IV. However convincing the preceding propositions may seem to the ordinary reader, the critical student of musical history justly demands something more. It is not enough for him to know that Op. 19 was composed before the publication of Op. 1; that Op. 2 is in part made up from the Pianoforte Quartets of 1785; that the Quintet Op. 4 is an arrangement of the “Parthia” in E-flat for wind-instruments afterwards published as Op. 103, and is now proved to belong to the Bonn period, and that a whole movement of the funeral cantata found its way into “Fidelio”--the argument is to him like an arch without its keystone until one or more of the important works be named specifically as Bonn compositions and proved to be such.[62]
[49] The discoveries made after Thayer completed and printed his first volume in German (1866), largely inspired by his labors, have made a thorough revision of this chapter imperative. In all that follows the editor has accepted the statement of facts made by Dr. Deiters in his revised version of the first volume published in 1901, but, in pursuance of his plan as set forth in the introduction, has omitted that which seemed to him more or less inconsequential, as well as that which belongs in the field of analysis and criticism.
[50] There have been a few performances of this cantata in Austria and Germany since its publication. It was given at a concert of the Beethoven Association in New York on March 16, 1920, under the direction of Mr. Sam Franko, with an English paraphrase of the text by the Editor of this biography, designed to rid it of its local application and some of its bombast and make its sentiment applicable to any heroic emancipator.
[51] See Vol. II, p. 210, of the first German edition of this work. Ries says, on page 124 of the “Notizen,” apropos of the posthumous manuscripts: “All such trifles and things which he never meant to publish, as not considering them worthy of his name, were secretly brought into the world by his brothers. Such were the songs published when he had attained the highest degree of fame, composed years before at Bonn, previous to his departure for Vienna; and in like manner other trifles, written for albums, etc., were secretly taken from him and published.”