The Rossini craze was no doubt largely responsible for some of Beethoven’s outbreaks concerning the taste of the Viennese, but on the whole he does not seem seriously to have been disturbed by it. Schindler cites him as remarking on the change in the popular attitude: “Well, they can not rob me of my place in musical history.” As for the Italian singers he thought so much of them that he told Caroline Ungher that he would write an Italian opera for Barbaja’s company. As for Rossini, he had heard some of Beethoven’s quartets played by Mayseder and his associates, and had enjoyed them enthusiastically. It was therefore natural enough that he should want to visit the composer. Schindler says that he went twice with Artaria to call upon him, after Artaria had each time asked permission, but that on both occasions Beethoven had asked to be excused from receiving him--a circumstance which had given rise to considerable comment in Vienna. The story is not true, but that it was current in Vienna four years afterward appears from an entry in a Conversation Book of August 1826 where somebody asks: “It is true, isn’t it, that Rossini wanted to visit you and you refused to see him?” There is no written answer. We repeat: the story is not true, though both Nohl and Wasielewski accepted it without demur. Twice, at least, Rossini publicly denied it. In 1867 Dr. Eduard Hanslick visited him with two friends in Paris. Concerning the interview, Hanslick wrote:[64] Suddenly, as if he intentionally wanted to call attention to something loftier, he asked if the Mozart monument at Vienna was finished? And Beethoven’s? We three Austrians looked rather embarrassed. “I remember Beethoven well,” continued Rossini after a pause, “although it is nearly half a century ago. On my visit to Vienna I hastened to look him up.” “And he did not receive you, as Schindler and other biographers assure us.” “On the contrary,” said Rossini, correcting me: “I had Carpani, the Italian poet with whom I had already called upon Salieri, introduce me, and he received me at once and very politely. True, the visit did not last very long, for conversation with Beethoven was nothing less than painful. His hearing was particularly bad on that day and in spite of my loudest shoutings he could not understand me; his little practice in Italian may have made conversation more difficult.” This confirms what Rossini told Ferdinand Hiller in 1856:[65] During my sojourn in Vienna I had myself introduced to him by old Calpani [_sic_]; but between his deafness and my ignorance of German, conversation was impossible. But I am glad that I saw him, at least. [Sidenote: ALLEGED MEETING OF BEETHOVEN AND SCHUBERT]