Note A — SUPPLEMENT TO VOLUME II.

Ries gives the following account of this new bar:—All the "Initiated" must be interested in the striking fact which occurred respecting one of Beethoven's last solo-Sonatas (in B major, with the great Fugue Op. 106)—a Sonata which has forty-one pages of print. Beethoven had sent it to me to London for sale, that it might appear there at the same time as in Germany. The engraving was completed, and I in daily expectation of the letter naming the day of publication. This arrived at last, but with the extraordinary "request,"—"Prefix the following two notes, as a first bar, to the beginning of the Adagio." This Adagio has from nine to ten pages in print. I own the thought struck me involuntarily, that all might not be right with my dear old master, a rumour to that effect having often been spread. What! add two notes to a composition already worked out and out, and completed six months ago? But my astonishment was yet to be heightened by the effect of these two notes. Never could such be found again—so striking, so important—no, not even if contemplated at the very beginning of the composition. I would advise every true lover of the art to play this Adagio first without, and then with these two notes, which now form the first bar, and I have no doubt he will share in my opinion.