If the wish to benefit the poor were not so evident in your letter, I should have felt not a little offended by your accompanying your request to me by the offer of payment.  From my childhood, whenever my art could be serviceable to poor suffering humanity, I have never allowed any other motive to influence me, and never required anything beyond the heartfelt gratification that it always caused me.  With this you will receive an Oratorio—­(A), the performance of which occupies half an evening, also an Overture and a Fantasia with Chorus—­(B).  If in your benevolent institution you possess a depot for such things, I beg you will deposit these three works there, as a mark of my sympathy for the destitute; to be considered as their property, and to be given at any concerts intended for their sole benefit.  In addition to these, you will receive an Introduction to the “Ruins of Athens,” the score of which shall be written out for you as soon as possible.  Likewise a Grand Overture to “Ungarn’s erste Wohlthaeter” [Hungary’s First Benefactors].

Both form part of two works that I wrote for the Hungarians at the opening of their new theatre [in Pesth].  Pray give me, however, your written assurance that these works shall not be performed elsewhere, as they are not published, nor likely to be so for some time to come.  You shall receive the latter Grand Overture as soon as it is returned to me from Hungary, which it will be in the course of a few days.

The engraved Fantasia with Chorus could no doubt be executed by a lady, an amateur, mentioned to me here by Professor Schneller.[2] The words after the Chorus No. 4, in C major, were altered by the publishers, and are now quite contrary to the musical expression; those written in pencil, therefore, on the music must be sung.  If you can make use of the Oratorio, I can send you all the parts written out, so that the outlay may be less for the poor.  Write to me about this.

Your obedient

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN.

[Footnote 1:  The correspondence with Varenna, consisting of fourteen letters and four notes, was purchased some years ago by a collector of autographs in Leipzig, and sold again by public auction, probably to different persons.  It would be like pursuing leaves scattered by the wind to try to recover these letters.  Those here given have for the most part appeared in newspapers; I cannot, therefore, be responsible for the text, farther than their publication goes, which, however, has evidently been conducted by a clever hand.  The date of the first letter is to be gleaned from the second, and we also learn from them that The Ruins of Athens and King Stephen (or at all events the Overture) were already finished in January, 1812.]