The Pianoforte Sonata, Op. 26, had its origin, according to Nottebohm’s study of the sketches, in the year 1800; but Shedlock (in the “Musical Times” of August, 1892) prints a few beginnings of the first movement in B minor (!) which probably date farther back, perhaps to the Bonn period. A young composer,[106] Ferdinand Paër (born at Parma in 1771), since the beginning of 1798 had produced on the court stage a series of pleasing and popular works. Laboring in a sphere so totally different from that of Beethoven, there was no rivalry between them and their relations were cordial and friendly. On June 6th of this summer Paër brought out a heroic opera, “Achilles,” which “was received with a storm of approval and deserved it,” says the correspondent of the “Zeitung für die Elegante Welt.” Paër in his old age told Ferdinand Hiller a characteristic anecdote of Beethoven which cannot possibly be true in connection with his “Leonore,” as he, by a lapse of memory, related it, but is, undoubtedly, in connection with “Achilles.” It was to the effect that Beethoven went with Paër to the theatre where an opera by the latter was performing. He sat beside him and after he had time and again cried out, “Ah, que c’est beau, que c’est intéressant!” had finally said: “Il faut que je compose cela.” The correspondent just cited complains of the “want of character” in the marches in “Achilles” and incidentally confirms one of Ries’s “Notizen”: “The funeral march in A-flat minor in the Sonata dedicated to Prince Lichnowsky (Op. 26) was the result of the great praise with which the funeral march in Paër’s ‘Achilles’ was received by Beethoven’s friends.” Of that Sonata, completed this year, Czerny says: “When Cramer was in Vienna and was creating a great sensation not only by his playing but also by the three sonatas which he dedicated to Haydn (of which the first in A-flat, 3/4 time, awakened great amazement), Beethoven, who had been pitted against Cramer, wrote the A-flat Sonata, Op. 26, in which there is purposely a reminder of the Clementi-Cramer passage-work in the Finale. The _Marcia funebre_ was composed on the impulsion of a very much admired funeral march of Paër’s, and added to the Sonata.” Whether or not this funeral march was really occasioned by Paër’s “Achilles” or one from another opera by Paër (since “Achilles” was performed for the first time in 1801, and the older first sketches already contemplated a “pezzo caracteristico p. e. una marcia in as moll”), is of subordinate interest, since the legend has nothing whatever to do with reminiscences, but only with its tremendous superiority to the music by Paër.