Anton Schindler - Subsequent Discredit

Subsequent Discredit

Although as early as the 1850s the inconsistencies of Schindler's account were clear enough to lead Alexander Wheelock Thayer to commence research for his own pioneering biography, it was a series of musicological articles published since the 1970s that essentially demolished Schindler's reputation of reliability. It was demonstrated that he falsified entries in Beethoven's Conversation Books (into which he inserted many spurious entries after Beethoven's death) and that he had exaggerated his period of close association with the composer (his claimed '11 or 12 years' was likely no more than five or six). It was also believed that Schindler also destroyed more than half of the conversation books. The Beethoven Compendium (Cooper 1991, p. 52) goes so far as to say that Schindler's propensity for inaccuracy and fabrication was so great that virtually nothing he has recorded can be relied on unless it is supported by other evidence. More recently, Theodore Albrecht has re-examined the question of Schindler's reliability, and as to his presumed destruction of a huge number of conversation books, concludes that this widespread belief could not be true.