“I have passed the forenoon to-day, and all yesterday afternoon in correcting these two pieces and am actually hoarse with stamping and swearing,” he wrote the copyist in reference to the A minor Quartet.  Elsewhere he complains about the carelessness of the publishers of his earlier quartets, which are “full of mistakes and errata great and small.  They swarm like fish in the sea, innumerable.”

When referring to the testimonial concert, allusion was made to the enormous labor involved in copying out all the parts required for the occasion, in which over one hundred persons participated.  To examine and correct each copy before placing it in the hands of the performers was in itself no slight task.  The labor of making the seven subscription copies of the Mass, was probably a still greater one.  In these days of cheap publications, one can hardly form an estimate of what it really meant.  Many months elapsed after the Mass was completed, before a clean copy could be gotten for the Archduke even.

No doubt the copyists often misunderstood the master’s instructions, always given in writing in his later years.  He was so careless with his handwriting that some of his letters are undecipherable in part, to this day.  Schindler, with good common-sense made a practice of transcribing Beethoven’s words on the back of any letter received from him before filing it away.  The master’s extraordinary carefulness in proof-reading has already been mentioned.  This was to him a matter of the utmost importance, second to none.  Press of work, illness even, was not allowed to interfere with the careful revision of his work.

He might write about patience in his note book, but it was exercised very little when dealing with his copyists.  There were times in this connection in which the situation became so strained that they refused to work for him.  In one such instance a man, Wolanck by name, returned the manuscript which the master had sent him, writing him at the same time an impertinent letter.  This copyist was evidently of a literary turn, with a talent for satire.  He begins by begging to be permitted to express his gratitude for the honor which Beethoven has done him in being allowed to drudge for him, but states that he wants no more of it.  He then proceeds to philosophize on the situation, saying that the dissonances which have marked their intercourse in the past have been regarded by him with amused toleration.  “Are there not” asks this Junius, “in the ideal world of tones many dissonances?  Why should these not also exist in the actual world?” In conclusion he ventures the opinion that if Mozart or Haydn had served as copyist for Beethoven, a fate similar to his own would have befallen them.