Beschreibung:

MUSIC]. BEETHOVEN, LUDWIG VAN, 1770-1827. Autograph letter signed ("Beethoven") to Tobias Haslinger, n.p., n.d. [Vienna, after 23 May 1824]. 3 pages, oblong 4to, 139 x 214mm. (5 1/2 x 8 3/8 in.), in pencil, addressed on page 4 in pencil, traces of original wax seal, paper evenly and lightly browned, in German. WRITTEN NOT LONG AFTER THE PREMIERE OF THE NINTH SYMPHONY The composer apologizes for forgetting to send his friend Haslinger tickets to a concert of his music and corrects an erroneous report that a certain trio was a new work: "You would do me great wrong if you believed that, through carelessness, I sent you no tickets....Whatever Duport did, I am entirely innocent--such as calling the terzetto a new work-- not I . You know my truthful nature too well...To the rest of the offers of Duport I pay no attention and have only lost time and money by this academy...." Written soon after the first performance of the Ninth Symphony (on 7 May 1824), Beethoven unequivocally blames Louis-Antoine Duport, who had been closely involved with the premiere of Beethoven's last symphony, for a misunderstanding which arose surrounding a concert of Beethoven's music at the Grosser Redoutensaal on 23 May 1824. It is presumably to this concert that Beethoven had failed to give Haslinger tickets. Duport, an ex-dancer who represented the lessee of the Karntnertor Theatre, had described the vocal trio (op. 116, "Tremate, empi, tremate," for soprano, tenor and bass with orchestra) as a new work, when in fact it had first been performed on 27 February 1814. Not surprisingly, Beethoven was extremely angry with Duport and had written to Prince Nikolas Galitzin on 26 May that he was "the victim of an ex dancer, Duport." Beethoven's correspondent, Tobias Haslinger (1787-1842), was a staunch friend and a partner with Sigmund Anton Steiner in the publishing house S.A. Steiner, which published a number of Beethoven's works, including the trio referred to in this letter. Published in Letters , ed. E. Anderson, vol. 3, no. 1294, p. 1130, where the autograph manuscript is noted as not traced. Anderson took the text from Nottebohm, Ein Skizzenbuch von Beethoven , Leipzig, 1865, p. 40 and also notes that the letter had appeared in the sale catalogue of G. Charavay, May 1890, item 11 (a clipping from that catalogue accompanies the letter).