06-Feb-2006
Beethoven Meets Mozart, from Stefan Jovanovich

The story of Beethoven meeting Mozart is great theater but it is undoubtedly one of his devoted biographer Jahn's inventions. For Beethoven not to have been recognized as a genius equal to Mozart would have been intolerable. It was what everyone expected, included Waldstein, who sent Beethoven off to Vienna with a purse and a letter that read: 'You are now going to Vienna in fulfillment of a wish that has so long been thwarted. The genius of Mozart still mourns and weeps for the death of its pupil. It has found a refuge in the inexhaustible Haydn, but no occupation; through him it desires once more to find a union with someone. Through your unceasing diligence, receive Mozart's spirit from the hands of Haydn' (Hans Gerstinger, Ludwig van Beethoven's Stammbuch, Leipzig, 1927).

I imagine the letter must have felt a thousand times heavier than the purse. How else can one explain Beethoven claiming that he had never heard Mozart's music before he came to Vienna when, in fact, he had played Mozart's operas while a viola player in the Bonn court orchestra?