Beethoven's 1813 Contact with Maelzel
- Lawsuit: Rights to Wellington's Sieg, op.91

_______________________________________________

June 21, 1813: Duke of Wellington won Battle of Vittoria over Napoleon. Maelzel persuaded Beethoven to write a commemorative piece for Maelzel’s mechanical instrument the panharmonicon. The piece (op. 91) composed during the summer and early autumn, and arranged for orchestra. Maelzel and Beethoven decided it was best for orchestra rather than panharmonicon) ¹

Oct. 13, 1813: Article published in The Wiener Vaterlandische Blatter re: Maelzel’s invention of the chronometer and Beethoven’s approval mentioned.¹

Dec. 8, 1813: Charity concert given by Maelzel and Beethoven including the premiere of Wellington's Sieg op. 91, the first public performance of the 7^th symphony, and music played by Maelzel’s Mechanical Trumpeter.¹

Jan. 2, 1814: Wellington's Sieg and parts of Die Ruinen von Athen were performed at a benefit concert awarded to Beethoven. Maelzel was not involved in this performance.¹

Mar. 16 & 17, 1814: Maelzel, having left Vienna after a disagreement with Beethoven over Wellington's Sieg, performed the work twice in Munich. On hearing of these performances, Beethoven instituted legal action against Maelzel for having stolen the work, but the litigation was eventually dropped.¹

Apr., 1814: Beethoven sent a score of Wellington's Sieg to the Prince Regent in London with a dedication to him, evidently hoping thereby to forestall a performance of the work in London by Maelzel; Maelzel did not, in the end, take the work to London.¹

"Meanwhile he had undertaken another lawsuit on his own account.." (regarding Wellington's Sieg) "Afterwards, however, Maelzel and Beethoven fell out over their respective rights in the work, and Beethoven went to law. Maelzel fought the case and there were years of fruitless conflict before the litigants made peace. Beethoven gained nothing, and this time he had wasted money as well as energy."⁴

Wiener Vaterlandische Blatter Oct. 13, 1813: "Herr Beethoven looks upon this invention as a welcome means with which to secure the performance of his brilliant compositions in all places in the tempos conceived by him, which to his regret have so often been misunderstood (orig. Thayer, 1967, pg. 544). In 1817 he had a pamphlet published (by Steiner) giving metronome markings for his first eight symphonies and the Septet, op. 20, and another, soon after, for the string quartets to date (op. 18, 59, 74, and 95). He provided metronome indications for the Piano Sonata (op. 106), Meeresstille (op. 112), Opferlied (op. 121b) and the Ninth Symphony, and wrote frequently to Schott’s of his intention, eventually unfulfilled, to send directions for the Missa Solemnis. As Kolisch states, the fact that Beethoven was prepared to adopt metronome indications for important works confirms that tempo is an essential part of the musical idea (1943, pg. 174), as does Beethoven’s letter of 1826 to Schott’s: ‘The metronome markings will be sent to you very soon. Do wait for them. In our century such indications are certainly necessary. Moreover, I have received letters from Berlin informing me that the first performance of the symphony [No. 9] was received with enthusiastic applause, which I ascribe largely to the metronome markings. We can scarcely have tempi ordinary any longer, since one must fall into line with the idea of unfettered genius.’ [Anderson 1545].²

Despite this, Beethoven’s metronome markings have not been generally accepted. In part this can be ascribed to his alleged comment to Schindler: 'No more metronome! Anyone who can feel the music right does not need it; and for anyone who can’t, nothing is of any use; he runs away with the whole orchestra anyway.’ (Schindler, 1966, ppg. 425-6). This remark should not be taken too seriously, since it may have been another of Schindler’s inventions. The main objection is that the markings are generally believed to be too fast. But Beethoven is not alone in this; indeed, according to Willy Hess, music proceeds much quicker in the imagination than in reality, and the composer sitting at his desk is likely to ascribe quicker metronome markings to his music than he would adopt in performance (Hess, 1988, pg. 17). This same point was acknowledged by Peter Stadlen when he investigated seemingly problematic metronome markings (1982, pg. 54). The vast majority were on the fast side, but after he had taken numerous factors into account he concluded that most were ‘within the realm of plausibility’. They become still more acceptable when tempered with flexibility. Newman defined this as follows: ‘Like tempo itself, flexibility reflects the prevailing rhythmic character, though at a more local level. And, it similarly responds to changes in the harmonic rhythm, texture, articulation, ornamentation, and rhythmic progress.’ (Newman, 1988, pg. 110). There is plenty of evidence both in Beethoven’s music and from contemporary reports to suggest that Beethoven favored an underlying strict tempo into which a certain amount of flexibility could be introduced. These points must call into question the literalism which has been applied to some modern ‘authentic’ performances.²

Much detailed work has been done on this complex, and in the last resort unrewarding subject, most notably and recently by Peter Stadlen, the first part of whose findings are embodied in an article ‘Beethoven and the Metronome’ published in Music and Letters (October 1967, vol. 48, no. 4). The whole position with regard to Beethoven’s metronome markings has been bedeviled by the composer himself, the shortcomings of whose mathematics made it hard for him in the first place to express his wishes with regard to tempo in the mechanical-numerical formulae devised by Maelzel. As Stadlen shows, at the session on 27 September, 1826, when uncle and nephew were trying to establish correct metronome markings in the presentation copy of the Ninth Symphony for the King of Prussia, there was considerable confusion over the units in question. Such passages, in Karl’s handwriting, as ‘twice 80 would make’, and then ‘80=0’, later corrected to ‘(halfnote) = 80; or 132' is the same tempo. Only in half notes (in two beats) which would be better’ reveals a state of affairs which has been perpetuated with almost incredible wantonness by copyists and printers. In the Eulenburg scores alone, for example, Stadlen has no difficulty in finding two crass instances from op.74 (half note=100) instead of (whole note=100) for the ‘Piu presto quasi prestissimo’ and (quarternote=72) instead of (eightnote=72) for the Adagio and the story of stems cavalierly added to semibreves, blocked-in minims, tails added to crotchets and dots sprinkled apparently ad libitum continues almost to our own day. Beethoven himself seems to have passed, in good health, the markings (halfnote=144 instead of quarternote=144) in the proofs of the finale of op. 106, and Schindler’s ‘so I am to mark the second movement of the A major symphony halfnote=80’ (instead of quarternote=80) in a conversation book of 1823 passes unremarked, not only by Beethoven himself but even by the twentieth-century editor of the notebooks (cf. George Schunemann, Beethoven's Konversationshefte, iii, p12)³

A further source of error originating in the composer himself is suggested by another of Karl’s entries in the conversation book of 27 September, 1826. ‘You are taking it faster than 126. 132. ‘This is how we had it this morning.’ Like any other composer and perhaps more than most others, Beethoven plainly felt the ‘right’ tempo for his music slightly differently at different times. In his case particularly we cannot ignore the part played by the physical-psychological element in his determination of tempi. A man of his temperament and in his physical condition might very well feel in a mood of physical exhaustion and depression that the tempi which he had decided upon in good health and high spirits were too fast, and vice versa. Schindler’s acid comment on the conversation-book concerned - ‘this proves the unreliability of Beethoven’s own metronome markings’ - is not wholly unjustified; but it does not absolve us from trying to determine, first the markings that Beethoven himself intended, and second the correct interpretation of those markings.³

Detailed account and documents regarding Beethoven’s lawsuit against Maelzel over the rights to Wellington's Sieg. ⁵

--------------------------------------

1. The paperback edition, ppg. 23, 49
2. ibid ppg. 282-273
3. Beethoven, The Last Decade 1817-1827. Martin Cooper Oxford Univ. Press 1985, 2d edition, ppg. 467-468
4. The Beethoven Companion, ed: Thomas K. Scherman & Louis Biancolli, Doubleday, 1972, pg. 815
5. ibid ppg. 909-914