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sketches which have been preserved more than the number of attempts
which mark the growth of the idea in the composer's mind, until it
assumed its final form. Yet there was no trace in the finished work of
the process of refining and elaboration through which it had passed.

Very curious was the origin of some of the suggestions which found
their way into the sketch-books. It was Beethoven's practice to keep
one of these books by his bedside, in case an idea occurred to him
during the night, and it is told that he was once aroused by the
knocking of a neighbour who had been accidentally locked out of his
house in the small hours of the morning. The irate neighbour knocked
four raps at a time, with a pause at the end of every fourth rap, and
the rhythmic regularity of the sounds not only startled Beethoven out
of his sleep, but suggested a musical idea to his mind. Up jumped the
composer, and down went the idea in his sketch-book, and the next
morning the jotting was included in one of his most striking
compositions--the 'Violin Concerto in D,' where the passage, given to
the drums, is many times repeated.

A village which formed one of his favourite resorts was Heiligenstadt,
situated about seven miles from Vienna. Here he went in the summer of
1802, after a severe illness. For some time past he had been suffering
from increasing deafness, and the malady seemed now to have reached an
acute stage, so that his country surroundings failed to exercise their
accustomed charm, and he fell into a deep melancholy. Indeed, he
appeared to have become impressed with the idea that his life-work was
ended, and that he had nothing to look forward to but the
companionship of an affliction which must sever him from the social
intercourse in which he delighted, and render his remaining years
solitary and miserable. It would be difficult to imagine a more
terrible calamity than that which had befallen Beethoven, or to
exaggerate its effects upon an over-sensitive nature such as he
possessed. As his deafness increased, his efforts to conceal the
results of the malady from those outside his own immediate circle
became more and more painfully evident. No one failed to observe how
he was affected, yet none dared to commiserate with him; and when he
discovered that his mistakes were drawing public attention to what he
was so anxious to hide, his mortification was intensified to a degree
that for the time destroyed his peace of mind and