Pablo Massa  wrote, in response to me:

>>Beethoven writes that the Brentanos are such useful friends because of
>>their money.  He only needs to "pull the tails of these sheep" and yes,
>>money again!  Imagine, such a sentence about the woman who is supposed to
>>be the woman of his life, his One and Only True Love.  It makes me giggle.
>
>Well.  As I imagined, this proves nothing against Solomon's theory.  I
>don't know the date of that letter, but these lines may be the product of:
>
>a) a sincere opinion of Beethoven before falling in love with Antonie.

No. Because he wrote these letters AFTER the famous love letter.  He
hardly knew her until 1810.  In 1798 Antonie moved to Frankfurt and there's
not the slightest trace that she and Beethoven ever met before 1810.  In
that year she and Franz moved to Vienna and stayed there until the fall
of 1812.  The friendship developed in those two years and the first still
existing letter (naturally we cannot exclude that letters got lost) from
Beethoven to Antonie dates from the fall of 1815, a heartily, very heartily
letter.

>b) a bitter show of resentment against her and her husband after a broken
>(or even frustrated) relationship.

No. Because his letters, again AFTER the famous love letter and AFTER the
supposed break, show a very heartily friendship between Beethoven and Franz
and Antonie as well.  This friendship continued until 1823.  Many a letter,
all of them very friendly.  He called Franz "Edler Mann" and "mein werter
Freund" and wrote about Antonie as "einzig herrliche Toni" et cetera, et
cetera.  And many a dedication to Antonie and her daughter followed (the
Diabelli variations, for instance).  May I give you an advice? Study the
Beethoven-Brentano correspondence and then judge again.  The problem with
Solomon is that he simply kept his mouth shut about these amazing lines,
so badly fitting to his hypothesis.  I don't hesitate to call that deceit.

>Of course, all of this proves nothing in favor of Antonie Brentano.

Very true.

>I don't know the letters to Antonie, but I don't see why the fact
>of Antonie's pregnancy could be an obstacle for an encounter or a
>relationship with B.

Do you really consider it possible that Beethoven would have thought about
living together with a woman who was pregnant by another man? Come on!
Read the love letter again and don't overlook that striking sentence:
"mache dass ich mit dir leben kann" (Beethoven's spelling).

>You extrapolate the mind-frame of a man of our century into a man of the
>early XIX.  The emotional concern of parents with their newborn or unborn
>children was very weak in those times compared to that of ours.

Also when the child fell ill in the way Karl Joseph did? Come on!
That would have been much more than "weak emotional concern." Maybe you
also should read Lund's book "Raptus" (published in 1995), devoted to her
attempt to improve Solomon's weak hypothesis.  This book, though IMHO very
silly, gives a good survey of everything that happened to Antonie, Franz
and Karl Joseph.  Very instructive.  Read about Franz' and Antonie despair
when the child fell ill.  Not a sign of "weak emotional concern".  On
the contrary.  Their feelings were as yours and mine if one of our kids
would have been as ill as poor Karl Joseph (probably he suffered from
meningitis).  They travelled through half Europe, trying to find doctors
who maybe could cure their child.  The poor kid had to undergo some
horribly painful treatments, like burning his limbs (he couldn't walk
anymore).  BTW, Lund doesn't doubt that Karl Joseph Brentano was
Beethoven's child and and a few years ago she travelled to the Brentano
estate in Winkel am Rhein, searching for proofs.  She wrote about this trip
in The Beethoven Journal.  As you probably have understood: I'm not on
Solomon's side, let alone Lund's.  However, Lund correctly pointed to a
very weak side of Solomon's hypothesis.  That's her merit.  Finally the
researchers awoke from Solomon's successfull attempt to hypnotize them
and they started a new research, though Tellenbach already had written a
convincing protest.  Her book is an excellent one.  Highly recommended
("Beethoven und seine unsterbliche Geliebte", published in 1983).  However,
she had overlooked Antonie's pregnancy.  And then came Lund.  And shortly
(I already wrote about it) there's a new hypothesis, for Almerie Esterhazy.
Only a few weeks ago a dedicated reader of all the professional magazines
on musicology told me that obviously even Solomon himself is beginning to
doubt his hypothesis.  In an article he pointed to the mysterious A in
Beethoven's diary of the fall of 1812 and wrote that the A probably points
to a "beloved person." A few years ago he surely plainly would have written
"to Antonie Brentano."

>Concerning the line of Beethoven to Antonie in 1816, I don't see
>what's wrong with it, since he didn't become a true "physical" father.

IF Antonie was the beloved Karl Joseph most probably was Beethoven's
child.  And that doesn't fit to Beethoven's sentence.  That's the crux.
Beethoven called his beloved "du" in his famous love letter.  In those days
in Germany and Austria that points to a sexual relationship.  Once again
sly Solomon keeps his mouth shut about this striking fact.  Beethoven and
the mysterious beloved had a true affair, not something like Dante and
Beatrice.

>The context and the right meaning of those words was surely well known to
>Antonie.

Of course, she knew about whom he was talking: his nephew.  But IF her
son, Karl Joseph, has been Beethoven's son things suddenly look quite
strange.  That's what I meant.

Joyce Maier
www.ademu.com/Beethoven