The composer of romances has written a mass for the anniversary of Beethoven’s death. He asks the count, with assumed modesty, if he will not attend the performance. “Thank you,” responds Andrea. “I do not feel myself endowed with the organs necessary to the appreciation of French singing; but if you were dead, monsieur, and Beethoven had written the mass, I should not fail to hear it.” It may be observed that this epigram has been remembered by several generations since Balzac. Von Büllow is credited with it. Behold the original in all its pristine glory! The deaf orchestra conductor also has his say: “Music exists independently of execution. In opening Beethoven’s symphony in C minor a musical man is soon translated into the world of fancy upon the golden wings of the theme in G natural, repeated in E by the horns. He sees a whole nature by turns illuminated by dazzling sheafs of light, shadowed by clouds of melancholy, cheered by divine song.” It is just possible that some one told Balzac of the indeterminate tonality at the opening of the Fifth Symphony, though he gets his scoring mixed. “Beethoven is surpassed by the new school,” said the writer of romances, disdainfully. “He is not yet understood,” answered the count; “how can he be surpassed? Beethoven has extended the boundaries of instrumental music, and no one has followed him in his flight.” Gambara dissented by a movement of the head. “His works are especially remarkable for the simplicity of the plan, and for the manner in which this plan is followed out. With the majority of composers the orchestral parts, wild and disorderly, combine only for momentary effect; they do not always coöperate by the regularity of their progress to the effect of a piece as a whole. With Beethoven the effects are, so to speak, distributed in advance.” This is not bad criticism for a writer of fiction. Think of the banalities perpetrated about the same time by Henri Beyle, Stendhal, otherwise a master of psychology.