At a period in which instantaneous performances were so popular, contests of the kind mentioned above were not misplaced. But Beethoven had more to suffer in them than others, since his genius had already outgrown them. He was a poet who loved to live apart and to offer his gifts in a more intimate fashion. How wonderfully did that very deafness, which turned his genius inward, preserve him in later years from public playing and conducting! But, before, he had been forced to enter the lists not only with Wölffl, with Gelinek, with the renowned technist Hummel, but actually with so contemptible an artist as Steibelt. This Steibelt was one of the disgraces of the age. Bespattered with praise, he rushed through Europe with his trashy compositions, his battles, thunder-storms, Bacchanals, which he played _ad libitum_, while his wife struck the tambourine in concert with him. The populace was enraptured, for Steibelt and Madame tickled their nerves with sparkling shakes and tremolos. At the house of the Count von Fries he fell in with Beethoven. A quintett of Steibelt’s and the B flat major trio of Beethoven’s (Op. 11) were played. In the latter occur the variations on a theme of Weigl, from the opera L’Amor Marinaro. Beethoven was out of humour and would not play. A week later the same company met again. On this occasion a quintett by Steibelt is again played, and to it Steibelt adds a series of wild clattering variations on the same theme of Weigl. Such “Leit-motive” attacks are familiar in these contests. It is well known that underlying Mozart’s Zauberflöte overture is a theme which Clementi had already used in his B flat major Sonata. Clementi had played it in a contest with Mozart, who did not care much for the Italian “mechanical” artist. But Beethoven this time avenged himself bitterly on Steibelt. After a long persuasion from his friends he stepped negligently to the piano, struck with one finger a few notes from the just-played quintett, and twisted it in and out until he had produced a fantasia; but Steibelt, before the conclusion of the piece, left the room and never came near him again.