[27] In September, 1804, Muzio Clementi, who was not only a fine musician but also a clever business man, made an arrangement with Breitkopf and Härtel, by which he secured all the compositions which Beethoven might bring that firm, for England at one-half the honorarium paid to the composer. (See an article by Max Unger in “The Monthly Record,” Nov.-Dec., 1908.) [28] Nottebohm’s researches (~cf.~ “Zweite Beethoveniana,” p. 416 ~et seq.~) show that Beethoven sketched all the movements of the Triple Concerto, Op. 56, in 1804; that the beginning of the work on the “Waldstein” Sonata. Op. 53, dates back to 1803, or at the latest the early part of 1804; sketches for Op. 54 are missing, but the three numbers of Op. 57 are so fully represented among the opera sketches that Schindler’s statement that the so-called “Appassionata” Sonata was composed at Count Brunswick’s in 1806 is to be understood as referring only to its definitive working out and the making of a fair copy; the date of the performance of “Leonore” (“Fidelio”), taken in connection with a revision of the air in E major, show that the “Leonore” sketchbook, between which and the book of 1803 there seems to have been another, of which no trace has been found, may have extended to the beginning of 1805. Chapter III The Year 1805--First Public Performance of the “Heroic Symphony”--The Opera “Leonore,” or “Fidelio”--A Study of the Sketchbook--The Singers and the Production. The life of an author or composer, when absorbed in the study of a great work, falls into a routine of daily labor that presents few salient points to the biographer. Thus it was with Beethoven during the first two-thirds of the year 1805. What has been preserved of his correspondence is very little in quantity and of slight value. Ries was away with Lichnowsky in Silesia during all the warm season, and, very soon after his return, was forced to depart again from Vienna for Bonn; hence the “Notizen” fail us in perhaps the most interesting period of the young man’s four years of pupilage under Beethoven--that of the composition of “Leonore,” or “Fidelio.” The history of the year is, in the main, the history of that work; and unfortunately a very unsatisfactory one. Not to break the thread of the story hereafter, the few events of the first half of the year unconnected with it, shall first be disposed of.