I have received your valued letters of August 5, October 30 and December 21, and learned with pleasure that you have received the 62 songs which I have set for you at last and that you are satisfied with all but 9 of them which you specify and in which you would like to have me change the ritornelles and accompaniments. I regret that I cannot accommodate you in this. I am not in the habit of rewriting my compositions. I have never done it, being convinced that any partial alteration changes the character of the entire composition. I regret that you will suffer the loss; but you can scarcely put the blame on me, since it ought to have been your affair to advise me more explicitly of the taste of your country and the small skill of your players. Having now received your instruction on these points I have composed the songs wholly anew and, as I hope, so that they will meet your expectations. You may believe that it was only with great reluctance that I determined to do violence to my ideas and that I should never have been willing to do so had I not feared that a refusal would cause a loss to you, as in your collection you wanted to have my compositions exclusively and that otherwise you might have had your care and expense to produce a complete work in vain.... The last two songs in your letter of December 21, pleased me very much. For this reason I composed them ~con amore~, particularly the second one. You noted it in [Illustration] but as this key seems too little natural and so little in harmony with the direction ~Amoroso~ that it might better be written ~Barbaresco~, I have set it in a more appropriate key. Further on in the letter he asks Thomson to tell him whether ~Andantino~ was to be understood as meaning faster or slower than ~Andante~, “for this term, like so many in music, is of so indefinite a significance that ~Andantino~ sometimes approaches an ~Allegro~ and sometimes, on the other hand, is played like ~Adagio~.” A rather long note to Zmeskall of February 25, being about a servant, is not worth copying. It begins: “I have, my dear Z., been almost continuously ill since I saw you last,” and closes after the signature with the word “~Miserabilis~.” Omitting others of similar contents we come to this interesting letter to Varena: [Sidenote: HELP FOR THE URSULINES AT GRATZ] Dear Sir!