Let us return to a field where Beethoven was even now more at home than he ever became in Plato’s political philosophy. Salieri had again engaged him for the “Widows and Orphans” concerts of April 1st and 2nd at which Haydn’s “Seven Last Words” was sung and Beethoven’s Pianoforte Quintet played. Kaiser Franz and the imperial family were present. RIVALRY OF BEETHOVEN AND WÖLFFL It was now no longer the case that Beethoven was without a rival as pianoforte virtuoso. He had a competitor fully worthy of his powers; one who divided about equally with him the suffrages of the leaders in the Vienna musical circles. In fact the excellencies peculiar to the two were such and so different, that it depended upon the taste of the auditor to which he accorded the praise of superiority. Joseph Wölffl of Salzburg, two years younger than Beethoven, a “wonder-child,” who had played a violin concerto in public at the age of seven years, was a pupil of Leopold Mozart and Michael Haydn. Being in Vienna, when but eighteen years old, he was engaged, on the recommendation of Mozart, by the Polish count Oginsky, who took him to Warsaw. His success there, as pianoforte virtuoso, teacher and composer, was almost unexampled. But it is only in his character as pianist that we have to do with him; and a reference may be made to the general principle, that a worthy competition is the best spur to genius. When we read in one of his letters Beethoven’s words “I have also greatly perfected my pianoforte playing,” they will cause no surprise; for only by severe industry and consequent improvement could he retain his high position, in the presence of such rivals as Wölffl and, a year or two later, J. B. Cramer. A lively picture of Wölffl by Tomaschek, who heard him in 1799, in his autobiography sufficiently proves that his party in Vienna was composed of those to whom extraordinary execution was the main thing; while Beethoven’s admirers were of those who had hearts to be touched. A parallel between Beethoven and Wölffl in a letter to the “Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung” (Vol. I, pp. 24, 25) dated April 22, 1799, just at the time when the performances of both were topics of general conversation in musical circles, and still fresh in the memory of all who had heard them, is in the highest degree apposite to the subject of this chapter. The writer says: