'n und welches
Haupt ihm gefaellt um das flicht er mit
liebenden Haenden den Lorbeer.'
Schiller."

In the mere grammar of musical composition the pupil required little of
his master. We have Beethoven's own words to prove this, scrawled at the
end of the thorough-bass exercises, afterward performed, when studying
with Albrechtsberger. "Dear friends," he writes, "I have taken all this
trouble, simply to be able to figure my basses correctly, and some
time, perhaps, to instruct others. As to errors, I hardly needed to
learn this for my own sake. From my childhood I have had so fine a
musical sense, that I wrote correctly without knowing that it _must_ be
so, or _could_ be otherwise."

Neefe's object, therefore,--as was Haydn's at a subsequent period,--was
to give his pupil that mastery of musical form and of his instrument,
which should enable him at once to perceive the value of a musical idea
and its most appropriate treatment. The result was, that the tones of
his piano-forte became to the youth a language in which his highest,
deepest, subtilest musical ideas were expressed by his fingers as
instantaneously and with as little thought of the mere style and manner
of their expression as are the intellectual ideas of the thoroughly
trained rhetorician in words.

The good effect of the course pursued by Neefe with his pupil is visible
in the next published production--save a song or two--of the boy;--the

"Three Sonatas for the Piano-forte, composed and dedicated to the most
Reverend Archbishop and Elector of Cologne, Maximilian Frederick, my
most gracious Lord, by LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN, _Aged eleven years_."

We cannot resist the temptation to add the comically bombastic
Dedication of these Sonatas to the Elector, which may very possibly have
been written by Neefe, who loved to see himself in print.

"DEDICATION

"MOST EXALTED!

"Already in my fourth year Music began to be the principal employment of
my youth. Thus early acquainted with the Lovely Muse, who tuned my soul
to pure harmonies, she won my love, and, as I oft have felt, gave me
hers in return. I have now completed my eleventh year; and my Muse, in
the hours consecrated to her, oft whispers to me, 'Try for once, and
write down the harmonies in thy soul!'--'Eleven years!' thought I,--'and
how should I carry the dignity of authorship? What would _men_ in the
art say?'--My timidity had nearly conquered. But my Muse willed it:--I
obeyed and wrote.