there came to him shortly before the idea of writing a brilliant piece for this concert. He chose a song which he had composed many years before,[63] planned the variations, the chorus, etc., and the poet Kuffner was called upon to write the words in a hurry according to Beethoven’s hints. Thus originated the Choral Fantasia, Op. 80. It was finished so late that it could scarcely be sufficiently rehearsed. Beethoven related this in my presence in order to explain why, at the concert, he had had it repeated. “Some of the instruments had counted wrong in the rests,” he said; “if I had let them play a few measures more the most horrible dissonances would have resulted. I had to make an interruption.” The particulars of this scene, in which Reichardt suffered so, are more or less circumstantially related by Ries, Seyfried, Czerny, Moscheles and Doležalek. Their statements when compared are not inconsistent and supplement each other, except as to Ries, whose memory evidently exaggerated what really occurred. Substantially they are as follows: Seyfried (Appendix to “Beethoven’s Studien,” p. 15): When the master brought out his orchestral Fantasia with choruses, he arranged with me at the somewhat hurried rehearsal, with wet voice-parts as usual, that the second variation should be played without the repeat. In the evening, however, absorbed in his creation, he forgot all about the instructions which he had given, repeated the first part while the orchestra accompanied the second, which sounded not altogether edifying. A trifle too late, the Concertmaster, Unrath, noticed the mistake, looked in surprise at his lost companions, stopped playing and called out drily: “Again!” A little displeased, the violinist Anton Wranitsky asked “With repeats?” “Yes,” came the answer, and now the thing went straight as a string. The “Allg. Mus. Zeit.” reported: The wind-instruments varied the theme which Beethoven had previously played on the pianoforte. The turn came to the oboes. The clarinets, if I am not mistaken, make a mistake in the count and enter at once. A curious mixture of tones results. Beethoven jumps up, tries to silence the clarinets, but does not succeed until he has called out quite loudly and rather ill-temperedly: “Stop, stop! That will not do! Again--again!” Czerny: In the Pianoforte with chorus he called out at the mistake: “Wrong, badly played, wrong, again!” Several musicians wanted to go away. Doležalek: He jumped up, ran to the desks and pointed out the place.