On 4 October 1771, Kārlis Ferdinands Amenda was born into the family of the pastor of Lipaiķi parish – a boy who would travel from Courland through Jelgava Gymnasium and Jena to Vienna and become Ludwig van Beethoven’s closest friend. He was a violinist, taught Mozart’s children, and was the first to receive the composer’s secret confession about his loss of hearing. After his European travels, Amenda returned to Courland, became pastor of Talsi in 1802, and kept throughout his life a friendship that links the Talsi parsonage with the world of Beethoven’s letters.

Amenda belonged to the educated Baltic German milieu of Courland, where theology, languages, and music connected provincial parsonages with European universities and salons. His correspondence with Beethoven is a rare Latvian cultural-historical testimony to how directly people from Courland were involved in the European musical world around 1800.