Background
Dorothea was born in Frankfurt and married Stephan van Ertmann, an Austrian infantry officer, in 1798.
Dorothea was born in Frankfurt and married Stephan van Ertmann, an Austrian infantry officer, in 1798.
The couple moved to Vienna, where Ertmann began taking lessons with Ludwig van Beethoven. He called her his "Dorothea-Cecilia". He dedicated his Piano Sonata Number.
28 to her, and she may also have been the intended recipient of his Immortal Beloved letters.
Her only child, Franz Carl, died at a young age in March 1804. While she was in mourning, Beethoven invited her to his home and improvised on the piano for her for an hour in order to comfort her, saying "We will now talk to each other in tones".
Ertmann premiered his Cello Sonata Number. 3 on March 5, 1809 with Nikolaus Kraft.
Ertmann gave a number of public concerts and was most noted for her performance of Beethoven"s compositions: Alexander Thayer said that "all contemporary authorities agree, if not the greatest player of these works at least the greatest of her sex".
Anton Schindler suggested that "she grasped intuitively even the most hidden subtleties of Beethoven"s works with as much certainty as if they had been written out before her eyes". He also said that "without Frau von Ertmann, Beethoven"s music would have disappeared even sooner from the repertory" because she created a musical salon dedicating to preserving his style against the rise of newer, more "fashionable" composers.