reminiscences well worth preserving. It is known from other sources that Beethoven, after the retirement of Albrechtsberger, considered Förster to be the first of all the Vienna teachers of counterpoint and composition, and this is confirmed by the son’s statement that it was on Beethoven’s advice that he sent to press the compendious “Anleitung zum Generalbass” which Breitkopf and Härtel published in 1805. A year or two later, Count Rasoumowsky applied to Beethoven for instruction in musical theory and especially in quartet composition. Beethoven absolutely refused, but so strongly recommended his friend Förster, that the latter was engaged. Förster’s dwelling in all those years was a favorite resort of the principal composers and dilettanti. Thither came Beethoven; Zmeskall, a very precise gentleman with abundant white hair; Schuppanzigh, a short fat man with a huge belly; Weiss, tall and thin; Linke, the lame violoncellist, Henry Eppinger, the Jewish violin dilettante, the youthful Mayseder, J. N. Hummel, and others. The regular periods of these quartet meetings were Sunday at noon, and the evening of Thursday; but Beethoven in those years often spent other evenings with Förster, “when the conversation usually turned upon musical theory and composition.” Notwithstanding the wide difference in their ages (22 years), their friendship was cordial and sincere. The elder not only appreciated and admired the genius of the younger, but honored him as a man; and spoke of him as being not only a great musical composer, but, however at times rough in manner and harsh, even rude, in speech, of a most honorable and noble nature. Add to all this the fact, that Beethoven in later years recommended Förster to pupils as his own “old master,” and it is no forced and unnatural inference, that he (Beethoven) had studied quartet composition with him, as he had counterpoint with Albrechtsberger, and operatic writing with Salieri. Nor is this inference weakened--it is rather strengthened--by some points in what now follows: The earliest mention of a string quartet in connection with Beethoven is that proposal by Count Appony cited from Wegeler which led to no instant result. Then comes a passage from a letter to Amenda: “Do not give your Quartet to anybody, because I have greatly changed it, having learned how to write quartets properly.” Had he learned from study under Förster? SKETCHES FOR THE FIRST QUARTETS