The planned biography was cancelled, perhaps for lack of subscribers. In his hands, however, much material remained: these were copies of the baptismal certificate; letters written by and to Beethoven; the contract for the annuity of 1809; notebooks of notes, most of which were gathered into what is today called the Tagebuch. There were few original documents. Later, however, from 1832 to 1835, Gräffer drafted a sketch for a biography of Beethoven, but above all, as Solomon recalls, he left an unpublished autobiography in which many details about Beethoven are collected. At a certain point Gräffer put all his material up for sale, but found no buyers.

It is certain that in 1842 Karl Holz, probably annoyed by the treatment Schindler had reserved for him in his biography published meanwhile in 1840, persuaded Ferdinand Simon Gassner (1798–1851), musician, Kapellmeister in Karlsruhe, and writer, to write a biography of Beethoven himself. Gassner came to Vienna and received from Holz and from Gräffer all the material they had at their disposal.

The history of this material, today known as the “Fischoff Manuscript,” is recounted differently by various scholars. Solomon reports that the material had for a certain period been in the hands of the pianist Joseph Fischhoff (1804–1857), who made a copy of it. This copy of the collection of information, consisting of 44 sheets, is what is today known as the “Fischoff Manuscript.” And it is said that the original dossier was then given, by Gassner’s widow, to Ludwig Nohl, who used it for his Beethoven’s Leben of 1864.

According to Eliot Forbes the story was different. The collection, of about sixty handwritten pages, contained letters and documents whose originals have been lost; observations, notes, and memoranda; personal recollections of Zmeskall von Domanovecz; copies of the few printed sources from the years 1830–1837 (Forbes includes the Tagebuch among them). This manuscript was left to Beethoven’s nephew, Karl, and at his death in 1857 remained with the widow Carolina. The manuscript, later sold, disappeared. But fortunately Jacob Hotschevar, Karl’s guardian, had made a copy of it, adding some anecdotes. This copy was then given to Joseph Fischoff, professor at the Vienna Conservatory. At his death it passed into the hands of a music dealer, Julius Friedländer, who sold it to the Berlin Library in 1859, where Thayer had the opportunity to study it.

Meanwhile, in the months following the Master’s death, another claimant to the Beethovenian mandate for a biography faithful to the facts of his life appointed himself as the one charged with writing it. This was Anton Schindler, who sought to exploit the opportunity arising from the fact that it was well known that he had been Beethoven’s famulus for several years, the person who had been closest to the Master roughly from 1818 to May 1824, and then again from the end of 1826 until his death. From his privileged position—which he sought to render ever more solid by asserting that he had carried out his functions as Beethoven’s secretary‑factotum as early as 1816—he spread the claim, even in a letter to Wegeler of 6 July 1827 (reported by S. Ley in Beethoven als Freund der Familie Wegeler–v. Breuning, Bonn 1927), that Beethoven himself had charged him and Steffen [Stephan] von Breuning with transmitting to posterity his true image, judging them the only ones capable of doing so.

Beethoven had had very close relations with them: with von Breuning since youth, and later with Schindler, and he had also lived with them for certain periods. In the letter, Schindler further stated that the Master had asked that the other childhood friend, Wegeler, also be involved in the work. Modern criticism considers these assertions by Schindler entirely unfounded. But certainly the strategy had been well chosen by the famulus: Steffen von Breuning was no longer able to testify or contradict, for he had died just over a month earlier, on 4 June; the only one left to write an “authorized” biography was Schindler himself!

With this stratagem Schindler also sought to draw Wegeler into his orbit, the only one—or one of the few—who could have given him first‑hand information about the Master’s youthful years. For the central years of Beethoven’s life, however, Schindler acknowledged that he would have to turn to the many still living who had had relations of friendship or work with the Master.

But Schindler’s imagination, realizing that even with Wegeler’s help it would be difficult to gain access to information about part of the Master’s life, did not stop there. He sought to involve Rochlitz in the drafting of a Beethoven biography, adducing as reason the claim that Beethoven, on his deathbed, had named Rochlitz as his possible biographer. Johann Friedrich Rochlitz had indeed been well acquainted with Viennese musical affairs as director of the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung from 1798 to 1818, but—let us not forget—he had met Beethoven only in 1822 and speaks of him in his Für Freunde der Tonkunst (1832).

Schindler, in the “Introduction” to his Biographie, recounts that one day, in the last months of life, von Breuning, chatting with Beethoven about Plutarch’s Lives, seized the occasion to ask him by whom he would wish his biography to be written. To which Beethoven would have replied immediately: “By Rochlitz!”

Wegeler at first was very cooperative and provided the enterprising Schindler with material containing information about the youthful period of Beethoven’s life. But it is certain that Schindler did not immediately set to work on the planned biography, probably also because of his professional commitments. From 1827 to 1829 he lived with a sister in Pest. Returning to Vienna he worked as a teacher. In 1831 he moved to Münster, with the post of director of the Musikverein, and in 1835 to Aachen as director of the city’s musical activities.

Another of the reasons why the project of the biography by Gräffer and Gassner was probably never carried forward lies perhaps in the fact that into Schindler’s hands had fallen extremely important material, which he claimed to have purchased, but which many believe he had removed after Beethoven’s death: many manuscripts, personal papers, and above all the Conversation Books. Material which Schindler had been very careful not to make available to those who wished to write a Beethoven biography. On the other hand, the old rivalry between Holz and Schindler prevented the latter from having access to the information gathered by Gräffer with Holz’s help.

But something in the research on Beethoven’s life was beginning to move. In 1832, in fact, Ignaz von Seyfried published his book on Beethoven’s musical studies, Beethoven’s Studien im Generalbasse, Contrapuncte und in der Compositions-Lehre, which also includes a certain number of details on Beethoven’s life and character. And Schindler himself had not renounced the idea of writing a biography.

At this point there was an attempt to involve Ries as well in a three‑way collaboration, because, given that Ries had frequented Beethoven assiduously during the central years of his life, he could have provided precious material on a period in which neither Wegeler nor Schindler had been in contact with the Master, and for which they essentially lacked direct information. It is certain that this attempt too — with which the astute Schindler wished to find a substitute for von Breuning and Rochlitz — failed in 1836.

And shortly afterwards Wegeler, having tried in vain to induce Schindler to publish the material he had provided him, decided to make public the information in his possession. Since in reality his contacts with Beethoven, after the youthful period, had practically ceased at the end of 1796, when, after his period of study in Vienna, he had returned to Bonn, he turned to Ries, who, as we have seen, had lived for a long time in close contact with Beethoven. And the two friends began the preparation of their collection of biographical notes on Beethoven: Biographische Notizen über Ludwig van Beethoven, which appeared published in Coblenz, where Wegeler lived and lived until his death, in May 1838. Ferdinand Ries, who had worked so much for the writing of the book, had died four months earlier.

Seven years later Wegeler published (Coblenz, Bädeker) a supplement, Nachtrag, with other brief recollections of Beethoven’s life and some new letters. This material was then reprinted by A. Kalischer in Berlin in 1906–1907. Finally it was translated into English by F. Noonan, under the title Remembering Beethoven, in 1987, and into Italian by A. Focher, under the title Beethoven. Appunti biografici dal vivo, in 2002.

The Notizen of Wegeler and Ries is a small book divided into two parts. The first, written by Wegeler, is a collection of information on the Beethoven family, on the young Ludwig in the Bonn period, on certain events reconstructed through the few letters written by Beethoven to Wegeler and some other letters written to the von Breuning family. There are very precise annotations on Beethoven’s character as a boy. The second part, written by Ries, concerns many events that occurred during the period of Beethoven’s life in which the two were in contact, Beethoven naturally in the position of master and Ries in that of pupil. Here too letters are interspersed to reconstruct certain events. But as Ries says in the very brief introduction, the intention of both was to report authentic facts, whose genuineness would make them an indispensable source for anyone wishing to prepare a true biography of the Master.

It is an inexhaustible mine of memories and direct experiences, not only concerning Beethoven the man but also musical matters. One may say that, apart from some episodes that might be anecdotal, and some errors due to the time elapsed between what is recounted and the moment of writing, there are few doubts about the authenticity of what is reported in this little book, from which all who have written on Beethoven — from the first nineteenth‑century biographers to their modern successors — have drawn abundantly, and often, it must be said, reconstructing events based solely on the accounts of Wegeler and Ries without even citing the source.

It is also possible that the two authors, out of affection, avoided mentioning episodes that might have cast Beethoven in a bad light, whose behaviour in business matters with publishers, and perhaps also in the case of the guardianship of his nephew, could be criticised. Likewise, passages or letters “in which Beethoven expresses himself in a very explicit manner, and not in laudatory terms,” as Ries writes, “concerning certain persons,” were cut or omitted.

As Focher has written, “This is not a scholarly study, nor an attempt at analysis of Beethoven’s works, nor an investigation into Beethoven the man, but rather a collection of notes, of memories, most often without commentary or interpretation, capable of revealing to us, little by little, a picture of incomparable suggestiveness, in which a living Beethoven, in ‘direct capture,’ is presented in his daily moods, while he plays, composes, or improvises, in his human relations with Viennese nobles, while he gives lessons or, walking, gathers ideas for a new composition.” The charm of such a reading did not leave Robert Schumann indifferent, who, having received a copy from Wegeler himself (as one reads on the back cover: “sent by Wegeler, received 5 June 1838. R. Schumann”), wrote on 11 June 1838 to his friend Henriette Vogt in Berlin, a great music enthusiast: “Upon your return an interesting reading awaits you, the biographical notes on Beethoven just published by Ferd. Ries and Dr. Wegeler. I shall lend you the book, from which, once begun, you will not be able to detach yourself.” In the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, the celebrated musical journal he directed, a [very laudatory] review appeared.

One may say that it is to this little book that we owe the image of Beethoven found in all subsequent biographies: that of a man of good heart, but capricious, of bad temper, proud, distrustful, and of depressed mood.

It must nevertheless be acknowledged that, although much criticised today, in the end Anton Schindler succeeded in his aim — namely, to write “the biography” of Beethoven. In fact, despite the works published earlier, Schindler’s is the true first Beethoven biography: Biographie von Ludwig van Beethoven, published for the first time in Münster in 1840, translated into English by Ignaz Moscheles and published in London in 1841 as The Life of Beethoven, edited by Ignace Moscheles Esq., and without Schindler’s name! Only in the Preface is it stated that it is the translation of the 1840 work; there are notes and appendices by Moscheles.

A second German edition, with the addition of a chapter entitled “Beethoven in Paris” and already published in 1842, appeared again in Münster in 1845. Finally the third edition appeared in 1860; it was then reprinted with notes and additions by A. C. Kalisher in 1909; reproduced in anastatic copy in 1927 with introduction and notes by F. Volbach; and in a reduced version with additional notes by S. Ley in 1949. This third edition of 1860 was translated into English by C. S. Jolly and published by McArdle in London in 1966 under the title Beethoven, as I knew him, with many notes.

Although modern criticism has become merciless toward this book, it remains a fascinating read. Unfortunately Schindler, in the attempt to idealize to the utmost the figure of the venerated Master, and also to increase his own prestige, added with his own hand, after Beethoven’s death, phrases in the Conversation Books of which he had taken possession. This has therefore aroused enormous distrust toward everything the biography contains. Everything written in it has been subjected to the severest criticism, and modern biographers no longer accept any information from Schindler unless it finds support in some other testimony.

Schindler had sought to have his biography considered the repository of the truths about Beethoven with these words written in the Introduction: “For the account of the facts of Beethoven’s youth I am indebted above all to Wegeler, the youthful companion of the young Amphion until 1796. As guarantors for the facts of the second period, not reported in letters or documents, I have Beethoven’s friends: many of these were in close relation with me in the years following the Master’s death. For the events of the third period I guarantee them personally, since in one way or another I took direct part in most of them.”

Wegeler and Ries had promised themselves to be as objective as possible. Schindler idealized the image of the Master, immersing it in an atmosphere at times fantastic.

As he wrote to Deiters, Thayer had wished to write a work on the facts of Beethoven’s life, on the man Beethoven and nothing more: “My only point of view is the truth. I have resisted the temptation to discuss the character of his music. It seems to me that Beethoven as a composer is sufficiently known through his works, and on the basis of these principles my long and arduous researches of so many years have been devoted to the man Beethoven.” Thayer’s idea, as Claman and Bellofatto write, had initially been to publish the work in English and to have it also translated into German. But he later changed his mind, perhaps because he feared he would not be able to supervise the printing of the book if it were done in his country of origin; and although he had learned German very well, in 1865 he sent to Hermann Deiters, whom he had chosen as collaborator, the first volume, in English, so that he might translate it into German. From this collaboration arose the first three volumes of the work, published in 1866, 1872, and 1879, which dealt with Beethoven’s life up to and including the year 1816.

But Thayer, owing to his health, was unable to bring his immense project to completion. It is not known exactly where the part written by Thayer ends. After his death, in 1898, the material for the book was entrusted to Deiters, who first published a revised edition of the first volume in 1901. He then began work on the fourth and fifth volumes. But death overtook him in 1907, when the fourth volume, which reached the year 1824, was already far advanced. The task of continuing the work was entrusted to Hugo Riemann (1849–1919), the great German musicologist, who published the last two volumes in 1907–1908, and who oversaw a revision of the first three volumes from 1910 to 1917. The long labour for the definitive and complete version of the work of Thayer, Deiters, and Riemann thus came to an end in 1917.

At Thayer’s death, the material he had accumulated for the writing of the work had been shipped to America, from where it returned in 1898 to Deiters in Germany, where it remained until Riemann had completed the work. While Riemann was still at work, a niece of Thayer, Mrs. Jabez Fox, persuaded Henry Edward Krehbiel to undertake the English version of the work. Krehbiel decided to base the English edition on Thayer’s manuscripts, on which Deiters had worked, but for the last ten years of Beethoven’s life, from 1817 to 1827, he worked in his own way, pruning much of Thayer’s material and giving, in his judgment—and not always entirely objectively—greater or lesser weight to certain events. The result was the work published in English in 1921 in New York by the Beethoven Association, by Henry Krehbiel.

But where did all of Thayer’s material end up? In 1921, Mrs. Gertrude Behr of Tamworth, New Hampshire, daughter of Mrs. Fox, recalled having seen many boxes of her great‑uncle’s papers in Cambridge. In 1953, Krehbiel’s daughter said she did not know where the boxes of material used for the book had gone after her father’s death. His library had been left to the New York Public Library, where there had been a Beethoven Room, which no longer exists. All that remains of the papers of the Thayer–Krehbiel collaboration is a collection of notes consisting of a few sheets written by Thayer, some by Krehbiel, and pasted onto others.

But around the 1950s, the musicologist Elliot Forbes took the work in hand again, enriching it with the results of the last fifty years of Beethoven research, but above all seeking to follow Thayer’s working method, which had not been followed by his successors for the last ten years of the Master’s life. The parts of Thayer’s work containing inaccuracies were eliminated, and many redundant sections were reduced compared to the original German edition. The work was published under the title Thayer’s Life of Beethoven. Revised and edited by Elliot Forbes, at Princeton in 1964 and subsequently reprinted. In the text, Forbes’s interpolations are clearly marked, being written between braces. It is a thoroughly updated and as objective as possible version of the work begun by Thayer more than a century earlier, in which Beethoven’s figure appears fully modelled, especially in its human aspects, and set within the historical events of his time.

From this point of view we may recognize that Thayer, while preparing his work, never tired of seeking out sources in order to reach the heart of the facts of Beethoven’s life, to counter not only Schindler’s biography, reprinted with its inaccuracies in 1860, but also the works of Lenz, Oulibicheff, Marx, and even Nohl with his Beethovens Leben, whose first volume had appeared in 1864. In 1877, before the publication of the third volume of his biography, Thayer published a booklet entitled Ein kritischer Beitrag zur Beethoven-Literatur (see Bellofatto). In it he branded these works indelibly. He reproached Lenz [Beethoven et ses trois styles (St. Petersburg 1852) and Beethoven. Eine Kunststudie (Hamburg 1856–1860)] for never having checked the original sources. Of Alexandre Oulibicheff’s Beethoven, ses critiques et ses glossateurs (Leipzig 1857), he wrote that it was a romanticization of the facts that departed from reality more than any other writing on Beethoven. Of A. B. Marx’s book he said that it was neither a biography nor a critical study of Beethoven’s works. He reproached Otto Mühlbrecht for having made of his Beethoven und seine Werke [Leipzig 1866] a ridiculous collection of rubbish. Against Ludwig Nohl [Ludwig van Beethoven Leben, Vienna and Leipzig 1864–67, and Beethoven’s Briefe, Stuttgart 1865], from whom he was certainly separated by a furious rivalry, he inveighed, describing him as a terrible donkey devoid of qualities who had written only works full of errors. The only one who escaped his censure was Gustav Nottebohm, whose Beethoveniana [Winterthur 1872] and Zweite Beethoveniana [Leipzig 1887] he greatly admired and considered extraordinary works. Perhaps because Nottebohm was a champion of research on the sketches, whose importance Thayer had been the first to emphasize.

It is worth recalling that in 1874 Gerhard von Breuning, the son of Stephan, published his recollections of Beethoven in a booklet Aus dem Schwarzspanierhause. Erinnerungen an L. van Beethoven aus meiner Jugendzeit [From the House of the Black Spaniards. Youthful Recollections of L. van Beethoven]. These are the memories, written almost half a century later, of a boy then thirteen years old, who frequented the Master’s house daily during the last two years of his life. It is considered a highly reliable testimony, thanks also to family memories, concerning Beethoven’s life.

There is no doubt that for his scrupulous and objective search for truth Thayer deserved, on the tombstone that covers his grave in the Evangelical Cemetery of Trieste, the inscription: “Alexander Wheelock Thayer, born in Natick, Mass. USA, October 22, 1817 – Died in Trieste, Austria – July 15, 1897. Biographer of Ludwig van Beethoven.”

There are many people who, while showing no lively interest in “classical” music, while declaring themselves indifferent, without understanding why, to the music of Bach, Mozart, Schubert, Wagner, or their successors, find in the Third, Fifth, or Seventh Symphony and in the Piano Concerto in E‑flat major Op. 73 [“Emperor”] the same spontaneous, indistinct movement of elevation and sublimated sensibility that they experience before certain majestic phenomena of nature—on the summit of a mountain, at the foot of a waterfall, or before a flaming sunset. These compositions “speak” to the least educated sensibility. And it is perhaps for this reason that Beethoven is still welcomed by ordinary people as the prototype of the musician, vaguely identified as something beyond and above the daily sphere of cares.

Beethoven has come to be identified, in the imagination of countless music lovers, as a kind of secular saint, since they could not conceive that the very creator of those works, sublime to them, might not be equally sublime, or might be subject to the errors and humiliating pettiness of the common man. The first examples of this tendency to romanticize or “heroicize” Beethoven’s personality are two of the three letters that Bettina Brentano published in 1839, apparently written to her by Beethoven—only one authentic; the other two are almost certainly Bettina’s forgeries. In these letters Bettina presents a Beethoven who is a “natural” genius, revolutionary, magician, and priest, and these remained the attributes of the Romantic artist. Even Anton Schindler rejected the letters of Bettina von Arnim; he knew, in fact, Beethoven’s rigorous ethics, of whom he wrote “that he had never been either a bel esprit or a monstrous braggart.”

The contrast between the man and his music already disturbed many of his contemporaries. The simplest expression of such bewilderment can be found as early as 1809, when Baron de Trémont reports his visit to the composer: “Imagine the utmost filth and disorder: puddles of water decorating the floor, and a rather old grand piano on which dust forced its way between sheets of written or printed music. Under the piano — I am not exaggerating — an unemptied chamber pot… Most of the chairs were covered with clothes and with plates full of the remains of the previous day’s dinner.” That unemptied chamber pot is the symbol of what the nineteenth century could absolutely not accept about Beethoven’s life, to the point of denying its existence together with every other testimony of a human personality often primitive.

In writing his biography, Schindler — who lived in almost daily contact with Beethoven during the last ten years of his life — knew well that he would have to suppress far more than a mere unemptied chamber pot in order to offer the world the image he himself wished to present. Schindler and the various biographers who followed him, whenever Beethoven’s actions did not coincide with their principles, simply drew a veil over the circumstance. In doing so they transgressed Beethoven’s explicit will: “There are papers here and there,” he said from his deathbed to Stephan von Breuning, “gather them and make the best possible use of them, but strict truth in everything. I hold both of you [Schindler and von Breuning] responsible.”

When Schindler wrote the first official biography of the composer, he could not comply with this explicit request. For in 1840 it would have required a man of exceptional intelligence to publish everything that Schindler personally knew about Beethoven; to understand that the truth could never inflict lasting harm on Beethoven’s name; and finally to face the storm of indignation that his frankness would certainly have aroused.

The biographer, more attentive to a man’s actions than to his words, must bear in mind that in the life of every artist the “actions” far more important are his creations. And Beethoven was bitterly aware of this when he said (as the publisher C. F. Peters reports in 1824): “Everything I do, apart from music, is stupid and badly done.” The professions of idealism and philanthropy, delicacy and nobility of soul, religious devotion and human tolerance scattered through his letters, diaries, and Conversation Books often contrast with his daily conduct; but they are perfectly reflected in his music, the only thing in which a judgment of him has validity. And it is a pity that Schindler suppressed much of the testimony relating to the private life between 1819 and 1827 of the man whom Antonie Brentano, in 1819, could describe as “even greater as a man than as an artist,” destroying more than fifty percent of the evidence — two hundred and sixty‑four of the four hundred Conversation Books. He justified his actions by asserting that the content of what he had destroyed was absolutely insignificant or politically undesirable (“unrestrained invectives against persons of the highest rank, the emperor and the crown prince”). — M. Cooper

On 21 March 1825 Ludwig Rellstab, a young Berlin poet and music critic, undertook a long journey which, through Dresden and Prague, would lead him to Vienna. If the imperial city, its works of art, and the fame of its entertainments represented for Rellstab an undeniable attraction, there was one purpose toward which his spirit was fatally drawn, and which led him to interpret his journey as a kind of pilgrimage: to meet the great Ludwig van Beethoven.

He let sixteen years pass before giving his memories a complete literary form. Thus was born, in 1841, the first edition of Beethoven. Ein Bild der Erinnerung aus meinem Leben, a work that would find its definitive form in 1854. Rellstab thus inserted himself into the Beethovenian memorial tradition — alongside F. G. Wegeler, F. Ries, A. F. Schindler — and at the same time into the current of narrative with a musical background.

It is difficult to assign a precise place to Rellstab’s text: on the one hand it approaches the tale; on the other it is not a biographical contribution in the strict sense. The facts presented are substantially accurate, although at times one finds imprecisions in the details; yet one perceives the author’s tendency to detach himself from rigid reporting in order to transfigure reality into the freer form of narrative. But his important strictly biographical contributions allow him to stand alongside historically more prestigious volumes, such as the Notizen of Wegeler and Ries or the Erinnerungen of Gerhard von Breuning. — Zattoni

One of the most significant contributions to a Beethoven biography is that of Ignaz Xavier Ritter von Seyfried, Viennese, born in 1776 and died in 1841, who had the good fortune to live in close contact with Beethoven for a long time. A composer and conductor, he was appointed Musical Director of the Theater an der Wien in 1801 and was bound to Beethoven not only by admiration and affection but also by ties of professional esteem, so much so that Beethoven entrusted to his baton the first performance of several of his works — one need only recall the premiere of Fidelio in November 1805.

Von Seyfried and Beethoven even lived under the same roof, at the Theater an der Wien, for a brief period in 1801, and, as von Seyfried recounts, they frequented the same restaurant and the same friends.

In 1832 von Seyfried published in Vienna, with Haslinger, a volume entitled Ludwig van Beethoven’s Studien in Generalbasse, Contrapuncte und in der Compositions-Lehre. Aus dessen handschriftlichem Nachlasse gesammelt und herausgegeben. It was a true treatise on harmony and composition in which von Seyfried claimed, as clearly stated in the title, to have gathered from manuscripts found in Beethoven’s posthumous estate rules and theories on counterpoint and composition written and elaborated by Beethoven himself.

Doubts were immediately raised as to whether this material was actually by Beethoven: Schindler was the first to assert that it was not Beethoven’s work but merely a collection of rules and laws taken from the great treatises on harmony and composition on which Beethoven himself had been trained. The problem has not been resolved and certainly never will be.

What matters here is that the treatise included two chapters, entitled Biographische Notizen and Charakterzüge und Anekdoten, in which biographical information was reported on episodes of Beethoven’s life, many of them experienced firsthand by von Seyfried himself. And from this source — often without citing it — many so‑called Beethoven biographers have drawn abundantly for almost two centuries.

The work enjoyed extraordinary success: it was published by subscription, and among the many hundreds of subscribers listed at the end of the book we find the names of many of the most famous musicians of the time, including that of Chopin (Friedr.) in Warsaw.

The book later had a second edition, in German and English (Leipzig, Hamburg, New York, 1853), with additional notes in the English text. And as far as Beethoven biography is concerned, in this second edition, published twelve years after von Seyfried’s death, two short writings were added by Georg August Geiringer — who had personally known Beethoven — and by Alfred Julius Becher, a Viennese who had contacts with Beethoven’s friends and acquaintances.

Interest in Seyfried’s work is demonstrated by the fact that it was published, even if only with the biographical notes, in Italy and translated into Italian in 1855 in Milan by Giovanni Canti. Among the purchasers of the volume are listed Franco Faccio and Giuseppe Verdi.

There had also been a French edition, by M. Schlesinger in 1833, and among the subscribers were Meyerbeer, Cherubini, Paganini, Rossini, Chopin, and Berlioz.

As for its significance for Beethoven biography, the work was thoroughly analysed in a magnificent 1997 thesis. In Dr. Paolini’s thesis, the judgment on the reliability of the information — after careful comparative analysis with other sources — was as follows:

“The memorial contribution contained in the appendix to Ludwig van Beethoven’s Studien in Generalbasse, Contrapuncte und in der Compositions-Lehre belongs to that current of ‘realistic’ writings which constitutes the starting point for every biographical investigation… Rarely have inconsistencies been found between his version of events and that of other biographers; most often, on the contrary, Seyfried has added to information and events already universally accepted new and interesting nuances that enrich Beethovenian memorial literature… even if in a small number of cases he departed from the truth. In formulating a final judgment… one may affirm that the Biographische Notizen, as well as the Charakterzüge und Anekdoten, contain information generally reliable and at times precious.”

In essence, Paolini notes that the majority of the information reported by von Seyfried is now universally accepted as reliable. Only some are considered doubtful and a few entirely unacceptable. In summary, an invaluable contribution to any Beethoven biography.