# Wanted to share my findings with you all



## DavidMahler (Dec 28, 2009)

I found a newspaper this week in a trunk - from 1885. On the front page it had a brief article about Beethoven. Figured I'd type it up and share it here:

*Boston Home Journal - Saturday August 9th 1885*

*BEETHOVEN'S ECCENTRICITIES*

_In 1816, Beethoven began to keep house, and a sad kind of home he had. He was like a child in the hands of servants and landlords, and rarely found himself at peace with either. He constantly changed his lodgings, and seldom had time to get things settled in a house before it was necessary to move again. It was seldom that a servant staid more than a few weeks, and the house frequently took care of itself. His room was generally a model of confusion. Letters strewed the floor, and the remains of his last meal, sketches of his music, books and pictures covered the chairs and tables. Sometimes it would be weeks before he could discovered a manuscript which he sorely needed. He broke nearly everything he touched and sometimes upset the ink in the piano. He loved to bathe, and frequently would stand pouring water over his hands, shouting his music; if any musical idea occurred, he would rush to the table and note it down, splashing the water over everything in the room. Every day, whatever the weather, Beethoven took a long walk; He had his favorite haunts around the city, and nearly all his musical ideas came to him in the woods or meadows, amid the trees, the rocks and the flowers. He was never without a little book in which he wrote down any thought which seized him; and then at home the thought would grow into a song or a symphony.

He was quiet and rapt when at the piano; but we are told that when conducting an orchestra, his movements were violent. At the diminuendo he would gradually crouch lower and lower, till he dropped entirely out of site, rising slowly during the crescendo, when he'd jump into the air. With his pupils he had the sweetest patients, repeating a correction over and over again; he would always forgive a wrong note, but woe to the unlucky pupil who failed to give the right impression to a phrase or bar, for this the master thought indicated a lack of soul, and this he would not forgive.

-"From Bach to Wagner" St Nicholas for August 
_


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## hocket (Feb 21, 2010)

What a great find.


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

Yep, nice find. Nothing controversial there, but I wonder how accurate it all is. Do you know what the ["From Bach to Wagner" St Nicholas for August] refers to?


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## Fsharpmajor (Dec 14, 2008)

From what little I could find by googling, St Nicholas was a magazine of the time, and "From Bach to Wagner" was a classical music column in it. The Boston Home Journal article is presumably an excerpt from the column.

Wagner would have only died a couple of years earlier.


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## DavidMahler (Dec 28, 2009)

I believe it may have been an excerpt from an upcoming book. I suspect this book may have been the first formal attempt to solidify Wagner as a titan after his death.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

Upsetting the ink into the piano heh heh... Imagine the language that would be flying about when that happened! Even more so if his pupil-cum-secretary Ries had the nerve to suggest he used a pencil while at the keyboard instead. In fact, Ries would have been one of the very few people who could have written an account such as this by virtue of his access to Beethoven and thus being fully aware of his regular habits and living conditions.


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