In these assemblages rank was ignored.  Art was a leveller, or, rather, the devotees of the art were raised to a common plane, where social distinctions were for the time being obliterated.  No special invitations were required.  Any one interested in the art was made welcome, and found there a congenial atmosphere.  Czerny, modest and retiring, had no thought of making social capital out of these concerts.  No one not wholly devoted to the art was wanted, no matter what his social position was, and want of social position was no bar when the artistic qualifications were present.  It was a band of chosen spirits, and the attrition engendered by these meetings must have been advantageous to each.  They were true Concerts Spirituels, an audience of artists from which the performers were drawn.

Second only to Czerny as a pianist among this company was Beethoven’s friend and pupil, the Baroness Ertmann, who frequently took part in these concerts.  Madame Ertmann’s virtuosity has already been commented on in these pages.  She won new laurels at the Czerny concerts through her admirable interpretation of Beethoven’s music.

During this winter of 1816 the master composed the fine sonata in A, opus 101, for her.  It commemorates the spiritual kinship existing between these two gifted persons.  “My dear, valued Dorothea Caecilia,” he writes in his letter of dedication, “receive now what has long been intended for you, and may it serve as a proof of my appreciation of your artistic talents and of yourself; I regret not having heard you recently at Cz—­(Czerny’s).  My absence was owing to illness, which at last appears to be giving way to returning health.”  Some years previously, when the Baroness had lost a son by death during her husband’s absence on his military duties, Beethoven asked the stricken woman to call, and comforted her, not with words, but in the language which both best understood. “‘We will talk in music,’ said Beethoven, who remained at the piano over an hour in which he said everything and even gave me consolation.”  The incident is obtained from one of Mendelssohn’s letters.

Among the important works produced in this period may be mentioned the Sonata, opus 90, “A struggle between the head and the heart.”  It is dedicated to Count M. Lichnowsky on the occasion of his marriage to a singer.  There was also the chorus set to Goethe’s words, “A Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage.”  This was written in 1815 and seven years later dedicated to Goethe.  The two sonatas, opus 102, for piano and cello, one of which is called the Free Sonata, are interesting, as in them is foreshadowed the trend of Beethoven’s mind toward religious music, which controlled him almost entirely from this time on.