Note 6 — Chapter IV

The origin of this work may not be uninteresting to the reader. It is briefly as follows. Among the effects of Beethoven offered for sale at the public auction of 1827 were five packets of MSS., labelled "Exercises in Composition." These were bought by the publisher, T. Haslinger, in the not unreasonable belief that they would be found to present a complete view of the preparation made by the master for his life's work. He determined to give the collection to the world, and entrusted the editing of it to the Chevalier von Seyfried, as a friend of Beethoven and himself a scholarly musician. In process of time the volume appeared, and was received with very opposite sentiments by different sections of the public: by some it was accepted as genuine; by others rejected as a fabrication. Nottebohm's investigation has proved the truth to lie between the two extremes. "Seyfried's book," he says, "is neither authentic nor forged; it is a falsified work." Seyfried, in fact, seems to have gone to work with incredible recklessness; his "Beethoven's Studies" is an Olla Podrida, composed of not only Beethoven's own exercises (put together without regard to natural sequence or chronology), but of another theoretical course, probably that prepared by Beethoven years after for the instruction of the Archduke Rudolph; while a third element is actually introduced in the shape of Studies from a MS. written in a strange hand, and possibly the work of another pupil of Albrechtsberger!