Thomas Appleby, father of Samuel Appleby, collector of valuable papers referring to the violinist Bridgetower, was a leader in the musical world of Manchester, England, and a principal director of concerts there. When these quartets came out in London, Clementi sent a copy of them to him. They were opened and thrown upon the pianoforte. Next day Felix Radicati and his wife, Mme. Bertinotti, called and presented letters, they being upon a concert tour. During the conversation the Italian went to the pianoforte, took up the quartets and seeing what they were, exclaimed (in substance): “Have you got these here! Ha! Beethoven, as the world says, and as I believe, is music-mad;--for these are not music. He submitted them to me in manuscript and, at his request, I fingered them for him. I said to him, that he surely did not consider these works to be music?--to which he replied, ‘Oh, they are not for you, but for a later age!’” Young Appleby believed in them, in spite of Radicati, and after he had studied his part thoroughly, his father invited players of the other instruments to his house and the first in F was tried. The first movement was declared by all except Appleby to be “crazy music.” At the end of the violoncello solo on one note, they all burst out laughing; the next four bars all agreed were beautiful. Ludlow, an organist, who played the bass, found so much to admire and so much to condemn in the half of this second movement, which they succeeded in playing, as to call it “patchwork by a madman.” They gave up the attempt to play it, and not until 1813, in London, did the young man succeed in hearing the three Quartets entire, and finding them, as he had believed, worthy of their author. [Sidenote: THE YEAR’S PUBLICATIONS] The Symphony in B-flat, Op. 60, was the great work of this summer season. Sketches prove that its successor, the fifth in C minor, had been commenced, and was laid aside to give place to this. Nothing more is known of the history of its composition except what is imparted by the author’s inscription on the manuscript: “Sinfonia 4^{ta} 1806. L. v. Bthvn.” In singular contrast to these grand works and contemporary with their completion, as if written for amusement and recreation after the fatigue of severer studies, are the thirty-two Variations for Pianoforte in C minor. They belong to this Autumn, and are among the compositions which their author would gladly have seen pass into oblivion. Jahn’s notes contain an anecdote in point. “Beethoven once found Streicher’s daughter practising these Variations. After he had listened for a while he asked her: “By whom is that?” “By you.” “Such nonsense by me? O Beethoven, what an ass you were!””