Italian, nor I either one or the other, we shall no doubt come to an understanding. THE FIRST STRING QUARTETS The reference to the Quartets, Op. 18, in this letter, taken in connection with the apologies for long delay in writing, indicates conclusively enough that at least the first set, the first three, had been placed in the hands of Mollo and Co. early in the autumn, and it is barely possible, not probable, that they had already been issued from the press.[96] The importance of these Quartets in the history both of Beethoven and of chamber music renders very desirable more definite information upon their origin and dates of composition than the incomplete, unsatisfactory and not always harmonious data already known, afford. The original manuscripts appear to have been lost. Von Lenz quotes in his “Critical Catalogue of Beethoven’s Works” an anecdote from a pamphlet printed at Dorpat in which is related: After Beethoven had composed his well-known String Quartet in F major he played for his friend (Amenda) (on the pianoforte?) the glorious _Adagio_ (D minor, 9-8 time) and asked him what thought had been awakened by it. “It pictured for me the parting of two lovers,” was the answer. “Good!” remarked Beethoven, “I thought of the scene in the burial vault in ‘Romeo and Juliet’.” This Quartet existed, then, before Amenda left Vienna. Czerny says in his notes for Jahn: “Of the first six Violin Quartets that in D major, No. 3 in print, was the very first composed by Beethoven. On the advice of Schuppanzigh he called that in F major No. 1, although it was composed later.” Ries confirms this: “Of his Violin Quartets, Op. 18, he composed that in D major first of all. That in F major, which now precedes it, was originally the third.”[97] _Nota bene_ that neither Czerny nor Ries spoke from personal observation at the time of composition; they must both have learned the fact from Beethoven himself, or, more probably, from dates on the original manuscripts. A criticism of three quartets which appeared in the “Allg. Mus. Zeitung” in 1799, which failed to give the name of the composer, has been applied by some writers (by Langhans in his History of Music, for instance) to Beethoven’s Op. 18; but erroneously. They were the works of Emanuel Aloys Förster (born January 26, 1748, in Neurath, Upper Silesia, died November 12, 1823, in Vienna), a musician who was so highly esteemed by Beethoven that, on one occasion at least, he called him his “old master.” The phrase can easily be interpreted to mean that Beethoven found instruction in Förster’s chamber music which he heard at the soirées of Prince Lichnowsky and other art-patrons. Förster’s compositions, not many of which have been preserved in print, are decidedly Beethovenish in character. His eldest son, who in 1870 was still living in Trieste, remembered Beethoven perfectly well from 1803 to 1813, and communicated to the author of this biography some