Maledizione! or the Perilous Prospects of Beethoven's Patrons

It is tempting to conjecture that the Viennese aristocrats who provided financial support to Beethoven were afflicted by a curse. At the very least, their tales demonstrate the risks that beset even the most privileged members of their society at the onset of the nineteenth century. Here we recount the lot of six of the composer's most readily recognized supporters – Archduke Rudolph, the Princes Kinsky, Lichnowsky andLobkowitz, Count (later prince) Razumovsky and Count Waldstein. Two of them suffered serious accidental occurrences (Kinsky's fatal fall from a horse and the Razumovsky conflagration, about which more will be said presently), the Archduke was apparently forced by arthritis to give up his beloved musical activity and five of the six (as well as other Beethoven patrons) underwent severe financial reverses, at least one of them, Waldstein, dying in poverty. In good part, these misfortunes were attributable to a combination of bad luck and the behavioral propensities of the individuals in question. But behind this story there are also the economic circumstances of the Habsburg Empire at the beginning of the nineteenth century, which constituted a threat to the wealth of the nobility in general. This paper offers some material on this more general subject as well as its biographical observations on some of Beethoven's most significant patrons. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 2002