Note 48 — Chapter VI

Dr. Riemann, who introduced this letter in the body of the text of this biography, preceded it with the following observations on the significance of the transaction between Beethoven and Clementi: “This business plays an extraordinarily important rôle in the next three years of Beethoven’s life (until the spring of 1810). The publication of its details has made portions of the account in the first edition of this work wholly untenable, since those portions were based on the assumption that the conclusion of the contract with Clementi had been followed also by the prompt payment of the honorarium (in 1807), whereas, as a matter of fact, the payment was delayed for three years, as has been plainly shown by the correspondence between Clementi and Collard. Clementi, it would seem, spent the eight years following 1802, when he went to St. Petersburg with Field, till 1810, entirely on the Continent (in St. Petersburg, Berlin, Leipsic, Rome) and sojourned several times in Vienna. We know from Ries’s account that he did not come into contact with Beethoven during his extended stay in 1804, but we also know that as early as the fall of 1804, he tried to secure the right of publishing Beethoven’s works in England.”