Will Your Electoral Grace graciously be pleased to hear that my father has passed away from this world, to whom it was granted to serve his Electoral Grace Clemens August and Your Electoral Grace and gloriously reigning Lord Lord 42 years, as chapelmaster with great honor, whose position I have been found capable of filling, but nevertheless I would not venture to offer my capacity to Your Electoral Grace, but since the death of my father has left me in needy circumstances my salary not sufficing and I compelled to draw on the savings of my father, my mother still living and in a cloister at a cost of 60 rth. for board and lodging each year and it is not advisable for me to take her to my home. Your Electoral Grace is therefore humbly implored to make an allowance from the 400 rth. vacated for an increase of my salary so that I may not need to draw upon the little savings and my mother may receive the pension graciously for the few years which she may yet live, to deserve which high grace it shall always be my striving. Your Electoral Grace’s Most humble and obedient Servant and musicus jean van Beethoven. There is something bordering on the comic in the coolness of the hint here given that the petitioner would not object to an appointment as his father’s successor, especially when it is remembered that Lucchesi and Mattioli were already in Bonn and the former had sufficiently proved his capacity by producing successful operas, both text and music, for the Elector’s delectation. The hint was not taken; what provision was granted him, however, may be seen from a petition of January 8, 1774, praying for an addition to his salary from that made vacant by the death of his father, and a pension to his mother who is kept at board in a cloister. A memorandum appears on the margin to the effect that the Elector graciously consents that the widow, so long as she remains in the cloister, shall receive 60 rth. quarterly. Another petition of a year later has been lost, but its contents are indicated in the response, dated June 5, 1775, that Johann van Beethoven on the death of his mother shall have the enjoyment of the 60 rth. which had been granted her. The death of the mother followed a few months later and was thus announced in the “Intelligenzblatt” of Bonn on October 3, 1775: “Died, on September 30, Maria Josepha Pals (_sic_), widow van Beethoven, aged 61 years.” In a list of salaries for 1776 (among the papers at Düsseldorf) for the “Musik Parthie” the salary of Johann van Beethoven is given at 36 rth. 45 alb. payable quarterly. The fact of the great poverty in which he and his family lived is manifest from the official documents (which confirm the many traditions to that effect) and from the more important recollections of aged people of Bonn brought to light in a controversy concerning the birthplace of the composer. For instance, Dr.