from any other of his teachers, much longer and systematically continued, is manifest. About this time the young court musician Franz Georg Rovantini lived in the same house with Beethoven. He was the son of a violinist Johann Conrad Rovantini who had been called to Bonn from Ehrenbreitstein and who died in 1766. He was related to the Beethoven family. The young musician was much respected and sought after as teacher. According to the Fischer document the boy Beethoven was among his pupils, taking lessons on the violin and viola. But these lessons, too, came to an early end; Rovantini died on September 9, 1781, aged 24.

A strong predilection for the organ was awakened early in the lad and he eagerly sought opportunities to study the instrument, apparently even before he became Neefe's pupil. In the cloister of the Franciscan monks at Bonn there lived a friar named Willibald Koch, highly respected for his playing and his expert knowledge of organ construction. We have no reason to doubt that young Ludwig sought him out, received instruction from him and made so much progress that Friar Willibald accepted him as assistant. In the same way he made friends with the organist in the cloister of the Minorites and "made an agreement" to play the organ there at 6 o'clock morning mass. It would seem that he felt the need of familiarity with a larger organ than that of the Franciscans. On the inside of the cover of a memorandum book which he carried to Vienna with him is found the note: "Measurements (Fussmass) of the Minorite pedals in Bonn." Plainly he had kept an interest in the organ. Still another tradition is preserved in a letter to the author from Miss Auguste Grimm, dated September, 1872, to the effect that Heinrich Theisen, born in 1759, organist at Rheinbreitbach near Honneck on the Rhine, studied the organ in company with Beethoven under Zenser, organist of the Münsterkirche at Bonn, and that the lad of ten years surpassed his fellow student of twenty. The tradition says that already at that time Ludwig composed pieces which were too difficult for his little hands. "Why, you can't play that, Ludwig," his teacher is said to have remarked, and the boy to have replied: "I will when I am bigger."

When Beethoven's studies with van den Eeden began and ended, whether they were confined to the organ or pianoforte, or partook of both-these are undecided points. It does not appear that any instruction in composition was given him until he became the pupil of Neefe. In the facsimile which follows the part devoted to thorough-bass in the so-called "Studien,”

THE STORY OF A FIRST COMPOSITION

65 the composer says: "Dear Friends: I took the pains to learn this only that I might write the figures readily and later instruct others; for myself I never had to learn how to avoid errors, for from my childhood I had so keen a sensibility that I wrote correctly without knowing it had to be so, or could be otherwise." This lends plausibility, at least, to another anecdote related by Mäurer concerning an alleged precocious composition by Beethoven:

About this time the English Ambassador to the Elector's court, named Kressner, who had extended help to the Beethoven family, living scantily on a salary of 400 fl. [?], died. Louis composed a funeral cantata to his memory-his first composition. He handed his score to Lucchesi and asked him to correct the errors. Lucchesi gave it back with the remark that he could not understand it, and therefore could not comply with his request, but would have it performed. At the first rehearsal there was great astonishment at the originality of the composition, but approval was divided; after a few rehearsals the approbation grew and the piece was performed with general applause.

George Cressener came to Bonn in the autumn of 1755, and died there January 17, 1781, in the eighty-first year of his age. The "about this time" in Mäurer's story agrees, therefore, well enough with that date; it is, however, a suspicious circumstance that Mäurer had left the service and returned to Cologne in the Spring of 1780 and, therefore, was not eye-witness to the fact; and another that the circumstance was not remembered by other members of the court chapel, not even by Franz Ries, nor by Neefe, who, though not then a member, was already in Bonn. "In 1780," continues Mäurer, "Beethoven got acquainted with Zambona, who called his attention to his neglected education, gave him lessons daily in Latin, Louis continuing a year (in six weeks he read Cicero's letters!)-also logic, French and Italianuntil Zambona left Bonn in order to become bookkeeper for Bartholdy in Mühlheim." In the "Geheime Staats-Conferenz Protocollen," May 20, 1787, one reads: "Stephan Zambona prays to be appointed, Kammerportier, etc.," to which is appended the remark: "the request not granted." Zambona is a name, too, which, half a dozen years later, often appears in the Bonn "Intelligenzblatt," as that of a shopkeeper in the Market Place of that town. If the story of the cantata be doubtful, that of these private studies on the part of a boy in Beethoven's position, only in his tenth year and a schoolboy then if ever, like Hamlet's possible dreams in the sleep of death, must "give us pause."

Mother and son undertook a voyage to Holland in the beginning of the winter of 1781. The widow Karth, one of the Hertel family, born in 1780 and still living in Bonn in 1861, passed her childhood in the house No. 462 Wenzelgasse in the upper story of which the Beethovens then lived. One of her reminiscences is in place here. She distinctly remembered sitting, when a child, upon her own mother's knee, and hearing Madame van Beethoven- "a quiet, suffering woman"-relate that when she went with her little boy Ludwig to Holland it was so cold on the boat that she had to hold his feet in her lap to prevent them from being frostbitten; and also that, while absent, Ludwig played a great deal in great houses, astonished people by his skill and received valuable presents. The circumstance of the cold feet warmed in the mother's lap, is precisely one to fasten itself in the memory of a child and form a point around which other facts might cluster.1

Another incident related in connection with this journey to Holland-not as a fact, but as one which she had heard spoken of in her childhood-and one very difficult to comprehend, is, that some person, whether an envious boy or a heartless adult she could not tell, drew a knife across the fingers of Ludwig to disable him from playing!

'There seems to have been no knowledge on the part of Beethoven's biographers of this visit to Holland until Thayer brought the incident to notice. It is, therefore, highly significant that the Fischer family also recalled the circumstance and, besides, knew what brought it about. The sister of young Rovantini, who died in September, 1781, was employed as governess in Rotterdam, and on receiving intelligence of the death of her brother came to Bonn, together with her mistress (whose name has not been preserved), to visit his grave. For a month she was an inmate of the Beethoven house; there was a good deal of music-making and some excursions to neighboring places of interest, including Coblenz. The visitors invited the Beethoven family to make a trip to Holland. Inasmuch as Johann van Beethoven could not get away, the mother went with the lad, and, a party of five, they embarked upon the voyage. This must have been in October or November, 1781, which agrees with the story of the extreme cold encountered on the voyage. They remained a considerable time, but whether or not Ludwig gave a concert as he had intended, is not known. Despite the attentions showered upon him by the wealthy lady from Rotterdam and the many honors, the pecuniary results were disappointing. To Fischer's question how he had fared Beethoven is reported to have answered: "The Dutch are skinflints (Pfennigfuchser); I'll never go to Holland again.”

Chapter IV

Beethoven a Pupil of Neefe-His Talent and Skill Put to Use-First Efforts at Composition-Johann van Beethoven's Family-Domestic Tribulations.

C

HRISTIAN GOTTLOB NEEFE succeeded the persons mentioned as Beethoven's master in music. When this tutorship began and ended, and whether or not it be true that the Elector engaged and paid him for his services in this capacity, as affirmed by divers writers-here again positive evidence is wanting. Neefe came to Bonn in October, 1779; received the decree of succession to the position of Court Organist on February 15, 1781, and was thus permanently engaged in the Elector's service. The unsatisfactory nature of the earlier instruction, as well as the high reputation of Neefe, placed in the strongest light before the Bonn public by those proceedings which had compelled him to remain there, would render it highly desirable to Johann van Beethoven to transfer his son to the latter's care. It would create no surprise should proof hereafter come to light that this change was made even before the issue of the decree of February 15, 1781;—that even then the pupil was profiting by the lessons of the zealous Bachist. Whether this was so or not, it was more than ever necessary that the boy's talents should be put to profitable use, for the father found his family still increasing. The baptism of a daughter named Anna Maria Franciska after her sponsors Anna Maria Klemmers, dicta Kochs, and Franz Rovantini, court musician, is recorded in the St. Remigius register February 23, 1779, and her death on the 27th of the same month. The baptism of August Franciscus Georgius van Beethoven-Franz Rovantini, Musicus Aulicus and Helene Averdonk, patrini, follows nearly two years later-January 17, 1781. There is no minister of State now to lend his name to a child of Johann van Beethoven, nor any lady abbess. Rovantini, one of the youngest members of the orchestra (relative and friend of the family), and a Frau Kochs, the young contralto, whose musical education the father

had superintended, take their places-another indication that the head of the family is gradually sinking in social position.

It is Schlosser who states that "the Elector urged Neefe to make it his particular care to look after the training of the young Beethoven." How much weight is to be attached to this assertion of a man who hastily threw a few pages together soon after the death of the composer, and who begins by adopting the old error of 1772 as the date of his birth, and naming his father "Anton," may safely be left to the reader. That the story may possibly have some foundation in truth is not denied; but the probabilities are all against it. Just in these years Max Friedrich is busy with his tric-trac, his balls, his new operettas and comedies, and with his notion of making the theatre a school of morals. The truth seems to be (and it is the only hypothesis that suggests itself, corresponding to the established facts), that Johann van Beethoven had now determined to make an organist of his son as the surest method of making his talents productive. The appointment of Neefe necessarily destroyed Ludwig's hope of being van den Eeden's successor; but Neefe's other numerous employments would make an assistant indispensable, and to this place the boy might well aspire. It will be seen in the course of the narrative that Beethoven never had a warmer, kinder and more valuable friend than Neefe proved throughout the remainder of his Bonn life; that, in fact, his first appointment was obtained for him through Neefe, although this is the first hint yet published that the credit does not belong to a very different personage. What, then, so natural, so self-evident as that Neefe, foreseeing the approaching necessity of some one to take charge of the little organ in the chapel at times when his duties to the Grossmann company would prevent him from officiating in person, should gladly undertake the training of the remarkable talents of van den Eeden's pupil with no wish for any other remuneration than the occasional services which the youth could render him?

Dr. Wegeler remarks: "Neefe had little influence upon the instruction of our Ludwig, who frequently complained of the too severe criticisms made on his first efforts in composition." The first of these assertions is evidently an utter mistake. In 1793 Beethoven himself, at all events, thought differently: "I thank you for the counsel which you gave me so often in my progress in my divine art. If I ever become a great man yours shall be a share of the credit. This will give you the greater joy since you may rest assured," etc. Thus he wrote to his old teacher. As to the complaint of harsh criticism it may be remarked that