The appointment was made, but the salary had not been determined on when an event occurred which wrought an entire change in the position of theatrical affairs at Bonn:--the Elector died on April 15, and the theatrical company was dismissed with four weeks’ wages. There was no longer a necessity for a second organist; and fortunate it was for the assistant that his name came before Max Friedrich’s successor (in the reports soon to be copied) as being a regular member of the court chapel, although “without salary.” Lucchesi returned to Bonn; Neefe had nothing to do but play his organ, cultivate his garden outside the town and give music lessons. It was long before such a conjunction of circumstances occurred as would have led the economical Max Franz to appoint an organist adjunct. Happy was it, therefore, that one of the deceased Elector’s last acts secured young Beethoven the place. EARLY EFFORTS AT COMPOSITION The excellent Frau Karth, born in 1780, could not recall to memory any period of her childhood down to the death of Johann van Beethoven, when he and his family did not live in the lodging above that of her parents. This fact, together with the circumstance that no mention is made of the Beethovens in the account of the great inundation of the Rhine in February, 1782, when all the families dwelling in the Fischer house of the Rheingasse were rescued in boats from the windows of the first story, added to the strong probability that Beethoven’s position was but the first formal step of the regular process of confirming an appointment already determined upon;--these points strongly suggest the idea that to Ludwig’s advancement his father owed the ability to dwell once more in a better part of the town, i.e., in the pleasant house No. 462 Wenzelgasse. The house is very near the Minorite church, which contained a good organ, concerning the pedal measurements of which, as we have seen, Beethoven made a memorandum in a note-book which he carried with him to Vienna.[26] In the “Neuen Blumenlese für Klavierliebhaber” of this year, Part I, pp. 18 and 19, appeared a Rondo for Pianoforte, in A major, “dal Sig^{re} van Beethoven”[27]; and Part II, p. 44, the Arioso “An einen Säugling, von Hrn. Beethoven.”[28] “Un Concert pour le Clavecin ou Fortepiano composé par Louis van Beethoven âgé de douze ans,” 32 pp. manuscript written in a boy’s hand, may also belong to this year[29]; and, judging by the handwriting, to the period may also be assigned a movement in three parts of four pages, formerly in the Artaria collection, without title, date or remark of any kind.[30]