So in Saxony the saying runs ‘as rude as a musician’. And indeed it might well be applied to me, for incidentally I told you in jest a few home truths – But today I can only write what is absolutely necessary. You say that my letter sparkles with good humour. Well, the artist must often be able to assume all humours; and thus my good humour may have been feigned [Anderson footnote: “Beethoven is playing on the words ‘Künstler (artist) and ‘erkünstelt’ (feigned).”] For the moment I am not in a good humour. What has happened to the Archduke Rudolph is having disastrous consequences for me. If only Heaven will give me patience until I have gone abroad, then I shall be in a position to find in myself my true calling, which is the sole possible good for a man and especially for an artist. –– If only I can be patient. But if all else is denied to me, I can wants more find comfort in nature and immediately too in my heavenly art, the only true divine gift of Heaven. Although we can as yet merely sense the coming of spring, it is true, yet my hopes too revive –– My health has again been frequently exposed to some very fierce attacks; and the winter in Vienna destroys nearly all the good which Summer usually brings. However, I am much better now and I hope that this improvement will continue –– You once sent me a letter about a particular kind of symphony, but I cannot find it. It expressed, however, almost exactly the same idea which I myself had already conceived. –– Please send me an once the three songs which are settings of poems by Goethe [Opus 83] –– perhaps they will be of some use to me, but not as a present –– I well believe that you are selling very few copies here; but there are several things which I am even less willing to believe and which are nevertheless facts –– Are the songs from Egmont not yet engraved? I never received Mozart’s Requiem and Don Giovanni –– never –– Traeg never received them and I did not receive them from you direct, for you always referred me to T[raeg] –– Do keep your promise about other things which you were going to send me –– Your poems will be used and are waiting to be turned to account –– And the Mass, when is it to be presented to our devout Catholics? ––
All good wishes; keep me in your kind remembrance; and make arrangements to have, when I arrive in your neighborhood, a supply of better ducats than the ones you sent me, for the latter or Shirley brought to you from some pirate, seeing that they have been coined in all the corners of the earth ––
Your most devoted
Ludwig van Beethoven