[45] From the Fischoff Manuscript. The verbal play can scarcely be given in English rhymed couplets. The sentiment is: “Happiness and long life I wish you to-day, but something do I crave for myself from you—your regard, your forbearance and your patience.”
[46] “J. Haydn in London,” page 53.
[47] Neefe relates that on his second visit to England, Haydn had contemplated taking Beethoven with him.
[48] “Friendship, with that which is good, grows like the evening shadow till the setting of the sun of life.”
[49] The discoveries made after Thayer completed and printed his first volume in German (1866), largely inspired by his labors, have made a thorough revision of this chapter imperative. In all that follows the editor has accepted the statement of facts made by Dr. Deiters in his revised version of the first volume published in 1901, but, in pursuance of his plan as set forth in the introduction, has omitted that which seemed to him more or less inconsequential, as well as that which belongs in the field of analysis and criticism.
[50] There have been a few performances of this cantata in Austria and Germany since its publication. It was given at a concert of the Beethoven Association in New York on March 16, 1920, under the direction of Mr. Sam Franko, with an English paraphrase of the text by the Editor of this biography, designed to rid it of its local application and some of its bombast and make its sentiment applicable to any heroic emancipator.
[51] See Vol. II, p. 210, of the first German edition of this work. Ries says, on page 124 of the “Notizen,” apropos of the posthumous manuscripts: “All such trifles and things which he never meant to publish, as not considering them worthy of his name, were secretly brought into the world by his brothers. Such were the songs published when he had attained the highest degree of fame, composed years before at Bonn, previous to his departure for Vienna; and in like manner other trifles, written for albums, etc., were secretly taken from him and published.”
[52] The subject of the German Song was used by Beethoven later in a sonata.
[53] The Trio in E-flat was not published until 1797. It is therefore obvious that the music which Abbé Dobbeler carried with him to England must have been a manuscript copy. Dr. Deiters, accepting without attempt at contradiction Thayer’s proof of its origin at a period not later than 1792, nevertheless puts forth the conjecture that the work may have been revised and reconstructed at a later date in Vienna, as was the case with other compositions. It is not to be supposed, he urges, that Beethoven, enjoying the celebrity that he did in 1797, would have published then with an opus number a production of his youth without first subjecting it to a thorough revision. Moreover, his earlier chamber compositions were in three movements, the minuet having been added for the first time in the Octet. It was scarcely conceivable that he should have simultaneously conceived a work in six movements unless he had had a Mozart model in his mind. But why not? We have seen from the story of the music admired at the court of Vienna from which the Elector came that the serenade form was in favor there. The Sonata for Pianoforte and Violoncello which Artaria announced in May, 1807, is an arrangement of this Trio, but it was not made by Beethoven.
[54] Josef Hellmesberger, of Vienna, completed the movement, utilizing the existing motivi, and the piece was published by Friedrich Schreiber.