Louis van Beethoven, son of the tenor singer mentioned, a boy of eleven years and of most promising talent. He plays the clavier very skilfully and with power, reads at sight very well, and--to put it in a nutshell--he plays chiefly “The Well-Tempered Clavichord” of Sebastian Bach, which Herr Neefe put into his hands. Whoever knows this collection of preludes and fugues in all the keys--which might almost be called the _non plus ultra_ of our art--will know what this means. So far as his duties permitted, Herr Neefe has also given him instruction in thorough-bass. He is now training him in composition and for his encouragement has had nine variations for the pianoforte, written by him on a march--by Ernst Christoph Dressler--engraved at Mannheim. This youthful genius is deserving of help to enable him to travel. He would surely become a second Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart were he to continue as he has begun. This allusion to Mozart, who had not then produced those immortal works upon which his fame now principally rests, speaks well for the insight of Neefe and renders his high appreciation of his pupil’s genius the more striking. Had this man then really so little influence upon its development as Wegeler supposed? That C. P. E. Bach’s works were included in Neefe’s course of instruction is rendered nearly certain by the following facts: he was himself a devout student of them; the only reference to his father made by Beethoven in all the manuscripts examined for this work, an official document or two excepted, is upon an unfinished copy of one of Bach’s cantatas in these words: “Written by my dear father;”[22] and one of the works most used by him in compiling his “Materialien für Contrapunkt” in 1809 was Bach’s “Versuch über die wahre Art das Clavier zu Spielen.” The unlucky remark of Wegeler, founded, too, possibly upon some expression of Beethoven’s in a moment of spleen, but certainly not in justice, has cast a shadow upon the relation between Neefe and his pupil. Writer after writer has copied without examining it. Does it bear examination? Possibly, if it be supposed to relate only to execution upon the pianoforte and organ; but in no other case. It is self-evident that serious study in the severe school of the Bachs was necessary to counteract the influence of the light and trivial music of the Bonn stage upon the young genius; and to Neefe the credit of seeing this and acting accordingly must be given. The reader’s attention is called particularly to the words “He is now training him in composition, and for his encouragement has had nine variations for the pianoforte written by him on a march by Dressler engraved at Mannheim,” in Neefe’s notice of Beethoven above cited, and the date of the article from which it is taken--March 2, 1783. Is it not perfectly clear that these variations have been recently composed, and very recently