Beethoven's Conversation Books. Volume 1. Nos.

1 to 8
(February 1818 to March 1820) ed. Theodore Albrecht (review)

Peter Höyng

Journal of Austrian Studies, Volume 52, Number 3, Fall 2019, pp. 89-92 (Review)

Published by University of Nebraska Press

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/oas.2019.0042

For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/745618

[ Access provided at 14 Jul 2020 21:22 GMT from University of Exeter ]

 Reviews | 89
The thirteen essays that follow take up these questions as they apply to
specific works. In most cases, Bloom’s model takes the character of a heuri-
stic, and readings of the texts in question take center stage. The volume thus
strikes an admirable balance between the general, which may be of interest
to scholars considering similar questions in other literary contexts, and the
specific, offering insightful contexutalizing readings of new works, some of
which have received limited attention.
At the same time that each entry focuses on a particular set of texts,
the recurrence of several themes strikes me as particularly interesting: A
deconstruction of homeland tropes, which Marta Wimmer calls “Anti-
Heimatliteratur,” is located in a number of literary genres, especially in re-
lation to the territories of the former Austro-Hungarian empire that now lie
outside Austria. The figure of Bernhard looms large, himself a wrestler with
tradition, now decades after his death hardening into a poetic opponent him-
self. And the term Krise, be it a Sprachkrise or one of a material, political, or
ethical nature, emerges again and again as a point of fascination for the young
authors being discussed.
Having opened the volume with a descriptive foreword, followed by
Höfler’s theoretical introduction, the editors refrain from any appearance of
closure or any attempt to interpret what these similarities may mean. May that
be left to the next generation, the posthumous opponents of Generation Y.
Andrew B. B. Hamilton
Bowdoin College

Theodore Albrecht, ed., Beethoven’s Conversation Books. Volume 1. Nos. 1 to 8

(February 1818 to March 1820). Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2018. 384 pp.

Despite the continuous flow of books on all aspects on Ludwig van Beethoven
(1770–1827) and his music—soon to be accelerated by the composer’s 250th
birthday in 2020—scholars have overlooked a remarkable, even unique, pri-
mary source: the so-called Konversationshefte, or conversation notebooks,
which span the last decade of the composer’s life, from February 1818 until his
death in March 1827.
Relatively early into his musical career, already celebrated for his virtuosity
at the piano and his inventive compositions, Beethoven, at just twenty-seven
years old, realized that his precious sensory organ, his auditory instrument,
90 | JOURNAL OF AUSTRIAN STUDIES 52:3

was beginning to falter. This impending loss not only shook Beethoven as a
private person but also destabilized his well-crafted public persona. By 1818
Beethoven’s hearing was so poor that even prostheses such as Mälzel’s ear
trumpet were no longer of much help to him in communicating with others.
And so, writing became imperative when communicating with the com-
poser, and the only option for Beethoven’s circle of family and friends to ver-
bally express themselves to him. As for the Aufschreibesysteme (F. Kittler), or
writing tools, those used in conversation with Beethoven included a “slate
and a slate pencil,” and “a conversation book made by folding and stitching a
large sheet of writing paper into octavo format, along with a pencil for con-
versing with the deaf invalid,” as Gerhard von Breuning wrote in his memoirs.
While both of these sets of utensils sufficed for basic daily communication,
they differed categorically in their ability to preserve the written notes. Whe-
reas the slate allowed for easy erasing of any jotted messages, the small books
have retained their inscriptions up through the present. It is these penciled
conversations that are of greatest value as cultural documentation of the first
part of the nineteenth century, not despite their transience and quotidian
prosaicness but precisely because of these traits. I am aware of no other sour-
ce that allows us to eavesdrop on day-to-day conversations that are as unfil-
tered and as unedited as these random notes, unintended for any purpose
beyond that of the immediate needs of the parties involved. The value of this
premodern recording of daily discourse is only partly diminished by the fact
that the disabled composer most often responded verbally and not in writing.
As Jan Swafford, one Beethoven’s latest biographers, correctly summarizes:
“Of the entries he wrote in the books, most were items for himself: musi-
cal sketches [very few], marketing schemes, shopping lists, addresses, book
recommendations.”
Anton Schindler, Beethoven’s somewhat dubious late secretary (1822–
1824 and 1826–1827), sold 137 (out of a total of 139) of these notebooks to the
Royal Archive in Berlin, today’s Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, in 1846; among
other things, the event marked the start of the composer’s re-naturalization
to Germany and of making him a German composer. Even though all major
biographers since the late nineteenth century have quoted from or publis-
hed parts of the notebooks, only in 1963 did Beethoven scholars undertake a
full publication of the notebooks utilizing the latest forensic innovations and
according to the highest standards of editing possible at the time. Previous
attempts had been hampered by the Cold War, but in 1968, the first volume
 Reviews | 91
reached publication. The strenuous and tedious nature of this work is evident
in the fact that the last volume was published thirty-three years later in 2001.
This German edition forms the core of Theodore Albrecht’s monumen-
tal endeavor for providing an updated and translated English edition of which
the first two volumes of a projected twelve volumes has been released. This
licensed edition by Breitkopf & Härtel has a number of advantages compared
to its original German version. Chief among them is that all explanatory end-
notes in the German edition are now to be found as footnotes on the bottom
of the relevant page. A sign of Albrecht’s diligent and exemplary care as edi-
tor is the fact that in cases where “notes from the German edition have been
significantly updated, corrected or otherwise changed in the English editi-
on” are noted as such (xxxiv). Next, the mostly disconnected conversation
notes read more comfortably thanks to two enhancements: first, Albrecht
prints the conversational entry’s author in capital letters; second, Albrecht
includes the presumed location where, and the day of the week, date, and/
or time of the day when the conversation took place. Another important im-
provement over the German edition comes with Albrecht’s decision to have
incorporated Schindler’s “fingierte” notes, and to mark them as such. Stadlen
had demonstrated in 1977 that many of Schindler’s entries were falsified, for-
ged, or fictitious. However, over time scholars realized that Schindler’s falsi-
fied entries nevertheless carried relevant elements of historical truth “if vie-
wed in a reasonable and adjusted context” (xxxii). While followers of Stadlen
advised Albrecht to omit these falsified entries, he as an editor and transla-
tor thankfully decided to include them and instead mark them as “falsified
entries.” Last but not least, what makes this English edition superior to its
German version is its enhanced index.
After having read parts and pieces of the English translation and compared
it to the original German, I have found the translation not only accurate but
actually well expressed in its historic idioms. One could probably quibble
over the fact that Albrecht left many book titles and names of journals in the
original German without translating them. However, it is safe to assume that
any scholar who takes up the task of studying or reading the conversations
will have some basic knowledge of German anyway. Thanks to Albrecht’s
Herculean task, the interdisciplinary work of scholars in German studies,
linguists, historians, musicologists, anthropologists, and other Beethoven-
investigating scholars should and can begin their share of work in trying
92 | JOURNAL OF AUSTRIAN STUDIES 52:3

to make sense of these un-premeditated fragments of premodern life in

Metternich-period Vienna.
Peter Höyng
Emory University

Barbara Meier, Alban Berg. Biographie. Würzburg: Königshausen &

Neumann, 2018. 342 S.

Alban Bergs Lebensbeschreibung (1885–1935) von Barbara Meier besticht

durch ihre Sachlichkeit. Diese Biographie verdient auch unter KollegInnen,
die sich normalerweise nicht mit moderner Musik auseinandersetzen oder
Musikerbiographien abgeben, Aufmerksamkeit.
Denn für LiteraturwissenschaftlerInnen und auch KulturhistorikerInnen
stellt Alban Berg insofern einen Sonderfall dar, als dass er sich zeitlebens für
moderne Literatur interessierte, ja in Jugendjahren literarisch ambitioniert
war und sich später auch als Musikschriftsteller hervortat. Darüber hinaus
gehörte er nicht nur zu den vehementen Verfechtern von Karl Kraus, sondern
vertonte Texte von Charles Baudelaire bis zu Peter Altenberg. Außerdem
pflegte er auch eine enge Freundschaft zum Journalisten und vernachlässigten
Autor Soma Morgenstern, und war durch die Freundschaft mit Alma Mahler
sehr gut mit Franz Werfel bekannt. Theodor W. Adorno, sein bekanntester
Kompositionsschüler, wurde für ihn zu einem freundschaftlichen Vertrauten,
nachlesbar durch ihren gut dokumentierten Briefaustausch.
Dass Berg unter GermanistInnen bekannt bleibt, verdient er
selbstredend durch seine beiden Opern Wozzeck (1925) nach Büchners
Dramenfragment Woyzeck und der (unvollendet gebliebenen) Lulu (postum
1937) nach Frank Wedekinds Tragödien Erdgeist und Die Büchse der Pandora.
Kurzum, die Verflechtungen zwischen Bergs musikalischer Avantgarde
und seinem Umgang mit Kunstschaffenden der frühen Moderne (vor
allem in Wien und Berlin) gestalten sich ausgesprochen vielfältig. Zu dem
erweiterten Verständnis der frühen Moderne gehört auch Bergs Begeisterung
fürs Autofahren, die teils seine Phobie gegenüber den vielen Zugreisen zu
kompensieren vermochte. Das dazugehörige Kapitel lautet, wie viele der
insgesamt 42 Abschnitte, chiffriert “Der blaue Vogel”.
Zu den zahlreichen Netzwerken innerhalb der Avantgarde steht für
Berg an zentraler Stelle sein Kompositionslehrer Arnold Schönberg (1874–