A reference to himself as one who was at court yet not a courtier had been made by Beethoven in an earlier letter. This play on words seems to have been much in his head about this time and it is small wonder that when an opportunity offered for the employment of the pun in a canon it should have been embraced; in fact, it looks as if possibly he had strained for the occasion, unless it should appear from evidence yet to be found that “One who was named Hoffmann,” in Beethoven’s words, was, as was long believed, the redoubtable E. T. A. Hoffmann, who had surely deserved the tribute contained in a canon which Beethoven wrote at this time. In the Conversation Book used in March, 1820, a strange hand writes: “In the _Phantasie-Stücke_ by Hoffmann, you are often spoken of. Hoffmann was musical director in Bamberg; he is now Government Councillor. Operas of his composition are performed in Berlin.” Beethoven remarks, in writing: “Hofmann du bist kein _Hofmann_.” Later in a conversation held at table, these words occur twice: “Hŏfmānn ÷ sei ja kein Hōfmănn--nein ÷ ÷ ÷ ich heisse Hŏfmānn und bin kein Hōfmănn.” These words are preceded by a measure of music, the beginning of the canon in question. Did Beethoven thus honor the fantastic poet, musician, novelist, essayist, singer, scene-painter and theatrical manager who had shown such keen critical appreciation of his symphonies? It was long a pleasure to believe so and natural, too, until Nottebohm came with his iconoclastic evidence to the contrary. On March 23 Beethoven had written a letter to Hoffmann, expressing his gratification at having won the good opinion of a man gifted with such excellent attributes as Hoffmann possessed. Had he written the canon at this time he would surely have enclosed it in this letter and then, since it was preserved among Hoffmann’s papers, it would have been found and given to the world with the letter. But Beethoven kept the canon in his mind or had a copy of it, and printed it in 1825, when B. Schott’s Sons in Mayence asked him for a contribution to their musical journal “Cäcilia,” which had been founded a year before. Now comes Nottebohm with his evidence in the case. A man named Gross was once the owner of the autograph and his son told Nottebohm that it had been written in the Matschaker Hof, a tavern at which Beethoven was dining at the time, and referred to a church musician named Vincenz Hoffmann, as the informant remembered the name. Nottebohm looked through the official lists of musicians in Vienna in the first decades of the century; he did not find a Vincenz, but did find a Joachim Hoffmann who might have been an acquaintance of Beethoven’s; and so he set him down as the recipient of the composer’s tribute.[29]