Heiligenstadt.

29.

TO HERR HOFMEISTER,--LEIPZIG.

Vienna, Sept. 22, 1803.

I hereby declare all the works you have ordered to be your property. The
list of these shall be made out and sent to you with my signature, as the
proof of their being your own. I also agree to accept the sum of fifty
ducats for them. Are you satisfied?

Perhaps, instead of the variations with violoncello and violin,[1] I may
send you variations for the piano, arranged as a duet on a song of mine;
but Goethe's poetry must also be engraved, as I wrote these variations in
an album, and consider them better than the others. Are you satisfied?

The arrangements are not by me, though I have revised and much improved
various passages; but I do not wish you to say that I have arranged them,
for it would be false, and I have neither time nor patience to do so. Are
you satisfied?

Now farewell! I sincerely wish that all may go well with you. I would
gladly make you a present of all my works, if I could do so and still get
on in the world; but--remember most people are provided for, and know what
they have to live on, while, good heavens! where can an appointment be
found at the Imperial Court for such a _parvum talentum com ego_?

Your friend,

L. V. BEETHOVEN.

[Footnote 1: These are the six variations in D, on the air _Ich denke Dein_
written in 1800 in the album of the Countesses Josephine Deym and Therese
of Brunswick.]

30.

CAUTION.

November, 1803.

Herr Carl Zulehner, a piratical engraver in Mayence, has announced an
edition of my collected works for the pianoforte and also stringed
instruments. I consider it my duty publicly to inform all friends of music
that I have no share whatever in this edition.

I would never have in any way authorized any collection of my works (which,
moreover, I consider premature) without previously consulting the
publishers of single pieces, and ensuring that correctness in which
editions of my individual works are so deficient. I must also observe that
this illegal edition cannot be complete, as several new works of mine are
shortly to appear in Paris, and these Herr Zulehner, being a French
subject, dare not pirate. I intend to take another opportunity of
enumerating the details of the collection of my works to be brought out
under my own auspices and careful revision.

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN.

31.

TO HERR RIES.[1]

1804.

Be so good as to make out a list of the mistakes and send