[Sidenote: KREUTZER AND HIS SONATA] Dear, best Herr Simrock, I have been waiting with longing for the Sonata which I gave you--but in vain--please write me what the condition of affairs is concerning it--whether or not you accepted it from me merely as food for moths--or do you wish to obtain a special Imperial ~privilegium~ in connection with it?--well it seems to me that might have been accomplished long ago.--Where in hiding is this slow devil--who is to drive out the sonata--you are generally the quick devil, are known as Faust once was as being in league with the imp of darkness and for this reason you are ~loved~ by your ~comrades~; but again--where in hiding is your devil--or what kind of a devil is it that sits on my sonata and with whom ~you~ have a misunderstanding?--Hurry, then, and tell me when I shall see the sonata given to the light of day--when you have told me the date I will at once send a little note to Kreutzer, which you will please be kind enough to enclose when you send a copy (as you in any event will send your copies to Paris or even, perhaps, have them printed there)--~this Kreutzer is a dear, good fellow~ who during his stay here[16] gave me much pleasure. I prefer his unassuming manner and unaffectedness to all the ~Extérieur~ or ~intérieur~ of all the virtuosi--as the sonata is written for a thoroughly capable violinist, the dedication to him is all the more appropriate--although we correspond with each other (i. e., a letter from me once a year)--I hope he will not have learned anything about it.... As a proof of the growing appreciation of Beethoven in foreign lands it may be remarked here that in the summer of 1803 he received an Erard pianoforte as a gift from the celebrated Parisian maker. The instrument belongs to the museum at Linz and used to bear an inscription, on the authority of Beethoven’s brother Johann, that it was given to the composer by the city of Paris in 1804. The archives of the Erard firm show, however, that on the 18th of Thermidor, in the XIth year of the Republic (1803), Sébastien Erard made a present of “un piano forme clavecin” to Ludwig van Beethoven in Vienna. FOOTNOTES: [1] Probably the Quintet for Pianoforte and Wind-Instruments, Op. 16, published in March, 1801. [2] “Cäcilia.” IX, p. 219. [3] The English editor of this biography found trombone parts written out by Beethoven among Mr. Thayer’s posthumous papers; they belonged to the Trio in the Scherzo of the Ninth Symphony, and Beethoven’s instructions to the copyist where to introduce them in the score plainly showed that they were an afterthought. [4] It was not the case this time, for the manuscript of this Concerto bears in the composer’s hand the date “1800.”