[Beethoven, Ludwig van. (1770-1827)] Ehlers, Wilhelm. (1774 - 1845). [Beethoven, Ludwig van. (1770-1827)] Ehlers, Wilhelm. (1774 - 1845) Autograph Letter about a collaboration with Beethoven Ehlers, Wilhelm. (1774 - 1845) Autograph Letter about a collaboration with BEETHOVEN
Important autograph letter from Wilhelm Ehlers, regarding work he was doing with Beethoven at the time. 2 pp. February 15, 1824. 6 x 4 inches (16 x 10 cm). Scattered light foxing, else fine. In German, translated in full:

"Best Br:! By tomorrow or the day after tomorrow [I] hope to receive the score; for the time being the book of [the Fool / the Shithead], as Beethoven himself wrote on the manuscript. Except for the chorus, which I have designated ɸɸ, you can orient yourself almost entirely to Kotzebue's ‘Ruins of Athens.' I bracketed the chants with red= and pencil. I spoke to Spitzeder, he made me almost the same remarks that I had already made on Sunday, but I have him around quite a bit and he now wishes to read the program. Let me know at what times of the day you speak and are at home, so that as soon as it is at all possible for me to talk to you further.

Yours J W Ehlers on February 15 1824"

Wilhelm Ehlers was a noted German theatre actor, opera singer (tenor), and theater director who worked with Beethoven on several projects in the early/mid 1820s. From 1801 to 1805, Ehlers had also been employed at the Weimar Court Theatre under Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who held him in very high esteem and actually became the godfather to one of his children in 1818.

The present letter is addressed to a colleague - most likely Jacob Herz Beer, a member of the Directorium of the Königsstädter Theater and the father of Giacomo Meyerbeer -who was helping him to adapt either Beethoven's "Ruins of Athens" (Op. 113) or "The Consecration of the House" (Op. 124). It's not clear which one of those works is meant here, because the referenced adaptation could be either the two act opera "Die Apotheose im Tempel des Jupiters Ammon," with a libretto written by Johann Chrysostomus Sporschil (1822/23) (sketches in SPK Artaria 201), or else Hermann von Hermannsthal's planned adaption of Op. 113 (March 1823). In any event, the term "Scheiße[r]l" ("Shithead") is clearly intended to be a strongly negative comment about the quality of the libretto in question, which Beethoven had already handed off to Ehlers. The original source that Ehlers mentions, which apparently bore Beethoven's own inscription to that effect, has not survived, and Michael Ladenburger at the Beethoven Haus Bonn has noted that this letter is the first known description of this amusing fact.

At the date of the present letter, Ehlers was serving as the director of the Königstädter Theater in Berlin, which had only been founded in 1822 and which had put on its premiere performance in August 1824. The "Spitzeder" who is referenced in this letter is Josef Spitzeder, the son of Johann Baptist Spitzeder, himself a member of the Großmann Schauspielergesellschaft (which had staged in Bonn from 1786-88). From 1789 on, Johann Spitzeder was a member of the Nationaltheater in Bonn, where he was actually a colleague of the young Beethoven, who had played the viola in the orchestra there.

We are grateful to M ichael Ladenburger at the Beethoven Haus, Bonn for his generous assistance with this letter.



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