30.

CAUTION.

November, 1803.

Herr Carl Zulehner, a piratical engraver in Mayence, has announced an edition of my collected works for the pianoforte and also stringed instruments.  I consider it my duty publicly to inform all friends of music that I have no share whatever in this edition.

I would never have in any way authorized any collection of my works (which, moreover, I consider premature) without previously consulting the publishers of single pieces, and ensuring that correctness in which editions of my individual works are so deficient.  I must also observe that this illegal edition cannot be complete, as several new works of mine are shortly to appear in Paris, and these Herr Zulehner, being a French subject, dare not pirate.  I intend to take another opportunity of enumerating the details of the collection of my works to be brought out under my own auspices and careful revision.

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN.

31.

TO HERR RIES.[1]

1804.

Be so good as to make out a list of the mistakes and send it at once to Simrock, and say that the work must appear as soon as possible.  I will send him the Sonata [Op. 47] and the Concerto the day after to-morrow.

BEETHOVEN.

[Footnote 1:  Ries relates that the three following notes refer to the pianoforte Sonata, Op. 31, No. 1, carefully engraved by Naegeli in Zurich, which Beethoven consequently sent forthwith to Simrock in Bonn, desiring him to bring out “une edition tres-correcte” of the work.  He also states that Beethoven was residing in Heiligenstadt at the time the work was first sent [see No. 26].  In Nottebohm’s Skizzenbuch von Beethoven, he says (p. 43) that the first notice of the appearance of this sonata was on May 21st, 1803; but Simrock writes to me that the date of the document making over the sonata to him is 1804.]

32.

TO HERR RIES.

I must again ask you to undertake the disagreeable task of making a fair copy of the errors in the Zurich Sonata.  I have got your list of errata “auf der Wieden.”

33.

TO HERR RIES.

DEAR RIES,—­

The signs are wrongly marked, and many of the notes misplaced; so be careful! or your labor will be vain. Ch’ a detto l’ amato bene?

34.

TO HERR RIES.

DEAR RIES,—­

May I beg you to be so obliging as to copy this andante [in the Kreuzer Sonata] for me, however indifferently?  I must send it off to-morrow, and as Heaven alone knows what its fate may then be, I wish to get it transcribed.  But I must have it back to-morrow about one o’clock.  The cause of my troubling you is that one of my copyists is already very much occupied with various things of importance, and the other is ill.

35.

TO THE COMPOSER LEIDESDORF,—­VIENNA.[1]

DORF DES LEIDES [VILLAGE OF SORROW—­LEIDESDORF],—­