own terms.  There had also been some talk before this about an opera on an American subject, the Founding of Pennsylvania.  It was suggested by a minor poet and government official, Johann Ruprecht, whose poem, Merkenstein, Beethoven had set to music previous to 1816.  In 1820 Beethoven had planned an Italian tour and had intended taking Ruprecht with him.  They must have quarrelled later, as in a letter to Schindler in 1823 Beethoven refers to Ruprecht in the most abusive terms.

A commission that must have gratified Beethoven exceedingly, but which, however, was not acted upon, was that which emanated from Breitkopf and Haertel, who sent the famous critic Friederich Rochlitz to Vienna in July, 1822, with a proposition that he write some Faust music in the style of the Egmont music.  It is narrated that Beethoven received the proposition with joy, but gave only a qualified assent.  There is no doubt that he would have found inspiration in the text, and that a noble work would have resulted, but he feared the nervous strain of such an undertaking.  “I should enjoy it,” he said to Rochlitz, “but I shudder at the thought of beginning works of such magnitude.  Once engaged on them, however, I have no difficulty.”  His labors on the Mass aged him.  In his prime on its inception, he emerged from his seclusion on completing it, infirm and broken in health.  The idea of the Faust music attracted him, as it would have been strictly symphonic in character.  He occasionally refers to it subsequently, but never got so far as to enter themes for it in his note-books.  Wagner essayed it, but went no further than to write the overture.  The subject of Faust still awaits a capable interpreter.

His next commission was a simple one, consisting of an order early in the spring of 1823 from Diabelli, composer and head of a large publishing house in Vienna, for six variations on a waltz by him (Diabelli).  The dance was always a favorite musical form with Beethoven in his lighter moments, and the variation form,—­capable of a degree of sprightliness, vivacity and originality in the right hands which give it an entrancing effect, to which we come again and again with pleasure, was something peculiarly his own at every stage of his artistic career.  His earliest essays in composition are in this form.  Variations occupy a prominent part in all his works, whether chamber-music, sonatas or symphonies.  They are introduced perhaps with best effect in the works of his last years, in the Ninth Symphony, and in the last quartets.

He accepted the order with pleasure and began work on it at once on reaching his summer quarters.  This was congenial work, affording him relief from the mental strain imposed on him by his labors on the Ninth Symphony, which was then under way.  A price of eighty ducats ($180) was fixed by the publisher at the outset for the set, but the master enjoyed his work so much, that the six, when completed, were increased to ten, then to twenty, and twenty-five, and so on until the number grew to thirty-three.  These variations are extremely elaborate and difficult, a characteristic of most of his work in these years.