The sonata[92] in D minor (1788) opens with a vigorous yet dignified Allegro; the graceful Adagio is of eighteenth century type; it is in the key of the relative major, but closes on the dominant chord of D minor, leading without break to a final Allegro, full of interesting details.  The movement concludes with an impressive poco adagio coda, in which Rust makes use of the principal theme of the opening movement.  We will venture on one quotation, although a few bars, separated from the context, may convey only a feeble impression—­

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The sonata in D major, composed six years later, opens with an interesting Allegro.  The second movement, in B minor, bears the superscription “Wehklage” (Lamentation).  Rust’s eldest son, a talented youth, who was studying at Halle University, was drowned in the river Saale, 23rd March 1794.  Matthisson, the “Adelaide” poet, sent to the disconsolate father a poem entitled “Todtenkranz fuer ein Kind,” to which Rust sketched music, and on that sketch is based this pathetic movement, which sounds like some tone-poem of the nineteenth century.  Here is the impressive coda:—­

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There follows a dainty, old-fashioned Minuet, and a curious movement entitled “Schwermuth und Frohsinn” (Melancholy and Mirth);[93] though after the “Wehklage” these make little impression.

During four years (1792-96), Rust was occupied with a sonata in C minor and major.  The work is a remarkable one.  It opens with an energetic Recitativo in C minor, interrupted for a few bars by an Arioso Adagio in C major.  Then comes a Lento in six-four time based on the celebrated Marlbrook song, a dignified movement containing, among other canonic imitations, one in the ninth.  It leads by means of a stringendo bar to a brilliant Allegro con brio, a movement of which both the music and the technique remind one of Beethoven’s bravoura style.  A second section of the sonata commences with the recitative phrase of the opening of the work, only in A minor.  This leads to a highly characteristic Andante, which Dr. Rust, the editor, in a preface to the published sonata, likens to the “mighty procession” in Lenau’s Faust.  The Finale consists of an animated Allegro, with a clever fugato by way of episode; there is still an Allegro maestoso, which, except for its length and the fact that it contains a middle section, Cantabile e religioso, we should call a long coda.  The whole, evidently programme-music, is a sonata worked out somewhat on Kuhnau lines.

Now, was Beethoven acquainted with Rust’s music?  Dr. Prieger, in the pamphlet mentioned above, remarks as follows:—­“During the years 1807-27 Wilhelm Karl Rust (b. 1787, d. 1855), the youngest son of our master, was in Vienna, and had the good fortune to make the acquaintance of Beethoven, who was pleased with his playing, and recommended him as teacher.  Among Rust’s lady pupils