The attempt to have Neefe dismissed from the service failed, but a reduction of his salary to the pittance of 200 florins had already led him to look about him to find an engagement for himself and wife in some theatre, when Maximilian, having become acquainted with his merits (notwithstanding his Calvinism), restored his former allowance by a decree dated February 8, 1785. When Joseph Reicha came to Bonn in Mattioli’s place is still undetermined with exactness; but a decree raising him from the position of concertmaster to that of concert director, and increasing his salary to 1,000 florins, bears date June 28, 1785. In the general payroll of this year Reicha’s salary is stated to be 666 thalers 52 alb., “tenorist Beethoven’s” 200 th., “Beethoven jun.” 100 th. Chapter VI Beethoven Again--The Young Organist--A First Visit to Vienna--Death of Beethoven’s Mother--Sympathetic Acquaintances--Dr. Wegeler’s “Notizen”--Some Questions of Chronology. Schindler records--and on such points his testimony is good--that he had heard Beethoven attribute the marvellous development of Mozart’s genius in great measure to the “consistent instruction of his father,” thus implying his sense of the disadvantages under which he himself labored from the want of regular and systematic musical training through the period of his childhood and youth.[32] It is, however, by no means certain that had Ludwig van Beethoven been the son of Leopold Mozart, he would ever have acquired that facility of expression which enabled Wolfgang Mozart to fill up the richest and most varied scores almost as rapidly as his pen could move, and so as hardly to need correction--as if the development of musical idea was to him a work of mere routine, or perhaps, better to say, of instinct. _Poeta nascitur, non fit_, not only in respect to his thoughts but to his power of clothing them in language. Many a man of profoundest ideas can never by any amount of study and practice acquire the art of conveying them in a lucid and elegant manner. On the other hand there are those whose thoughts never rise above the ordinary level, but whose essays are very models of style. Handel said of the elder Telemann, that he could compose in eight parts as easily as he (Handel) could write a letter; and Handel’s own facility in composition was something astonishing. Beethoven, on the contrary, as his original scores prove, earned his bread by the sweat of his brow. But no amount of native genius can compensate for the want of thorough training. If, therefore, it be true that nature had in some degree limited his powers of expressing his musical as well as his intellectual ideas, so much greater was the need that, at the age which he had now reached, he should have opportunity to prosecute uninterruptedly a more profound and systematic course of study. Hence, the death of Maximilian Friedrich, which must have seemed to the Beethovens at first a sad calamity, proved in the end a blessing