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Updated: June 14, 2025
The following story of Beethoven's absent-mindedness is vouched for by Moscheles: "When I came in early to find Beethoven, he was still abed; but feeling wide-awake and lively, he jumped up and placed himself at the window just as he was, in order to examine the 'Fidelio' numbers which I had arranged.
On July 18 the opera had a performance for Beethoven's benefit; Moscheles made a pianoforte score under the direction of the composer, who dedicated it to his august pupil, the Archduke Rudolph, and it was published in August by Artaria. The history of "Fidelio," interesting as it is, need not be pursued here further than to chronicle its first performances in the English and American metropoles.
He had been some time ill, and four of the greatest physicians in Europe were his almost constant attendants. The funeral of "The Swan of Pesaro," as he was called by his compatriots, was attended by an immense concourse, and his remains rest in Père-Lachaise. Moscheles, the celebrated pianist, gives us some charming pictures of Rossini in his home at Passy, in his diary of 1860.
His parents were musical, and when at sixteen he wrote a small matter of two oratorios without previous instruction, they put him to study under Dudley Buck. From his tuition he graduated to Germany, and to such teachers as Moscheles, Richter, Plaidy, Lobe, Raif, Taussig, and Weitzmann. He studied in England after that, and returned again to Germany.
What, for example, could more vividly portray an artist's tendencies than the description of Thalberg by Moscheles, who knew him more thoroughly than any other contemporary, and felt a keener sympathy with his genre as an artist than with the more striking originality of Chopin and Liszt. Moscheles writes: "I find his introduction of harp effects on the piano quite original.
This is the testimony of Moscheles, an excellent and kind-hearted man, and a thoroughly skilled musician, after spending nearly every day for six weeks with the family: "It is a family such as I have never known before; Felix, a mature artist, and yet but fifteen; Fanny, extraordinarily gifted, playing Bach's fugues by heart and with astonishing correctness in fact, a thorough musician.
He gave lessons to none but the most talented pupils, and his services were sought by the most wealthy families of the English capital, though the ability to pay great prices was by no means a passport to the good graces of Moscheles.
The former sounds more varied, but we may suppose the latter to be correct because of Mikuli. Yet this exquisite flight into the blue, this nocturne which should be played before sundown, excited the astonishment of Mendelssohn, the perplexed wrath of Moscheles and the contempt of Rellstab, editor of the "Iris," who wrote in that journal in 1834 of the studies in op. 10:
They, as well as all the Viennese musicians, were bound together by a common tie, very well expressed in the saying of Moscheles: "We musicians, whatever we be, are mere satellites of the great Beethoven, the dazzling luminary."
She was enchanted by the playing of Moscheles, and, when she accidentally made the acquaintance of the performer at the house of a mutual acquaintance, the couple quickly became enamored of each other. A brief engagement of less than a month was followed by marriage, and so Moscheles entered into a relation singularly felicitous in all the elements which make domestic life most blessed.
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