Beethoven, the Man and the Artist, as Revealed in His Own Words

by Ludwig van Beethoven

36. “Yes, yes, then they are amazed and put their heads together because they never found it in any book on thorough bass.”

(To Ries when the critics accused him of making grammatical blunders in
music.)

37. “No devil can compel me to write only cadences of such a kind.”

(From notes written in his years of study. Beethoven called the
composition of fugues “the art of making musical skeletons.”)

38. “Good singing was my guide; I strove to write as flowingly as possible and trusted in my ability to justify myself before the judgment-seat of sound reason and pure taste.”

(From notes in the instruction book of Archduke Rudolph.)

39. “Does he believe that I think of a wretched fiddle when the spirit speaks to me?”

(To his friend, the admirable violinist Schuppanzigh, when the latter
complained of the difficulty of a passage in one of his works.)

[Beethoven here addresses his friend in the third person, which is the customary style of address for the German nobility and others towards inferiors in rank. H. E. K.]

40. “The Scotch songs show how unconstrainedly irregular melodies can be treated with the help of harmony.”