Ludwig van Beethoven was, famously, a freelance musician. He didn’t work as a Kapellmeister in a court or an organist in a church.
Beethoven as a teenager
Then, as now, it wasn’t easy to cobble together a living as a working freelance musician. Over the course of his career, he supplemented the income from publishing his compositions with teaching (usually wealthy and powerful people).
The stories of Beethoven’s relationships with these students are fascinating: “Beethoven’s Students: From Carl Czerny to Countesses”
Today, we have the stories of five more of Beethoven’s students.
Countesses Josephine and Therese Brunsvik
Therese Brunsvik
Therese Brunsvik was born in July 1775 and Josephine in March 1779 in Preßburg (now known as Bratislava, Slovakia). The sisters came from a wealthy family and lived in a massive castle.
Tragically, their father died in 1793, meaning it was imperative that they marry well for financial security.
In 1799, their mother took them to Vienna. She wanted them to have the best musical training to help them on the marriage market.
So in 1799, Therese, 24, and Josephine, 20, went to Beethoven’s home to take some lessons from him.
Therese wrote in her memoirs:
Like a schoolgirl, with Beethoven’s Sonatas for Violin and Violincello and Pianoforte under my arm, we entered.
The immortal, dear Louis van Beethoven was very friendly and as polite as he could be. After a few phrases de part et d’autre, he sat me down at his pianoforte, which was out of tune, and I began at once to sing the violin and the ‘cello parts and played right well.
This delighted him so much that he promised to come every day to the Hotel zum Erzherzog Carl – then zum Goldenen Greifen.
Josephine Brunsvik
The two women studied with Beethoven for sixteen consecutive days while the family was staying in Vienna.
Beethoven gave input on their technique. For instance, he told Therese to keep her fingers low and curved instead of high and straight, as she’d been taught.
They all got along well, and Beethoven ended up becoming good friends with the Brunsviks, even falling in love with Josephine.
However, he was a young composer in his late twenties, his economic prospects were uncertain, and he had no hope of marrying her.
Instead, their striving mother arranged for Josephine to marry Count Joseph Deym von Strítez, a man thirty years Josephine’s senior.
Still, Beethoven remained friends with the Brunsvik sisters. He dedicated his 1803 Six Variations in D Major on “Ich denke dein” for four-hand piano to them.
Beethoven: 6 variations on “Ich denke dein” piano four hands WoO 74
He also dedicated his Piano Sonata No. 24 to Therese in 1809.
Beethoven Sonata no.24 “À Thérèse”
Therese became involved in education, while Josephine’s life became increasingly desperate. (In fact, Josephine was possibly Beethoven’s “Immortal Beloved”! But that’s a tragic story for another time.)
Josephine died of tuberculosis in 1821. Therese outlived her by forty years.
Eleonore von Breuning
Beethoven’s students – the von Breuning family
In 1784, a teenaged Beethoven’s friend, the future doctor Franz Wegeler, introduced him to the wealthy von Breuning family of Bonn, Germany.
Beethoven had endured a turbulent childhood. He had grown up with an abusive father, and in 1787, when he was only sixteen, his beloved mother died. He began thinking of the widowed matriarch Helene von Breuning as a maternal figure.
He also befriended the children, including a daughter named Eleonore (one year his junior) and a son named Stephan (four years his junior). He eventually became their piano teacher and fell in puppy love with Eleanore.
At the von Breuning’s, Beethoven met members of the aristocracy for the first time, and was introduced to poetry and literature that would later inspire him.
Eleonore von Breuning © beethoven.de
He composed two easy piano pieces for Eleonore, the Allegro and Adagio, WoO 51.
Beethoven: Sonata in C Major WoO 51
In the summer of 1792, 22-year-old Beethoven and 21-year-old Eleonore had a fight that Beethoven later regretted.
He left Bonn in November 1792 to make his name in Vienna, leaving the Breunings behind with his childhood.
Eleonore ended up marrying Franz Wegeler ten years later. Despite the fact they’d parted on a sour note, the friend group continued corresponding until the end of Beethoven’s life. In fact, Stephan ended up being named the executor of Beethoven’s estate.
Archduke Rudolph of Austria
Archduke Rudolf
Archduke Rudolph of Austria was born in 1788 in Florence, Italy. His parents were Emperor Leopold II and Maria Louisa of Spain, and he was the brother of the man who became Emperor of Austria.
Rudolph was quiet and sickly, suffering from epilepsy, as many members of the Habsburg family did. Instead of joining the military, he opted to join the church.
He started piano and composition lessons with Beethoven in Vienna around 1803, when he was fifteen. He also gave Beethoven access to his impressive music library.
In 1809, Beethoven decided to accept an invitation to become the Kapellmeister at the court of Napoleon’s brother in Kassel, Germany.
However, the idea of losing Beethoven was unacceptable to Rudolph and other aristocrats, so Rudolph joined forces with other aristocrats to pledge to pay Beethoven an annual salary.
Even after the other guarantors of the salary suffered financial troubles or died, Archduke Rudolph made sure to pay their shares.
That same year, the Imperial family fled Vienna ahead of Napoleon’s invasion. Beethoven wrote his Piano Sonata No. 26 as a tribute to Rudolph and his generosity. The first movement was titled “The Farewell”, and the second “Absence.” Beethoven pledged he would only complete the final movement, “The Return”, once the cardinal returned to Vienna in 1810.
Beethoven: Sonata No. 26 ‘Les Adieux’
Over the course of his career, Beethoven dedicated fourteen works to Rudolph, including many of his most beloved works like the Archduke Trio, the Emperor Concerto, and the Hammerklavier Sonata.
Rudolph was appointed Archbishop of Olomouc in the present-day Czech Republic in 1819. Archduke asked him to compose a piece for the enthronement. Beethoven wrote the Missa Solemnis for him, but didn’t finish it until 1823.
He died of a cerebral haemorrhage in 1831 at the age of 43.
Beethoven: Missa solemnis
Therese Malfatti
Ludwig van Beethoven and Therese Malfatti
Therese Malfatti was born in Vienna on 1 January 1792, the daughter of a wealthy merchant and his wife. Interestingly, she was also the niece of Beethoven’s physician.
She grew into a smart, feisty, and beautiful woman.
Beethoven was introduced to her by his friend Baron Gleichenstein, who was courting Therese’s sister. He was immediately smitten by the woman twenty years younger than him.
In April 1810, he asked one friend to buy him new clothes and asked another if he could borrow a looking glass, indications that he was suddenly – and uncharacteristically – concerned about his appearance.
He also asked his old friend Franz Wegeler to send him his birth certificate from Bonn, possibly so he could get a marriage license to marry Therese.
However, once his romantic intentions became known, he was discouraged by her horrified parents. Gleichenstein was tasked with telling Beethoven the news that there was no hope of their marriage. Chastened, Beethoven wrote Malfatti a letter apologizing for his “craziness.”
At some point during their acquaintance, he advised her on musical matters, although the exact nature of his musical instruction is unknown. But it is reasonable to think of her as a Beethoven student.
Given the fact that Beethoven nearly proposed to her, we know remarkably little about Therese Malfatti. Most of what we do know about her time with Beethoven is shrouded in myth.
According to one legend, in 1810 he went to a party at the Malfatti household…intending to perform a little piano piece for her and to propose marriage. However, the punch at the party was a little too rich for his system, and he got too drunk. He wrote the name of the piece instead. The drunken handwriting was later interpreted as “Für Elise” instead of “Fur Therese.”
It’s a fanciful tale, but there’s not much to back it up besides the fact that a copy of the piece was found among her papers when she died. But it speaks to how hard facts we have, and how legends have filled the vacuum.
Therese married Baron von Drosdick in 1817.
As for Beethoven, he drifted away from Dr. Malfatti, still bitter that his doctor hadn’t stood up for him. The two only reconciled at the end of Beethoven’s life.
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