Beethoven listened calmly for a little while without taking personal notice of the abuse or the boasting. Suddenly, however, he arose, went to the table where his colleagues were sitting, and looked the singer Heller sharply in the eye. “Tell me,” he said quietly but firmly, “do you not perform ‘The Lamentations of the Prophet Jeremiah’ in church in the morning?”
“Certainly,” replied Heller. “Why do you ask?”
“Because, perhaps I can make a wager with you,” said Beethoven. “I will play the accompaniment on the piano, and will bet that I will break your time, or, as they say, ‘put you out.’”
“I take the bet. What shall it be?” cried Heller with malicious glee; for he believed himself so sure of winning that he already regarded his opponent as a loser.
“A keg of wine, which we can empty together after church here in the wine-shop,” replied Beethoven.
“It is agreed. I take the bet,” said Heller.
“It’s agreed,” said all the other musicians, with a malicious look at Beethoven; for not one of them believed that he could “put out” the most correct singer of them all. But Beethoven finished his glass of wine, smiling to himself.
“The Lamentations of the Prophet Jeremiah” are little sentences of four or six lines each, and in performance are chanted like the old chorals in a definite rhythm. The tune consists of four successive tones, several words and sometimes whole sentences being sung upon the third, and coming to a rest which the accompanist fills in with a free harmonic passage. Thereupon the singer returns to the ground tone,—not a difficult accomplishment for a clever musician, if the accompanist does not “put him out.”
On the following morning, confident of winning, Heller began his song. Beethoven accompanied him at first in the old and customary manner. All at once, however, he modulated so freely and independently, while he firmly held the first tone in the treble, that Heller could not find his way back to it, and, in fact, was completely “put out” by the “conceited young person.”
“He played incorrectly,” said Heller, angrily.