During the summer, it was “considered good form in Vienna… to move to the countryside”, topographer Adolph Schmidl wrote in 1833, “to escape the humid, musty city.” Over the course of the 19th century, as the Viennese increasing began to move out of the city centre for the summer, suburbs like Grinzing, Nussdorf and Heiligenstadt in the north-west of the city became popular summer resorts for aristocrats and the bourgeoisie.
One of the reasons Beethoven moved house so many times was his habit of spending the summers in the suburbs of Vienna, or in nearby towns like Baden. The composer spent several summers in what is now the district of Döbling, including at a house on Silbergasse, where he worked on his Cello Sonata No. 5 over the summer of 1815.
composed in 1815 while Beethoven was living in Silbergasse
“Döbling is a rather large village, …which in the summer is inhabited for the most part by Viennese.”
Joseph von Kurzböck: Neuester wienerischer Wegweiser für Fremde und Inländer vom Jahre, 1802 (Latest Tour Guide to Vienna for Foreigners and Natives, 1802), p. 322.
It was widely believed that Beethoven wrote his Third Symphony at Döblinger Hauptstrasse 92, but this conclusion turned out to be wrong, and based on inaccurate dates.
Fragments of the “Eroica” Symphony were probably composed when Beethoven was living on Pfarrplatz.
Beethoven's house in Probusgasse is another example of just how difficult it is to pin Beethoven's work down to one time and place. For a long time, it was thought that he composed his Second Symphony at Probusgasse, but it again turned out that key evidence had been wrongly dated.
In any event, Beethoven's stays in the countryside were closely connected with his physical health. For example, he moved to Heiligenstadt on the advice of his doctor, where he stayed at a resort with a medicinal spring. The house in Probusgasse is best know for the “Heiligenstadt Testament”, which Beethoven composed in the form of an (unsent) letter to his brothers, and makes his despair at his increasing deafness all too apparent. Just yards from the Probusgasse house is Beethoven’s former residence on Pfarrplatz, in which he composed fragments of the Third Symphony.
composed between 1800 and 1802, and assumed for a long time to have been written at Probusgasse 6.
“Heiligenstadt [is] an old village of 62 houses, an hour from Vienna… The air and the waters are very healthy, and there is a first-rate bath, which strengthens the nerves and heals palsy. The village's location, in the midst of vineyards and fields, is one of the most pleasant and attractive around Vienna.”
Beiträge zur Geschichte des Dorfes Heiligenstadt (Articles on the History of the Village of Heiligenstadt), 1807, p. 5.
“Grinzing sits at the bottom of the foothills below the Kahlengebirge, where some splendid wine grapes grow… Anyone wishing to visit the Kahlenberg or the Leopoldsberg must drive from Döbling to Heiligenstadt, and from there take the winding road that leads into the aforementioned mountains.”
Joseph von Kurzböck: Neuester wienerischer Wegweiser für Fremde und Inländer, 1802 (Latest Guidebook to Vienna for Foreigners and Natives, 1802), p. 322–323.
In 1808, the 38-year-old Beethoven was working on his Sixth Symphony, and sharing a late 18th-century, one-storey house at what is now Grinzinger Strasse 64. His housemate was the writer Franz Grillparzer, who was 17 at the time. The rural village, which was located in a wine-producing region, was not yet accessible by omnibus (an early form of regular public transport), meaning that peace and quiet could be more or less guaranteed.
Composed in 1808, when Beethoven was living for part of the time in Grinzinger Strasse
In 1822, when he was in the process of moving to Döbling, Beethoven asked his brother Nikolaus Johann to arrange for his piano to be moved, and left him the following instructions:
“With the English piano, alongside the feet, you must take out the screws from the lyre underneath using a chisel. You will probably require several people in the place in Döblin[g] because of the piano – you would be best advised toto carry it in.”
Ludwig van Beethoven to Johann van Beethoven, late August 1822
Login
Details
