Even during this wild period of my life, my musical development had not been entirely at a standstill; on the contrary, it daily became plainer that music was the only direction towards which my mental tendencies had a marked bent.  Only I had got quite out of the habit of musical study.  Even now it seems incredible that I managed to find time in those days to finish quite a substantial amount of composition.  I have but the faintest recollection of an Overture in C major (6/8 time), and of a Sonata in B flat major arranged as a duet; the latter pleased my sister Ottilie, who played it with me, so much that I arranged it for orchestra.  But another work of this period, an Overture in B flat major, left an indelible impression on my mind on account of an incident connected with it.  This composition, in fact, was the outcome of my study of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in about the same degree as Leubald und Adelaide was the result of my study of Shakespeare.  I had made a special point of bringing out the mystic meaning in the orchestra, which I divided into three distinctly different and opposite elements.  I wanted to make the characteristic nature of these elements clear to the score reader the moment he looked at it by a striking display of colour, and only the fact that I could not get any green ink made this picturesque idea impossible.  I employed black ink for the brass instruments alone, the strings were to have red and the wind green ink.  This extraordinary score I gave for perusal to Heinrich Dorn, who was at that time musical director of the Leipzig theatre.  He was very young, and impressed me as being a very clever musician and a witty man of the world, whom the Leipzig public made much of.

Nevertheless, I have never been able to understand how he could have granted my request to produce this overture.

Some time afterwards I was rather inclined to believe with others, who knew how much he enjoyed a good joke, that he intended to treat himself to a little fun.  At the time, however, he vowed that he thought the work interesting, and maintained that if it were only brought out as a hitherto unknown work by Beethoven, the public would receive it with respect, though without understanding.

It was the Christmas of the fateful year 1830; as usual, there would be no performance at the theatre on Christmas Eve, but instead a concert for the poor had been organised, which received but scant support.  The first item on the programme was called by the exciting title ’New Overture’—­nothing more!  I had surreptitiously listened to the rehearsal with some misgiving.  I was very much impressed by the coolness with which Dorn fenced with the apparent confusion which the members of the orchestra showed with regard to this mysterious composition.  The principal theme of the Allegro was contained in four bars; after every fourth bar, however, a fifth bar had been inserted, which had nothing to do with the melody, and which was announced by a loud bang on