On November 1, 1808, Beethoven writes the letter printed above in the body of the text. Why Dr. Riemann should have thought it necessary to consider the first letter of contemporaneous date with the first receipt is not plain, nor why he should surmise that Beethoven had enclosed the receipt in the letter before he received the money which was not paid at the time. To this Editor it seems as if the confused tangle might be explained in part, at least, as follows, though the explanation leaves Beethoven under a suspicion which cannot be dispelled until more is learned of the dealings between him and Count Oppersdorff: On the occasion of Beethoven’s visit to Count Oppersdorff in company with Lichnowsky in the summer or fall of 1806, the Count commissioned the composer to write a symphony for him; Beethoven had begun work on the Fifth Symphony, but laid it aside and during the remainder of his stay at Grätz and in the winter of 1807 wrote the Symphony in B-flat which is dedicated to Count Oppersdorff; for this he received 500 florins on February 3, 1807; he did not send the Count the score, as was the custom, for exclusive use during a fixed period, but turned it over to Lobkowitz for performance, being in urgent need of money; a year later he substituted the Fifth for the Fourth and accepted from Count Oppersdorff 150 florins in March and 200 in June for it without delivering it, this sum being, it may be presumed, a bonus for the larger work, the Count apparently having asked for something employing an unusual apparatus (hence the “3 kettledrums”); this symphony was also withheld in the end, for reasons which are not known, and Oppersdorff had to content himself with the mere dedication of the Symphony in B-flat originally designed for him. Dr. Riemann’s comment on the transactions is this: “The letter of November 1, 1808, proves conclusively that Count Oppersdorff could not have received either the C minor or the B-flat Symphony for his use for the customary half year; for the B-flat Symphony was performed by Lobkowitz in March, 1807; it was sold to Clementi and also to the Industriecomptoir in the summer, delivered for publication at the latest in the fall of 1807 when Beethoven had to return the 1500 florins to his brother Johann. The C minor Symphony was performed at the concert in the Theater-an-der-Wien on December 22, 1808, offered to Breitkopf and Härtel as early as June, 1808, sold on September 14, 1808, and published in April, 1809. To all appearances, Count Oppersdorff was compelled to look upon the 350 florins as remuneration for the mere dedication of the Symphony in B-flat which was published by the Industriecomptoir in March, 1808 (score not until 1821 by Simrock). The name of Count Oppersdorff does not appear again in the life-history of Beethoven.” [63] Czerny did not know that Beethoven had formed the idea of this work full eight years before. See notice on the Petter sketchbook ~ante~, Chapter II. Chapter VIII