The compositions and publications of this year remain to be enumerated--a task of some difficulty, requiring a preliminary remark or two. The great cost of living and the various extraordinary demands upon his purse this year, deranged Beethoven’s pecuniary affairs seriously; from the same cause the Vienna publishers were not in a condition to pay him adequately and in advance for his manuscripts. The dilatoriness of the London publishers has just been mentioned. Happily his relations with Breitkopf and Härtel were such, that they were ready to remunerate him handsomely for whatever new compositions he might send them; and there seems to have been an arrangement made, under which divers new works of this period were published simultaneously by them in Leipsic and by Artaria in Vienna. Nevertheless, Beethoven was pressed for money, not only from the causes above stated, but from the need of an extra supply, in case the project of marriage, now in his mind, should be effected. Of course he counted with certainty upon the regular payment of his annuity, now that the war was over, and a lasting peace apparently secured by the rumored union between Napoleon and Archduchess Marie Louise. But a semi-annual payment of this annuity was far from sufficient to meet the expenses of establishing himself as a married man. Now that his concert was abandoned, no immediate profit could arise from the completion of the new symphonies; nor was there any immediate need of his beginning the “Egmont” music. It is obvious, therefore, that his labors, during the “several weeks in succession” when he worked “so that it seemed rather for death than immortality,” were, as before said, the completion and correction for the press of various more or less important works existing in the sketchbooks, and the composition of divers smaller pieces, such as would meet with a ready sale, and hence be promptly and liberally paid for by publishers. It is not at all surprising to find among them a number of songs the texts of which were apt expressions of his feelings at this juncture. Such considerations render it extremely probable, perhaps certain, that a larger number of minor productions belong by date of completion to this year, than they, who have endeavored to ascertain the chronology of Beethoven’s works, have heretofore suspected. But the following list contains only works of which the date is certain--or probable almost to certainty. [Sidenote: THE COMPOSER’S WORK IN 1809] Compositions of 1809: 1. Concerto for Pianoforte, E-flat major, Op. 73. 2. “Quartetto per due Violini, Viola e Violoncello, da Luigi van Beethoven, 1809,” Op. 74, E-flat major.