The Quartets, Op. 59, certainly belong to this year. “Quartetto 1^{mo}.... Begun on May 26, 1806,” are Beethoven’s own words; and the opus number, the reports of their production during the next winter, and, especially, the date of their publication, making allowance for Rasoumowsky’s right to them for a year, all point to November or December as the latest possible date for their completion. The idea of employing popular airs as themes was by no means new to Beethoven. Without referring to the example set by Haydn, Pleyel, Koželuch, it had been proposed to him by Thomson; and as to Russian melodies, he must have read the “Allg. Musik-Zeitung” very carelessly not to have had his curiosity aroused by the articles on Russian music published in that journal in 1802--a curiosity which, in the constant intercourse between Vienna, Moscow and St. Petersburg, there would be no difficulty in gratifying. Czerny writes, however, “He had pledged himself to weave a Russian melody into every quartet.” But Lenz, himself a Russian and a musician, says: “The Russian themes are confined to the Finale of No. 1 and the third movement of the second Quartet.” This is a case in which Czerny’s authority can scarcely be gainsaid; otherwise, it might be supposed that the composer of his own motion introduced these two themes in compliment to Rasoumowsky. “The Adagio, E major, in the second Rasoumowsky Quartet, occurred to him when contemplating the starry sky and thinking of the music of the spheres,” writes Czerny in Jahn’s notes. Perhaps no work of Beethoven’s met a more discouraging reception from musicians, than these now famous Quartets. One friendly contemporary voice alone is heard--that of the “Allg. Mus. Zeit.” Czerny told Jahn, that “when Schuppanzigh first played the Rasoumowsky Quartet in F, they laughed and were convinced that Beethoven was playing a joke and that it was not the quartet which had been promised.” And when Gyrowetz bought these Quartets he said: “Pity to waste the money!” The Allegretto vivace of the first of these quartets was long a rock of offence. “When at the beginning of the year 1812,” says Lenz, “the movement was to be played for the first time in the musical circle of Field Marshal Count Soltikoff in Moscow, Bernhard Romberg trampled under foot as a contemptible mystification the bass part which he was to play. The Quartet was laid aside. When, a few years later, it was played at the house of Privy Councillor Lwoff, father of the famous violinist, in St. Petersburg, the company broke out in laughter when the bass played his solo on ~one~ note.--The Quartet was again laid aside.”