Beethoven spent the summer of 1818 in Mödling. Soon after he arrived, he took possession of a new piano manufactured for him by the company Thomas Broadwood of London. The six-octave two-pedal piano was to become one of Beethoven’s most treasured instruments.
On 17 May 1818, Vincenz Hauschka, a cellist and founding member of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde (Society of Friends of Music) wrote Beethoven offering a commission for a “heroic oratorio.”
Beethoven’s response in early June played on the similarity of the words “Freunde” and “Feinde” (similar to the English “friend” and “fiend”), addressing Hauschka as: “Most excellent leading Member of the Club of the Enemies of Music of the Austrian Imperial State!”
The whimsical letter (published in Emily Anderson’s Letters of Beethoven as No. 903) continued with some music with the text “I am ready”:
And then:
The only subject I have is a sacred one. But you want a heroic subject. Well, that will suit me too. But I think that for such as mass of people it would be very appropriate to mix in a little sacred stuff,
followed by a setting of the word “Amen”:
At one point, Beethoven writes “Now all good wishes, most excellent little Hauschka. I wish you an open stool and the finest commode,” which Thayer-Forbes translates as “I wish you open bowels and the handsomest of close-stools.” (p. 702)
Towards the end of the letter, Beethoven includes more “I am ready” music:
The music in this letter was catalogued as the musical joke WoO 201, but some analysts instead interpret the music as the start of a double fugue.
Beethoven never composed the heroic oratorio that Hauschka requested.
#Beethoven250 Day 309
Canon “Ich bin bereit” (WoO 201), 1818
An ad may precede this choral arrangement of the music in Beethoven’s letter to Vincenz Hauschka.
Beethoven’s canon “Ich bitt’ dich” (WoO 172) is chronologically not well fixed. Beethoven-Haus narrows down the date to “Supposedly between 1813 (1816?) and ca. 1824,” but Thayer-Forbes dates it as “About 1818.” It was written for and dedicated to Vincenz Hauschka.
The complete text of the “Ich bitt’ dich” canon translates as “Please write out for me the E-flat scale.” The score was published by Breitkopf & Härtel in 1864 and hence is available on the IMSLP site.
#Beethoven250 Day 309
Canon “Ich bitt’ dich” (WoO 172), c. 1818
An animated score is included, but the singers don’t take the repeat that allows the canon to continue forever.