As the year began with the first, so it closed with Beethoven’s second appearance in public as composer and virtuoso; and here is the advertisement of the performance from the “Wiener Zeitung” of December 16:
Next Friday, the 18th instant, Mr. the Chapelmaster Haydn will give a grand musical concert in the small Redoutensaal, at which Mad. Tomeoni and Mr. Mombelli will sing. Mr. van Beethoven will play a Concerto of his composing on the Pianoforte, and three grand symphonies, not yet heard here, which the Chapelmaster composed during his last sojourn in London, will be performed.
One would gladly know what concerto was played.[74] But there was little public criticism then outside of London and very rarely any in Vienna. The mere fact of the appearance of Beethoven at his old master’s concert is, however, another proof that too much stress has been laid upon a hasty word spoken by him to Ries. Haydn wanted that Beethoven should put “Pupil of Haydn” on the title-page of his first works. Beethoven was unwilling to do so because, as he said, “though he had taken some lessons from Haydn he had never learned anything from him.” Nothing could be more natural than for Haydn, knowing nothing of the studies of his pupil with Schenk, to express such a wish in relation to the Sonatas dedicated to him, and equally natural that the author should refuse; but to add to the attractions of the concert was a very different matter--a graceful and delicate compliment which he could with pleasure make.
This chapter may appropriately close with the one important family event of this year. The father, the mother, two infant brothers and two infant sisters slept in the churchyard at Bonn; but Ludwig, Caspar and Johann were never more to look upon their graves. The three brothers were now reunited. Vienna had become their new home and not one of them beheld the rushing Rhine again.
[70] Though Thayer fixed the date of this letter in May or June, 1794, Dr. Deiters believed that it was of a much earlier date; and may, indeed, have been written before Beethoven went to Vienna. For his theory Dr. Deiters found a plausible argument in the spelling of the name with a “w” instead of a “v,” and the reiterated references to a misunderstanding which had long been made right. The letter has no date or superscription and Wegeler assumed that it was the continuation of one whose first page had been lost. If the letter was written in Bonn it would prove that the Rondo (probably that in G for Pianoforte and Violin, B. and H. Series XII, No. 102) was composed before the beginning of the Viennese period; which might well be. The Sonata is probably the unfinished one in C, dedicated to Eleonore von Breuning.