Official title: WoO 173 Hol Euch der Teufel! B’hüt’ Euch Gott! Rätselkanon (B-dur) nach einem eigenen Text Widmung: — NGAXII/2 AGA-SBG V/35 (2. Auflage: 36; Hess 253—254)

Origin and publication: The canon was written in the summer of 1819 in Mödling. The first edition appeared posthumously in 1865 in Alexander W. Thayer’s chronological index. During a conversation in March 1820, Friedrich August Kanne wrote in one of Beethoven’s conversation books: “Sie haben an Steiner von Mödling im vorigen Sommer einen Canon infinitus geschickt ä due [Noten] keiner hat ihn aufgelöst ich habe ihn aufgelöst, denn er tritt in der Sekunde ein [Noten] er geht in infinitum Hol Euch der Teufel! B’hüt Euch Gott! war der Text.” (BKh 1 p. 390f.) Beethoven had moved to Mödling on 12 May 1819. The Viennese music publisher Sigmund Anton Steiner and Karl Friedrich Zelter attempted to visit him on 12 September 1819. The two met Beethoven on the road to Vienna. Beethoven was still in Mödling on 10 October 1819 and returned to Vienna only in November. By that time the canon had already been written. Beethoven’s tone towards Steiner and his staff was often friendly, gruff, and slightly coarse. From 1820 onwards, the relationship with Steiner cooled considerably. Besides the two-voice solution at the lower seventh, presented by Kanne, Ludwig Misch proposed two four-voice solutions, whose third and fourth parts may be used ad libitum at the upper third and upper seventh.

Text: As early as 1815 Beethoven had greeted Steiner in a letter with exactly the same words (BGA 808 of 29 May 1815). In 1801 he had written down three bars of a canon with the text “Hol dich der Teufel”. Part of the text of the canon WoO 178 for Abbot Stadler also contains the admonition “Hol’ Sie der Teufel, wenn Sie nicht kommen”.

The sketches will be featured in an article specially created for the Beethovenian Music Research Center, www.lvbeethoven.org