he kept on
playing his own part, sang the cellist's part. When this was commented
on, he remarked that the bass part _had_ to be this way if the composer
understood his business. The composer in this instance was Foerster, his
old teacher.

On another occasion, Beethoven played at sight a new and difficult
composition which had been brought him. The composer told him that he
(Beethoven), had played the Presto so fast that it would have been
impossible to see the single notes. "That is not necessary," Beethoven
replied. "If you read rapidly, many misprints may occur; you do not heed
them, if you only know the language." Wagner in his life of Beethoven
says: "The power of the musician is not to be appreciated otherwise than
through the idea of magic." It would seem so in very fact. Consider the
million combinations of which the brain has to take cognizance while
doing so comparatively simple a thing as transposing. Not to play the
particular notes which are indicated on the staff, but some others, one
or two steps higher or lower; to play four or five at a stroke, as in
piano, and to do it quickly, sixty or eighty or a hundred in a
minute,--this is almost like magic, but it is nothing to what Beethoven
frequently did in music. At a public concert at which he played, he
asked his friend Seyfried, a distinguished composer and all-round
musician, to turn the leaves for him of a new concerto written for the
occasion. "But that was easier said than done," said Seyfried who told
the story. "I saw nothing but blank leaves with a few utterly
incomprehensible Egyptian hieroglyphics which served him as guides, for
he played nearly the whole of the solo part from memory, not 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 Lich