[91] An untranslatable pun.
[92] Under date of London, 14th February, 1875, Mr. E. Speyer writes: “My father ... on a visit to Vienna in 1832, made the acquaintance of the Abbé Stadler, who communicated to him the following curious fact in relation to Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, viz: That the theme of the Trio
was nothing more nor less than a Lower-Austrian Pilgrimage Hymn (Wallfahrtgesang), which the Abbé himself had frequently heard sung.” This correspondent’s father was the W. Speyer, or Speier, whose name so often appears in old volumes of the “Allg. Mus. Zeit.”
[93] Here Beethoven was mistaken. Haydn composed accompaniments for a volume of Scottish songs for Napier, a London publisher, without ritornellos or violoncello; he wrote as Beethoven wrote for Thomson—with violoncello part as well as ritornellos. In a later letter (of February 19) the same error is repeated.
[94] Laub and Jahn read “R”; Köchel, “M.” The former might be the publisher Rizzi, the latter Mollo.
[95] “Andreas Baron von Forray, husband of Countess Julie Brunswick, a cousin of Count Franz Brunswick, was a good pianoforte player and great music lover,” says Köchel.
[96] Related by Court Councillor Wittescheck and confirmed by Schindler, who had “this fact” from Maximiliane—then Frau von Plittersdorf.
[97] Dr. Riemann, who believes that Beethoven’s “Immortal Beloved” was Countess Therese Brunswick but places the love-letter, or letters, in the year 1812, accounts for this date on the hypothesis that Beethoven reached Teplitz (whence he assumes, of course, that the letters were sent) on the fifth of the month but was registered on the seventh, on which day he was reported from his lodgings.
[98] The following information about Beethoven’s association with Varnhagen in the summer of 1812, and much that is new about Beethoven’s meetings with Goethe, is Dr. Riemann’s contribution to Thayer’s biography. It is based on the correspondence between Varnhagen and Rahel Levin, a study: “Beethoven, Goethe und Varnhagen von Ense mit ungedruckten Briefen an Beethoven, Oliva, Varnhagen, etc.,” by Dr. Emil Jacobs, published in the second December installment of “Die Musik,” 1904, and the Weimar Collection of Goethe’s letters.