# A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Lichnowsky, Carl

From volume 2 of the work.
​LICHNOWSKY, Carl, Fürst (Prince), by Russian patent issued January 30, 1773; born 1758, died April 15, 1814; was descended from an old Polish family whose estates were so situated that, after the partition of Poland, it owed allegiance to all three of the plunderers. The principal seat of Prince Carl was Schloss Grätz, near Troppau in Silesia; but Vienna was his usual place of residence. He claims ​a place in this work as the pupil and friend of Mozart and the Mæcenas of Beethoven.
Readers of Burney's 'Musical Tour' will remember his eulogies of the Countess Thun-Klösterle, so celebrated for her beauty, intellect and culture, whose disregard for mere form gave her the reputation of eccentricity, but whose house and family had charms that attracted even the Emperor Joseph and his brothers thither on the footing of friendly visitors. Of her taste in music it is sufficient to say that she was a profound admirer of the compositions of both the young Mozart and the young Beethoven, at a time when such appreciation was by no means universal. Her daughters—Georg Forster's 'Three Graces'—were worthy of their mother. Elizabeth married Rasoumowsky; Christine, born July 26, 1765, married, November 21, 1788, Lichnowsky; and the third the English Lord Guilford. Schönfeld, a Viennese, writes in 1796, of Lady 'Gilfort' as a guitar player of very high rank and a singer of uncommon excellence; and of Princess Lichnowsky as 'a strong musician who plays the pianoforte with feeling and expression.'
Lichnowsky, without pretending to rival the great magnates Esterhazy, Lobkowitz, and their peers, in maintaining a complete 'chapel' of vocal and instrumental music, had within five years after his marriage his regular Friday quartet of youthful virtuosos, Schuppanzigh, Sina, Weiss, and Kraft, all of whom became famous, and also gave musical entertainments on a scale requiring a full orchestra.
His relations to the Prussian court compelled him occasionally to appear there; and he thus found opportunity to give Mozart—only two years his senior—a practical and substantial proof of his affection, by inviting him, in those days of tedious and expensive travelling, to join him on one of these occasions free of expense. This was the journey in the spring of 1789, during which the King of Prussia offered Mozart the then noblest musical position in Germany, but which a kind word from the Emperor, after his return, led him to reject, without securing an equivalent. There seems to be no doubt that Lichnowsky, deeply moved by the distressing condition of his teacher and friend, had taken him to Berlin in the hope of improving his circumstances, and that the King's offer was partly due to his influence. Two and a half years later poor Mozart was dead, leaving a void in the Lichnowsky-Thun circle which there was no one to fill. Another two years and young Beethoven had come from Bonn.
The relations between him and the Lichnowskys are sufficiently indicated in the article Beethoven; but a current error must be corrected; namely, that the breach caused by the quarrel at Grätz in 1806 was final. Lichnowsky lived in a large house over the Schotten gate—both house and gate disappeared long since—and in the storey below him dwelt Beethoven's friends, the Erdödys. The Schotten and Mölker bastions were contiguous, and the Pasqualati house, on the latter, was in the same row with that of Lichnowsky, though a few doors away from it. This then was the reason why Beethoven was content to live in rooms in the fourth storey, looking to the cold north, and without a direct ray of the sun. He remained there from 1804 to 1807, and then removed into rooms provided him by the Countess Erdödy.
An outbreak with the Countess led him to remove to the other side of the city, where he passed the years 1809 and 1810. Meantime, so complete a reconciliation had taken place between him and both Lichnowsky and the Countess Erdödy, that in 1811 he went again to Grätz, and on his return once more took hia old lodging in the Pasqualati house, where he remained until the death of Lichnowsky. It was during these last years that Schindler records the frequent visits of the prince to the composer.
Edward Maria, son and successor of Prince Carl (born Sept. 19, 1789, died Jan. 1, 1845, at Munich), distinguished himself as an agriculturist, but more as a man of letters. He stands high in Austrian literature as a national antiquarian, especially for his great 'History of the House of Habsburg.'
[ A. W. T. ]