Ries; its most valuable contribution, however, refers to the Mass in D and the explanation which it offers of the fact that Beethoven sent no invitation to the English court to subscribe for that work. “In addition to these hardships,” Beethoven writes, “I have many debts to pay, for which reason it would be agreeable to me if you have disposed of the Mass to send me also the check for it, for by that time the copy for London will have been made. There need be no scruples because of the few souverains who are to get copies of it. If a local publisher made no objections, there ought to be still fewer in London; moreover, I bind myself in writing that not a note of it shall appear either in print or otherwise.” The poor Archduke-Cardinal comes in for his customary drubbing, the special complaint now being that Beethoven is obliged to draw his “wretched salary” with the aid of a stamp. The letter was placed for delivery in the hands of the amiable gentleman of the Austrian Embassy whose name we now learn to be Bauer and who was also the bearer of an address to King George IV[82] which Ries was to ask Bauer to read, after which the latter was to see to its delivery into the royal hands and if possible get in return at least a “butcher’s knife or a tortoise”; a printed copy of the “Battle of Vittoria” was to accompany it. The character of the address to the king can be guessed at from the following draft for an earlier letter which was found amongst Schindler’s papers:

There are other letters to Ries which must be considered later. They do not bear out Schindler’s contention that an estrangement had taken place between former master and pupil, but were it not that Beethoven’s utterances on that point were chronic when negotiating sales of his works it might be said that they show that his burden of debt rested with peculiar grievousness upon him at this time. That it did trouble him more than ordinarily is otherwise evidenced. In April Schindler writes: “Don’t think night and day about your debts. When you are well again you’ll pay them without feeling it.” Steiner, who may have thought that consideration was no longer incumbent on him, now that Beethoven was offering his works to other publishers, pressed him for the money which he had loaned him and threatened to sue him for 800 florins. Beethoven presented a counter-claim and demanded that Steiner publish a number of compositions which he had purchased but had not issued. The debt to Brentano also distressed him. He had as yet received nothing from the royal subscribers to the Missa Solemnis. He appealed to his brother Johann to go security for him, but he refused. Then he consulted Dr. Bach, who advised him to dispose of one of the seven shares of bank stock which he had purchased after his stroke of fortune at the time of the Congress of Vienna. Schindler was called on to act as fiscal agent in what must have seemed a complicated matter to Beethoven, since at another time he had wanted to hypothecate a share and, on getting it out of its hiding-place, learned that all he had to do to get the money he needed was to cut off a coupon and collect it. Now he writes to Schindler:

Another note to the same:

On a separate scrap of paper is written: “It must not appear that the money is needed.” The date of this note is fixed by the circumstance that it is the one in which Beethoven asks Schindler to draw up a list of courts to which the invitations to subscribe to the Mass were to be sent. In still another note he refers to bank shares which evidently were to be hypothecated. It was while in this distressful state concerning his debts that he took the first steps toward making his nephew his legal heir. On March 6, 1823, he wrote to Bach:

The words excluding Johann from the guardianship were written on the third page of the document and on the first there was this addition: “NB. In the way of capital there are 7 shares of bank stock; whatever else is found in cash is like the bank shares to be his.” Shortly before his death he reiterated this bequest with modifications entailed by changed conditions.

The origin of a canon which Beethoven improvised at the coffee-house “Zur goldenen Birne” on February 20 to the words “Bester Herr Graf, Sie sind ein Schaf” is said by Schindler to have been a discussion between the composer and Count Lichnowsky concerning a contract with Steiner. Obviously, Beethoven and his adviser had disagreed.

In November 1822, Anton Tayber, Imperial Court Composer, died. Beethoven applied for the appointment as his successor and Counts Lichnowsky and Dietrichstein entered the lists for him. Beethoven made a personal appeal to Dietrichstein, who was the “Court Music-Count” who, on February 23, 1823, disclosed the plan which had been conceived to promote Beethoven’s interests with the Emperor in a letter to Lichnowsky:

On March 10 Dietrichstein sent Beethoven three texts for graduals and a like number for offertories from which to choose words to be used in the mass to be composed for the emperor. On the count’s letter Beethoven wrote the memorandum: “Treat the gradual as a symphony with song—does it follow the Gloria?” Here we have some light on the subject which came up for thought during the account of Beethoven’s negotiations with publishers for the Mass in D. It would seem to appear that Beethoven was much pleased with the interest manifested in his application by Count Dietrichstein, and looked with auspicious eye upon the latter’s plan to put him into the Emperor’s good books. There can scarcely be a doubt but that he gave considerable thought to the proposed mass even while still at work on the Mass in D. He conceived the plan of accompanying the Kyrie with wind-instruments and organ only in a “new mass,” as he designates it, and sketches for a Dona nobis pacem which have been found “for the mass in C-sharp minor” point to a treatment which may be said to be in harmony, so far as can be seen, with Count Dietrichstein’s suggestions. On one occasion he writes to Peters that he had not made up his mind which mass he should have, and on another that he had three masses, two other publishers having asked for such works. He tells Schindler that reports that the Mass in D was not finished were to be denied because they were not true, the unfinished numbers being additions. So also he writes to the Archduke. These additions were to be a gradual, an offertory, and a setting of the hymn Tantum ergo sacramentum, and it is a fair presumption, since appropriate texts for the first two were sent to Beethoven by Count Dietrichstein, that they were contemplated in connection with the mass for the emperor and that possibly after the abandonment of that project they were associated with the Mass in D. Nothing is known of the music which Beethoven had in mind for these additional numbers, but many sketches are lost and there is no knowing how much music which was never written out Beethoven carried in his head.[83]

Beethoven spoke of the “second” mass to others besides the publishers. Nothing came of it, however. He decided to postpone work on the mass for the Emperor, pleading the pressure of other obligations in the letters of thanks which he sent to Counts Lichnowsky and Dietrichstein. They and Archduke Rudolph were greatly disappointed and, if Schindler is to be believed, the Archduke and Lichnowsky rebuked him.[84]

In this period, too, the alluring vision of a new opera presented itself, haunted the minds of Beethoven and his friends for a space and then disappeared in the limbo of unexecuted projects. “Fidelio” had been revived on November 3, 1822, at the Kärnthnerthor Theatre. Its success was so great that the management of the theatre offered a commission to Beethoven for a new opera. Beethoven viewed the proposition favorably and his friends hailed it with enthusiasm, especially Count Moritz Lichnowsky. Beethoven’s love for classic literature led him to express a desire for a libretto based on some story of the antique world. He was told that such stories were all worn threadbare. In the Conversation Books we see what suggestions were offered by others: a text by Schlegel; Voltaire’s tragedies; Schiller’s “Fiesco.” Local poets and would-be poets were willing to throw themselves into the breach. Friedrich August Kanne, editor of the musical journal published by Steiner and Co., wrote a libretto which Beethoven sent to Schindler with a note saying that except for the fact that the first act was rather lukewarm it was so admirably written that it really did not require the collaboration of “one of the first composers,” adding, “I do not want to say that it is just the most suitable thing for me, but if I can rid myself of obligations to which I am bound, who knows what might—or will—happen!” Lichnowsky tells Beethoven in February that he is determined to see Grillparzer, with whom he evidently wants to talk about an opera-book on “Macbeth” or “Romeo and Juliet.” Brother Johann brings Beethoven a proposition from Johann Sporchil, historian and publicist, and Sporchil, receiving encouragement, submitted a work act by act to the composer, who wrote comments on the manuscripts but never did more.[85] Lichnowsky hears of an opera on “Alfred the Great,” said to be very beautiful and full of spectacular pomp. He will bring it to the composer in a few days. The Count has also written to Grillparzer, and Beethoven, recalling that he is an old acquaintance, resolves to visit him. Lichnowsky’s suggestion bore fruit of a kind. Grillparzer has left us an account of his attempt to collaborate with Beethoven on an opera in his “Erinnerungen an Beethoven.”[86] The request for a libretto, he says, came to him through Count Dietrichstein and was somewhat embarrassing to him because of his unfamiliarity with the lyric drama and his doubts touching Beethoven’s ability, after his later works, to compose an opera. Finally, however, he decided to make the attempt, and submitted a subject to Beethoven’s friends and then to Beethoven himself. It was a semi-diabolical story drawn from Bohemian legendary history, entitled “Dragomira.” It met with Beethoven’s approval and he agreed to write it, but afterward changed his mind and took up the fairy tale of Melusina. Of the manner in which he treated this subject Grillparzer says:

The book appealed to Beethoven, but several conferences between him and the poet were necessary before it was brought into satisfactory shape. Grillparzer had excluded much of the material in the old legend which was unsuited to dramatic treatment, and strengthened the plot with conceits of his own invention. As soon as he had sent the text he went to Beethoven at Schindler’s request. At first blush Beethoven was much pleased with the book, and he wrote Grillparzer a letter which delighted the poet. Grillparzer describes the visit to Beethoven at his lodgings in the Kothgasse which he made in company with Schindler: