‘Van Beethoven. Heroische Symphonie in Es, Nro. 3. schön, besonders das Andante … .Van Beethoven. Ouverture zum Trauerspiele: Coriolan von Collin. Wurde bereits einmal gemacht und ist eine der schönsten Compositionen dieses Meisters’ (p. 53).Footnote ¹ These hand-written annotations appear on a carefully preserved handbill for the twelfth of twenty ‘Adelige Liebhaber-Concerte’, a weekly, semi-private subscription series held in Vienna from November 1807 to March 1808. As was his custom, Bohemian Count Johann Nepomuk Chotek (1773–1824), an avid concert-goer and inveterate diary writer, jotted down his reactions to music he heard performed on 2 February 1808 in the University Aula by some of the city’s best musicians. On this occasion, he was pleased by Beethoven’s music, reflecting, as musicologist Rita Steblin writes in Beethoven in the Diaries of Johann Nepomuk Chotek, ‘the growing admiration – among discerning members of the public – for Beethoven as a “master” composer’ (p. 54). But Chotek was often critical of Beethoven’s new works. He was dismayed, for example, by much of what he heard at the famous Beethoven Academy of 22 December 1808 held at the Theater an der Wien, which included the premieres of Symphony No. 5, Symphony No. 6, Piano Concerto No. 4, parts of the Mass in C Major, a fantasy improvisation for piano and the Choral Fantasy (pp. 77–81).

Chotek’s extensive diaries – he wrote every day without exception from 24 May 1804 to 31 March 1824, just one week before his death – as well as the numerous concert handbills (some of them the only extant copies) and miscellaneous papers he kept, represent important new documentary sources of information about cultural life in Vienna and Prague during Beethoven’s time, including the performance and reception of Beethoven’s music. Steblin began reading Chotek’s diaries while investigating Beethoven’s ‘Immortal Beloved’ episode. Convinced that the Immortal Beloved was Countess Josephine Brunsvik-Deym-Stackelberg (1779–1821), one of whose letters mentions Chotek’s wife Isabelle, Steblin began to peruse Chotek’s diaries (now housed in the Czech State Regional Archive in Prague), looking for references to Josephine. She quickly recognized that Chotek’s voluminous and detailed personal writings, together with the annotated handbills and other papers, contain a wealth of information about early nineteenth-century concert practice while also presenting the valuable critical perspective of a knowledgeable, first-hand observer. In addition to identifying the works and performers in the many concerts he attended, Chotek discusses the character and quality of the music, its degree of familiarity, the success of the performance, the talent of the performers, the reaction of the audience, the number of subscribers and the amounts paid, among other matters.

Through prodigious effort, Steblin sifted through the 25 books of Chotek’s diaries – some including as many as a thousand pages – to locate those entries with particular relevance to Beethoven scholarship. Organized chronologically with major sections devoted to Chotek’s Prague residency of 1804–07, Vienna residency of 1807–12 and Prague residency of 1812–24, the resulting book includes numerous extracts from the diaries presented in the original German, along with contextual information and detailed annotations (e.g., biographical background about the composers and performers) provided in English. Subheadings clarify the significance of the chosen extracts, e.g., ‘Vienna in 1810: New Musical Instruments’ and ‘Premiere of Beethoven’s Archduke Trio (Op. 97) on 2 June 1811’. Facsimile reproductions of numerous concert handbills, four tables (including lists of Beethoven works that Chotek heard in Vienna during 1807–12, and of the works performed by Beethoven’s patron, friend and student Archduke Rudolph at concerts hosted by another patron, Prince Joseph Lobkowitz) and an extensive bibliography and index add to the book’s value. Chotek’s accounts of early nineteenth-century concert life in Vienna and Prague not only fill gaps in current knowledge about the period and illuminate facets of Beethoven’s biography, but help scholars assess contemporaneous documentary sources, such as the Vertraute Briefe of Johann Friedrich Reichardt (1752–1814),Footnote ² the diary of Count Karl Zinzendorf (1739–1813),Footnote ³ and the Leipzig Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung,Footnote ⁴ the factual content and critical perspectives of which Chotek’s writings often duplicate, augment, or contradict.

The oldest child of an aristocrat with important government posts in Vienna and Prague, Chotek spent most of his life in the two cities, as well as on the family’s four landed estates. Born, raised and educated in Vienna, he moved with his young wife Isabelle in 1799 to Prague, where he served in several positions: district adviser, Bohemian government adviser and finally district manager for Beraun, a town near Prague. Chotek preferred living in Prague, but reluctantly agreed to move back to Vienna in November 1807 so that Isabelle could be near her recently widowed father. Chotek served there as Councillor to the Government of Lower Austria, and, during the French invasion of Vienna in 1809, was in charge of Vienna’s military hospitals. He also founded a textile factory at the family’s Gemnischt estate. Chotek held the position of Councillor until the end of June 1812, when he returned to Prague; because he no longer held a government appointment, he had time to undertake various charitable efforts, including organizing benefit concerts, running a soup kitchen and distributing wood to impoverished families. Apart from several brief trips, including back to Vienna in June 1814 and April–May 1818, he remained in Prague until his death on 8 April 1824.

As a member of the nobility, Chotek had regular access to Vienna’s political, social and cultural elite. His diaries reveal that he conversed with the emperor and empress, heard August Schlegel’s famous lectures, watched plays by Madame Germaine de Staël, witnessed the lying-in-state of Mozart’s detested employer Hieronymous Colloredo and routinely dined with aristocrats such as Lobkowitz, Prince Ferdinand Kinsky (another Beethoven patron) and the Russian diplomat Prince Alexander Kurakin. An amateur violist and pianist, Chotek attended, and occasionally performed in, concerts and theatre almost every evening of his adult life; these included private family gatherings, semi-private events in the palaces of noblemen and public performances at venues such as Vienna’s Kärtnertortheater, Leopoldstadt Theater, Kleinen Redouten Saal, Theater an der Wien, Burgtheater and University Aula. The diary entry for 6 Feb 1811 describes an evening spent at the famous Viennese musical salon of the highly talented Jewish pianist Fanny von Arnstein (pp. 126–9).

Chotek’s nightly concert-going, which led him to become a perceptive listener, exposed him to a broad variety of genres: operas, ballets, oratorios, Masses, cantatas, overtures, symphonies, concertos, chamber works, keyboard pieces, vocal duets, arias and ballads. As typifies early nineteenth-century concert practice, the programmes usually featured diverse musical works by living or recently deceased composers, e.g., Ludwig van Beethoven, Luigi Cherubini, Domenico Cimarosa, Joseph Eybler, Franz Joseph Haydn, Conradin Kreutzer, Joseph Mayseder, Ignaz Moscheles, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Antonio Salieri, Franz Schubert, Ludwig Spohr and Carl Maria von Weber.

Chotek had the good fortune to attend four semi-private subscription concerts given by the Schuppanzigh quartet (the first regular chamber music subscription concerts), 16 of the 20 ‘Adelige Liebhaber’ concerts at the University Aula, nine of the weekly private concerts hosted by Lobkowitz (many with Archduke Rudolph as the featured pianist), seven of the weekly concerts hosted by the French ambassador Louis-Guillaume Otto and numerous concerts given by the Kraft and Pixis string quartets. In addition to the Beethoven Academy on 22 December 1808, Chotek was present at Haydn’s last public appearance (a gala performance on 27 March 1808 of his oratorio The Creation), the premiere of Beethoven’s Fifth Piano Concerto in E-flat, and the premiere of the Archduke Trio. Among the many intriguing cultural phenomena and figures that Chotek describes in his diaries are Count Joseph Deym’s (pseudonyum Joseph Müller) popular wax museum with musical clocks playing pieces by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven; Joseph Ignaz Gurk’s Panharmonicon – ‘an orchestrion featuring military band instruments’ (p. 93) – which also played works by Beethoven; tableaux vivants; touring virtuosi such as cellist Bernhard Romberg and female violinist Clarisse Larcher and child prodigies such as singer Lisette Barensfeld and pianist Joseph von Szalay.

Chotek’s and Beethoven’s lives intersected in various ways, although it is not clear that they ever actually met. For a time, Chotek’s parents lived in the same house where Beethoven would live with Countess Anna Maria Erdödy in late 1808 and early 1809; Chotek’s doctor was also one of Beethoven’s; Chotek’s youngest brother married Countess Henriette Brunsvik, the cousin of possible ‘Immortal Beloved’ Josephine Brunsvik-Deym-Stackelberg and Chotek frequently attended concerts at the palaces of Beethoven’s patrons (including Lobkowitz and Kinsky, who died in 1812 in an accident at Chotek’s father’s estate), several of which Beethoven himself also attended. Most important, Chotek heard Beethoven’s music on many occasions, and he rarely failed to comment upon it. As might be expected of someone with high regard for Beethoven’s enormously popular Septet (Op. 20) of 1800, Chotek had mixed feelings about Beethoven’s ‘Middle Period’ works. Among those he favoured are the Eroica Symphony, the F major Razumovsky Quartet, the Coriolanus Overture, the Cello Sonata (Op. 69) and Fidelio. As noted, he disliked most of the music presented at the 22 December 1808 Academy; the introduction of realistic effects into serious music, as in Symphony No. 6, particularly bothered him. He was equivocal about Piano Concerto No. 5 and Wellington’s Sieg. But Chotek was not simply a musical conservative; he criticized Beethoven’s early work Quintet in E-flat for Piano and Winds (Op. 16) (1796) for sounding like a weak imitation of Mozart.

Beethoven in the Diaries of Johann Nepomuk Chotek immerses the reader in early nineteenth-century concert life in Vienna and Prague; both Chotek’s documentary materials and Steblin’s annotations are extraordinarily rich in historical detail. The book offers valuable insight into concert practice during the early Romantic era. One learns, for example, that women formed a significant part of the audience at chamber music concerts, that audiences generally expected to hear new works and that the frequent practice of inserting poetic recitations between musical numbers at concerts met with some disapproval. The book also supplies new factual information concerning the identity of musical works and performers on particular programmes, and the dates and even existence of certain concerts, information that was previously in doubt or entirely unknown. According to Steblin, whereas other documentary sources, such as Reichardt’s Vertraute Briefe, are sometimes frustratingly vague or incomplete, Chotek’s diaries typically supply detailed and accurate information.

Some of Steblin’s most important discoveries pertain to the 1811 subscription concerts hosted by Lobkowitz, events that often included Beethoven’s music and that Beethoven sometimes attended. Chotek’s accounts of these concerts – the ‘first known eye-witness reports’ (p. 112) – are particularly valuable because little documentary evidence about Beethoven in 1811 survives. Steblin reveals that Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5, which Chotek describes as ‘extraordinarily difficult and intellectual’ but also as ‘not at all pleasant’ (p. 114), was premiered (with the eventual dedicatee, Archduke Rudolph, as featured pianist) at a concert at the Lobkowitz palace on 13 January 1811, considerably earlier than the 28 November 1811 premiere date given in Georg Kinsky and Hans Halm’s thematic catalog of Beethoven’s works.Footnote ⁵ Chotek’s diaries also enable Steblin to establish new dates for several other first performances: the Cello Sonata (Op. 69), it now appears, was premiered (with Beethoven as pianist) on 21 January 1809, six weeks earlier than indicated in the scholarly literature, and the Archduke Trio on 2 June 1811, a full three years earlier than previously thought.

Steblin’s book enhances Beethoven scholarship in other ways as well. The programmes of the ‘Liebhaber’ concerts, for example, shed light on several of Beethoven’s letters. Chotek’s diaries reveal for the first time that Beethoven was present at certain concerts, such as the morning Augarten concert of 5 May 1812, and they greatly increase the number of Beethoven works known to have been performed in Prague during the 1810s. The diaries also present candid impressions of both Beethoven and his music. (Chotek was appalled by the disrespect that Beethoven showed to both the orchestra and the public at the 22 December 1808 Academy, and after a Lobkowitz concert of 20 January 1811, he described Beethoven’s behaviour as resembling that of a ‘madman’ (p. 119)).

In sum, Beethoven in the Diaries of Johann Nepomuk Chotek is a dense yet fascinating read. One might wish for an additional chapter summarizing the book’s most important findings and discussing Chotek’s perspective on Beethoven. Nevertheless, through painstaking research, Steblin has helped to revive the lively cultural contexts in which Beethoven’s tradition-bending music was first heard, and to illuminate its reception through the response of one musically astute, contemporary listener.