1808 -- ein Jahr mit Beethoven. Ed. by Ute Jung-Kaiser and Matthias Kruse.

Abstract

If one had spent an imaginary year with Beethoven in 1808 as a kind of fly-on-the-wall observer, one would have witnessed much activity that still leaves traces today. From surviving documents, we know he spent much of his time that year sketching the ‘Pastoral’ Symphony and two piano trios and writing out their full scores. At the start of the year he was also finishing off his Cello Sonata Op. 69 and probably making a few adjustments to the score of the Fifth Symphony, which had been more or less finished the previous year. Other activities that kept him very busy in 1808 involved writing letters (nearly thirty survive); negotiating with publishers; playing the piano at concerts and privately; checking proofs; making new friends (notably Marie Erdödy and Archduke Rudolph); renewing old friendships (Ferdinand Ries returned to Vienna that year); parting with others (Josephine Deym left Vienna in August, and had no confirmed contact with Beethoven after her return); and changing lodgings, moving from the Pasqualati House to Heiligenstadt, then Baden for the summer, before returning to Countess Erdödy's for the winter. Beethoven also devoted much time and effort trying to arrange a big public concert featuring his latest works—an effort that eventually succeeded on 22 December. Accounts of all these diverse activities could be assembled into a single narrative in a book that would provide a coherent overview of a whole year in his life. Such a study would be a useful contribution to Beethoven scholarship, although no year in his life has yet been documented in this way (except in outline in longer biographies). An ideal title for that book would be 1808—A Year with Beethoven. The book under review bears this very title. But in no way does it resemble the hypothetical book described above, and to that extent the title seems somewhat misleading.