purchased the right of publication for the British Dominions in consequence of their letter of January 20th, in which they had said that because of the war they had declined Beethoven's proposition. He also promised to ask Beethoven to treat with them for the German rights. (This fact is already known to the readers from the letters written by Beethoven to Breitkopf and Härtel dated September 3 and November 18, 1806.) Count Gleichenstein witnessed the signing of the contract (which is in French), the substance of which is as follows:

Beethoven grants Clementi the manuscripts of the works afterwards enumerated, with the right to publish them in Great Britain, but reserving the rights for other countries. The works are: three Quartets, one Symphony ("the fourth that he has composed"), the Overture to "Coriolan," a Concerto for Violin and the arrangement of the same for Pianoforte "with additional notes."

Clementi is to pay for these works the equivalent of £200 in Viennese funds at Schuller and Co.'s as soon as the arrival of the manuscripts is reported from London. If Beethoven cannot deliver all the compositions at once he is to be paid only in proportion. Beethoven engages to sell these works in Germany, France or elsewhere only on condition that they shall not be published until four months after they have been despatched to England. In the case of the Violin Concerto, the Symphony and the Overture, which have just been sent off, not until September 1, 1807. Beethoven also agrees to compose on the same terms, within a time not fixed, and at his own convenience, three Sonatas or two Sonatas and a Fantasia for Pianoforte with or without accompaniment, as he chooses, for which he is to be paid £60. Clementi engages to send Beethoven two copies of each work. The contract is executed in duplicate and signed at Vienna, April 20, 1807, by Clementi and Beethoven.1

The quartets, in parts, had been lent to Count Franz Brunswick and were still in Hungary, which gave occasion to one of Beethoven's peculiarly whimsical and humorous epistles:

tion between Beethoven and Clementi: "This business plays an extraordinarily important rôle in the next three years of Beethoven's life (until the spring of 1810). The publication of its details has made portions of the account in the first edition of this work wholly untenable, since those portions were based on the assumption that the conclusion of the contract with Clementi had been followed also by the prompt payment of the honorarium (in 1807), whereas, as a matter of fact, the payment was delayed for three years, as has been plainly shown by the correspondence between Clementi and Collard. Clementi, it would seem, spent the eight years following 1802, when he went to St. Petersburg with Field, till 1810, entirely on the Continent (in St. Petersburg, Berlin, Leipsic, Rome) and sojourned several times in Vienna. We know from Ries's account that he did not come into contact with Beethoven during his extended stay in 1804, but we also know that as early as the fall of 1804, he tried to secure the right of publishing Beethoven's works in England."

"This is given from Jahn's copy, to which is appended the following note: "Titles of the 6 works with changed dedications: 3 quartets, the name Rasoumowsky changed in Beethoven's handwriting to à son Altesse le Prince Charles de Lichnowsky. The name of Frau von Breuning stricken out of the dedication of the arrangement of the Concerto. The Pianoforte Concerto originally dedicated with a German title to Archduke Rudolph, then with a French title à son ami Gleichenstein." None of these changes was made; the "six works" came out with the dedications originally intended.

THE FAMOUS LOVE-LETTER AGAIN

To Count Franz von Brunswick:

105

Dear, dear B! I have only to say to you that I came to a right satisfactory arrangement with Clementi. I shall receive 200 pounds Sterling and besides I am privileged to sell the same works in Germany and France. He has also offered me other commissions-so that I am enabled to hope through them to achieve the dignity of a true artist while still young. I need, dear B, the QUARTETS. I have already asked your sister to write to you about them, it takes too long to copy them from my score-therefore make haste and send them direct to me by LETTER POST. You shall have them back in 4 or 5 days at the latest. I beg you urgently for them, since otherwise I might lose a great deal.

If you can arrange it that the Hungarians want me to come for a few concerts, do it-you may have me for 200 florins in gold-then I will bring my opera along. I will not get along with the princely rabble. Whenever we (several) (amici) drink your wine, we drink you, i.e., we drink your health. Farewell-hurry-hurry-hurry and send me the quartets-otherwise you may embarrass me greatly.

Schuppanzigh has married-it is said with ONE very like him. What a family ? ? ? ?

Kiss your sister Therese, tell her I fear I shall become great without the help of a monument reared by her. Send me to-morrow the quartets -quar-tets-t-e-t-s.

Your friend Beethoven.1

If an English publisher could afford to pay so high a price for the manuscripts of a German composer, why not a French one? So Beethoven reasoned, and, Bonn being then French, he wrote to Simrock proposing a contract like that made with Clementi. The letter, which was dictated and signed by Beethoven but written by another, expresses a desire to sell six new works to a publishing house in France, one in England and one in Vienna simultaneously, with the understanding that they are to appear only after a certain date. They are a symphony, an overture for Collin's "Coriolan," a violin concerto, 3 quartets, 1 concerto for the pianoforte, the violin concerto arranged for pianoforte "avec des notes additionelles." The price, "very cheap," is to be 1200

This letter (to which allusion has been made in the chapter devoted to Beethoven's love-affairs) was first printed from the original owned by Count Géza von Brunswick in the "Blätter für Theater und Musik" (No. 34). If the date, "May 11, 1806," was written by Beethoven and is not an error by a copyist, it provides another instance of the composer's irresponsibility in dating his letters; for the reference to the contract with Clementi is irrefutable evidence that it was written in 1807. Beethoven's remark about getting great without the help of a monument reared by Therese von Brunswick is evidently an allusion to the fact that the Countess erected a monument to her father in the grounds of the family-seat in Hungary, and might properly enough be cited, together with the commissioned kiss, as proof of the intimacy between the Brunswicks and Beethoven. Had there been talk of another family monument at Martonvásár? Beethoven's remark might easily be thus interpreted. The sister whom he had asked to write about the quartets was doubtless Josephine, Countess von Deym. The sportive remark about Schuppanzigh's marriage with one like him is explained by the fact that the violinist was of Falstaffian proportions.

Actually

1812

florins, Augsburg current. As regards the day of publication, he thinks he can fix the first of September of that year for the first three, and the first of October for the second three.

Simrock answered that owing to unfavorable circumstances due to the war, all he could offer, in his "lean condition," was 1600 livres. He also proposed that in case Beethoven found his offer fair, he should send the works without delay to Breuning. Simrock would at once pay Breuning 300 livres in cash and give him a bill of exchange for 1300 livres, payable in two years, provided nobody reprinted any of his works in France, he taking all measures to protect his property under the laws.

A series of letters written from Baden and bearing dates in June and July, addressed to Gleichenstein, are of no special interest or importance except as they, when read together, establish beyond cavil that Beethoven made no journey to any distant wateringplace during the time which they cover. By proving this they have a powerful bearing on the vexed question touching the true date of Beethoven's famous love-letter supposed by Schindler to have been addressed to the young Countess Guicciardi. That it was written in 1806 or 1807 was long since made certain; and it was only in a mistaken deference to Beethoven's "Evening, Monday, July 6"-which, if correct, would be decisive in favor of the latter year-that the letter was not inserted in its proper place as belonging to the year 1806. That this deference was a mistake, and that Beethoven should have written "July 7," is made certain by Simrock's letter, which, by determining the dates of the notes to Gleichenstein, affords positive evidence that the composer passed the months of June and July, 1807, in Baden. A cursory examination of the composer's correspondence brings to light other similar mistakes. There is a letter to Breitkopf and Härtel with this date, "Wednesday, November 2, 1809"Wednesday was the 1st; a letter to Countess Erdödy has "29 February, 1815"-in that year February had but 28 days; and a letter to Zmeskall is dated "Wednesday, July 3rd, 1817"-July 3rd that year falling on a Thursday. Referring the reader to what has appeared in a previous chapter, for the letter and a complete discussion of the question of its date, it need only be added here, that it was, beyond a doubt, written from some Hungarian wateringplace (as Schindler says), where Beethoven tarried for a time after his visit to Brunswick and before that to Prince Lichnowsky. This fact being established, it follows, as a necessary consequence, that it was not written to Julia Guicciardi—already nearly three years the wife of Gallenberg-nor to Therese Malfatti-then a

COMPOSITION OF THE MASS IN C

107

girl but thirteen or at most fourteen years-nor, in short, to any person whose name has ever been given by biographer or novelist as among the objects of Beethoven's fleeting passions. Thus we are led to the obvious and rational conclusion, that a mutual appreciation had grown up between the composer and some lady not yet known; that there were obstacles to marriage just now insuperable, but not of such a nature as to forbid the expectation of conquering them in the future; and that-in 1807 as in 1806 -they were happy in their love and looking forward with hope.1 The following letter to Prince Esterhazy, dated July 26, belongs to the same period and refers to the composition of the Mass in C:

Most Serene, most Gracious Prince!

Having been told that you, my Prince, have asked concerning the mass which you commissioned me to write for you, I take the liberty, my Serene Prince, to inform you that you shall receive the same at the latest by the 20th of the month of August-which will leave plenty of time to have it performed on the name-day of her Serene Highness, the Princess-an extraordinarily favorable offer which I received from London when I had the misfortune to make a failure of my benefit at the theatre, which made me grasp the need with joy, retarded the completion of the mass, much as I wished, Serene Prince, to appear with it before you, and to this was added an illness of the head, which at first permitted me to work not at all and now but little; since everything is so eagerly interpreted against me, I inclose a letter from my physicianmay I add that I shall give the mass into your hands with great fear since you, Serene Highness, are accustomed to have the inimitable masterpieces of the great Haydn performed for you.

At the end of July, Beethoven removed from Baden to Heiligenstadt, devoting his time there to the C minor Symphony and the Mass in C. One of Czerny's notes relates to the mass:

Once when he (Beethoven) was walking in the country with the Countess Erdödy and other ladies, they heard some village musicians and laughed at some false notes which they played, especially the violoncellist, who, fumbling for the C major chord, produced something like the following:

Beethoven used this figure for the "Credo" of his first mass, which he chanced to be composing at the time.

The Editor of the English edition feels it to be his duty to permit Thayer to reiterate his argument in favor of the year 1807, as that in which the_love-letter was written, notwithstanding Dr. Riemann's curt rejection of it in the German edition. The question is still an open one.

The name-day of Princess Esterhazy, née Princess Marie von Liechtenstein, for which Beethoven promises in the letter above given to have the Mass ready, was the 8th of September. In the years when this date did not fall upon a Sunday it was the custom at Eisenstadt to celebrate it on the first Sunday following. In 1807 the 8th fell on a Tuesday and the first performance of Beethoven's Mass, therefore, took place on the 13th. Haydn, as Pohl informs us, had written his masses for this day and had gone to Eisenstadt from Vienna to conduct their performance. So Beethoven now; who seems to have had his troubles with the singers here as in Vienna, if one may found such an opinion upon an energetic note of Prince Esterhazy copied and printed by Pohl. In this note, which is dated September 12, 1807, the Prince calls upon his vice-chapelmaster, Johann Fuchs, to explain why the singers in his employ were not always on hand at his musical affairs. He had heard on that day with displeasure that at the rehearsal of Beethoven's Mass only one of the five contraltos was present, and he stringently commanded all the singers and instrumentalists in his service to be on hand at the performance of the mass on the following day.

The Mass was produced on the next day the 13th. “It was the custom at this court," says Schindler,

that after the religious service the local as well as foreign musical notabilities met in the chambers of the Prince for the purpose of conversing with him about the works which had been performed. When Beethoven entered the room, the Prince turned to him with the question: "But, my dear Beethoven, what is this that you have done again?" The impression made by this singular question, which was probably followed by other critical remarks, was the more painful on our artist because he saw the chapelmaster standing near the Prince laugh. Thinking that he was being ridiculed, nothing could keep him at the place where his work had been so misunderstood and besides, as he thought, where a brother in art had rejoiced over his discomfiture. He left Eisenstadt the same day.

The laughing chapelmaster was J. N. Hummel, who had been called to the post in 1804 in place of Haydn, recently pensioned because of his infirmities, due to old age. Schindler continues:

Thence dates the falling-out with Hummel, between whom and Beethoven there never existed a real intimate friendship. Unfortunately they never came to an explanation which might have disclosed that the unlucky laugh was not directed at Beethoven, but at the singular manner in which the Prince had criticized the mass (in which there is still much that might be complained of). But there were other things which fed the hate of Beethoven. One of these was that the two had an inclination for the same girl; the other, the tendency which Hummel had first