The December 1825 issue of a London newsletter The Harmonicon: A Journal of Music ran an article entitled “A Visit to Beethoven”, an anonymous “letter written by an English lady; dated Vienna, October 1825.”
The author tells of going to Baden, “a pretty little town in the Archduchy of Austria, about fifteen miles S.W. of Vienna, much frequented for its hot baths (whence it derives its name, similarly to our Bath)” where Beethoven could be found during the summer months. Her visit is pleasant:
I conversed with him in writing, for I found it impossible to render myself audible; and though this was a very clumsy mode of communicating, it did not much signify, as he talked on freely and willingly.
Towards the end of the visit, he tells her he wants to give her a souvenir:
He then went to a table in an adjoining room, and wrote two lines of music — a little fugue, for the piano-forte — and presented it to me in a most amiable manner. He afterwards desired that I would spell my name to him, that he might inscribe his impromptu to me correctly.
Afterwards, he played the piece for her on the famous Broadwood piano.
The little piece of music that Beethoven dashed out for his English visitor is catalogued as WoO 61a. Although the autograph no longer exists, it had the inscription
Comme un souvenir à Sarah Burney Payne par Louis van Beethoven le 27 Septembre, 1825.
#Beethoven250 Day 350
Allegretto quasi andante in G Minor (WoO 61a), 1825
A studio recording of this 13-bar quasi-fugue with animated score.
Within the Burney family, the name Sarah was fairly common, so the name “Sarah Burney Payne” on Beethoven’s dedication of the WoO 61a fugue has led to some confusion. I hope I do not add to that confusion. I believe I have it correct:
The dedicatee is not Sarah Harriet Burney (1772–1844), the daughter of the famous music historian Charles Burney (1726–1814) with his second wife. This Sarah was a novelist but not as famous as her half-sister, the pre-Austen satirical novelist Fanny Burney (1752–1840).
Nor is it Sarah Payne (1759–1832), who married James Burney to became Sarah Payne Burney. James Burney (1750–1821) was Fanny’s older brother. He was an English rear-admiral who accompanied Captain Cook and who married at the age of 35.
The dedicatee is instead the daughter of James Burney and Sarah Payne, whose name was also Sarah and who was born in 1796. In 1821 she married her cousin on her mother’s side, John Thomas Payne (c.1796–1880) and hence became Sarah Burney Payne.
Sarah Burney Payne is therefore the granddaughter of Charles Burney, the preeminent English music scholar of the 18th century. The Burney name would have been familiar to Beethoven, so of course he would welcome a visit from Charles Burney’s granddaughter.