Opinion is divided here touching the merits of the two; yet it would seem as if the majority were on the side of the latter (Wölffl). I shall try to set forth the peculiarities of each without taking part in the controversy. Beethoven’s playing is extremely brilliant but has less delicacy and occasionally he is guilty of indistinctness. He shows himself to the greatest advantage in improvisation, and here, indeed, it is most extraordinary with what lightness and yet firmness in the succession of ideas Beethoven not only varies a theme given him on the spur of the moment by figuration (with which many a virtuoso makes his fortune and--wind) but really develops it. Since the death of Mozart, who in this respect is for me still the _non plus ultra_, I have never enjoyed this kind of pleasure in the degree in which it is provided by Beethoven. In this Wölffl fails to reach him. But W. has advantages in this that, sound in musical learning and dignified in his compositions, he plays passages which seem impossible with an ease, precision and clearness which cause amazement (of course he is helped here by the large structure of his hands) and that his interpretation is always, especially in Adagios, so pleasing and insinuating that one can not only admire it but also enjoy.... That Wölffl likewise enjoys an advantage because of his amiable bearing, contrasted with the somewhat haughty pose of Beethoven, is very natural. No biography of Beethoven which makes any pretence to completeness, can omit the somewhat inflated and bombastic account which Seyfried gives of the emulation between Beethoven and Wölffl. Ignatz von Seyfried at the period in question was one of Schikaneder’s conductors, to which position he had been called when not quite twenty-one years of age, and had assumed its duties March 1, 1797. He was among the most promising of the young composers of the capital, belonged to a highly respectable family, had been educated at the University, and his personal character was unblemished. He would, therefore, naturally have access to the musical salons and his reminiscences of music and musicians in those years may be accepted as the records of observation. The unfavorable light which the researches of Nottebohm have thrown upon him as editor of the so-called “Beethoven Studien” does not extend to such statements of fact as might easily have come under his own cognizance; and the passage now cited from the appendix of the “Studien,” though written thirty years after the events it describes, bears all the marks of being a faithful transcript of the writer’s own memories: