It was not the present Prince Joseph Kinsky (who died in 1798 in his forty-eighth year) who at a later period became a distinguished patron of Beethoven, but his son Ferdinand Johann Nepomuk, then a bright boy of eleven years, born on December 4, 1781, upon whose youthful taste the strength, beauty and novelty of that composer’s works made a deep impression. Prince Carl Lichnowsky, the pupil and friend of Mozart, had a quartet concert at his dwelling every Friday morning. The regularly engaged musicians were Ignaz Schuppanzigh, son of a professor in the Real-Schule, and a youth at this time of sixteen years (if the musical lexica are to be trusted), first violin; Louis Sina, pupil of Förster, also a very young man, second violin; Franz Weiss, who completed his fifteenth year on January 18, 1793, viola; and Anton Kraft, or his son Nicholas, a boy of fourteen years (born December 18, 1778), violoncello. It was, in fact, a quartet of boy virtuosos, of whom Beethoven, several years older, could make what he would. The Prince’s wife was Marie Christine, twenty years of age, one of those “Three Graces,” as Georg Förster called them, daughters of that Countess Thun in whose house Mozart had found such warm friendship and appreciation, and whose noble qualities are so celebrated by Burney, Reichardt and Förster. The Princess, as well as her husband, belonged to the better class of amateur performers upon the pianoforte. Court Councillor von Kees, Vice-President of the Court of Appeals of Lower Austria, was still living. He was, says Gyrowetz, speaking of a period a few years earlier, “recognized as the foremost music-lover and dilettante in Vienna; and twice a week he gave in his house society concerts at which were gathered together the foremost virtuosos of Vienna, and the first composers, such as Joseph Haydn, Mozart, Dittersdorf, Hoffmeister, Albrechtsberger, Giarnovichi and so on. Haydn’s symphonies were played there.” In Haydn’s letters to Madame Genzinger the name of von Kees often occurs--the last time in a note of August 4, 1792, which mentions that the writer is that day to dine with the Court Councillor. This distinguished man left on his death (January 5, 1795) a very extensive collection of music. Gottfried, Freiherr van Swieten, son of Maria Theresia’s famous Dutch physician, says Schönfeld, is, VAN SWIETEN AND HIS INFLUENCE