having had time to write it out in full; he always gave me a sign, when he was at the end of one of these unintelligible passages.”  Seyfried, thorough musician that he was, understood the difficulties of the position for Beethoven, and was so apprehensive of turning a page at the wrong time, that his nervousness was observed by the master, who afterward rallied him about it.  Extempore playing is not to be compared with this, as the concerto was written for strings and piano, Beethoven taking the piano part.

The three quartets, opus 59, known as the Rasoumowsky Quartets, to which a passing reference has been made, take their name from having been dedicated to Count Rasoumowsky, who was the Russian ambassador.  The Count had married a sister of the Princess Lichnowsky and was a cultivated man whose greatest delight was music.  He lived in great state in a palace, then on the outskirts of Vienna, now used as the Geological Institute.  He was closely identified with the musical life of Vienna, and shortly after these quartets appeared, formed a string quartet of distinguished musicians, which he maintained for many years, taking the part of second violin himself.  It is almost needless to state that Beethoven’s work took precedence in the repertoire.

The first of the three quartets, the one in F, has an Adagio movement on which Beethoven inscribed in the sketch-book, “Eine Trauerweide oder Akazienbaum aufs Grab meines Bruders.” [A weeping willow or acacia tree over my brother’s grave.] Beethoven had indeed lost an infant brother twenty-three years before this event, but it is not likely that he was thus tardily commemorating him.  His brother Kaspar Karl was married the day before this quartet was begun and it is probably a humorous allusion to that circumstance.  But if his brother’s marriage was an occasion for humor at the beginning, it lapsed afterward into the sternest tragedy in its effect on the master’s life, as will be seen further on in these pages.

These quartets are monuments to Beethoven’s genius and are classed among the best examples of chamber-music.  The Adagio of the second one was thought out by Beethoven one night while contemplating the stars.  Somewhat of the infinite calm and serenity of his mood is imparted to it.  The incident is related by Czerny to whom it was related by Beethoven himself.  The quartets were generally disliked and condemned by musicians when first produced.  Cherubini said that they made him sneeze.  Others said that Beethoven was music-mad, that they could not be called music, that they were too difficult, unintelligible, and so on.  That was close onto a century ago, and they are still unintelligible to some, but we now know that this is not the fault of the quartets as was so naively assumed at that time.  The condemnation of them by the performers has a show of reason in it as they taxed their capacity too severely.  Wagner had the same thing to contend with for the same reason.