Stirling wrote:

>One could write a fairly good article just dealing with the effects
>inflation in Vienna on Beethoven's income...

Of course inflation affects everyone's income (or at any rate, most of us
peons--I'll let the economically gifted deal with the exceptions).  There
is a note on the economic situation in Vienna in Beethoven's day in _The
Beethoven Compendium_ (edited by Barry Cooper), as well as some information
about his sources of income, the changes taking place in the world of music
in his time, and their effects on his compositional output.

Also, Maynard Solomon in his biography _Beethoven_ has some interesting
things to say about the effects of the Napoleonic Wars and the Congress
of Vienna in 1814, at which the negotiations ending the war were conducted.
The wars, including the French occupations of Vienna, helped to impoverish
many of the patrons he had depended on in his earlier career, and thus
pushed him in the direction of writing for himself and for the wider
musical public rather than for these few aristocratic fans.

The Congress brought into Vienna a horde of courtiers and assorted
hangers-on of the crowned heads of Europe, creating a sudden surge of
prosperity and the need for many balls and parties to keep all these folks
occupied while the negotiations dragged on, and Beethoven was called upon
to write a lot of music for these functions.  But the longer-term effects
of this social life helped to turn the musical tastes of the Viennese
public in directions that Beethoven was not particularly interested in,
which contibuted to insuring that much if not most of the compositions of
his last period were way above the public's heads and were not well known
or appreciated until long after his death.

Exploring such connections between the twists and turns in LvB's economic
situation and the nature of his music is a very interesting subject of
research indeed.

Jon Johanning // [log in to unmask]