P.P.
As a punishment for your complete silence I am inflicting upon you the task of forwarding these two letters immediately. A Livonian windbag promised me to forward a letter to K[otzebue]. But although he made out that he was a good friend of his, he has probably not done so. Generally speaking, Russians and Livonians are windbags and braggarts –– So please, although the task of carrying out this commission is being inflicted upon you as a punishment, and rightly so, for many faulty editions, wrong titles, careless work and so forth, not to mention other human errors, please, and again I beg you most humbly, have these letters delivered –– And with the letter to Goethe send him Egmont (the score) as well, but not in the way you usually send off your scores, perhaps with a number missing here and there and so forth; do not send it in that way, but send him a complete copy. This must not be postponed any longer. I have given my word and I will keep it, the more so if I can compel somebody Else like you to fulfill my promise –– Ha, ha, ha, to think that you are to blame for the language I can use about you, about such a sinner who, if I chose, could be made to go about in a penitent’s hair shirt, doing penance for all the infamies he has committed in my works. In spite of my note in favour of the old text in the oratorio chorus ‘Wir haben Ihn gesehen’ you have again retained the unfortunate alteration. In the name of Heaven, do people in Saxony really believe that the words make the music? If an unsuitable word can ruin the music, which is quite certain, yet one should be delighted whenever one finds that music and words form unit; and although the verbal expression in itself maybe commonplace, one should not want to improve any word or passage –– Dixi [Anderson footnote: “I.e. I have spoken. This was a favourite ejaculation of Beethoven’s, both in conversation and in his letters, particularly when he was roused to indignation or anger.”] –– So far I have made very little use of the 50 thalers worth of sheet music. For everything is very slack at Herr Traeg’s! [Anderson footnote: “Beethoven is punning on the German word ‘träg’ which means ‘idle’ or ‘slack’.”] And, in particular, I find no trace there of Härtel’s hard work. Send me soon, therefore, the scores of Mozart’s Clemenza di Tito ––
Così fan tutte ––
Le nozze di Figaro ––
Don Giovanni ––
As my little parties at home are being resumed, I need works of that kind. Send them as postage free as possible, for I am a poor Austrian musical drudge –– I fancy you could make me a present of C. P. Emanuel Bach’s works, for surely they are rotting with you –– Have you not yet engraved the three songs by Goethe [Opus 83]? Make haste and do so, for I should very much like to give them soon to the Princess Kinsky, one of the prettiest and plumpest women in Vienna. And the songs in Egmont, why have they not yet come out, why indeed has the whole score of Egmont not come out, out, out? –– If here and there you still want to have an ending tacked on to the entr’actes, I am willing to undertake this too. Or you can ask some proof-reader of the Musik Zeitung at Leipzig to do it, for people of that fraternity understand neither rhyme nor reason –– Kindly charge to my account the postage for the letters. –– I have a suspicion, indeed, I have heard whispered rumours to the effect, that you are looking for another wife. Hence I ascribe to that all the confusion prevailing at present in your firm. I wish you a Xanthippe, such as was the lot of the saintly Greek Socrates, so that for once I may see a German publisher embarrassed, and that is saying a good deal –– Yes, indeed, in great embarrassment –– I trust that I shall soon have the honour of receiving a few lines from you ––
Your friend
Beethoven